[ExI] ET Emergence (Was Re: Uploads as a group of AI agents)

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 29/03/2026 10:59, John K Clark wrote:
> Forget 1/3 c, if just one ET had been able to send just one Von Neumann probe at 1/30 c then almost instantly (cosmically speaking) it would be very obvious to anybody that the Milky Way had been engineered, but instead we see a huge astronomical number of energy rich photons from hundreds of billions of starsradiating uselessly into empty space; and the Milky Way is not unique, even our largest telescopes can find no sign that any other galaxy has been engineered either. That's why I think the evidence is overwhelming that we are the only intelligent beings in the observable universe.  


I don't think this can be definitively decided, at the moment.

As I've said before, this ignores timing.

I know it's speculative (but so is just about everything we're discussing here), but just suppose the time hasn't been right up until very recently, for intelligent life to start creating space-going civilisations, von-neumann probes, etc.

Yes, a few hundred thousand years is an eye-blink, cosmologically, but not culturally, and certainly not in terms of biological life-spans. If the very first space-capable civilisations emerged say a thousand years ago, only the ones within a thousand light years would be even theoretically observable (and maybe they are: vis. the Tabby stars). 

Your argument makes sense, I'm, not saying it doesn't, but we can't ignore the timing. Maybe the von-neumann probes are on the way, but won't be apparent for another few thousand+ years, because they launched just recently.

Can we rule this out? I don't think so.

We can argue about the possible reasons for no civilisations being capable of extensive space activity (which almost certainly means uploading into non-biological embodiments of some kind*) until very recently, but we can't rule it out. Many things seem to follow a pattern where they emerge all over the place when 'the time is right', we see this throughout our history, and also in cosmology. I don't see why a similar thing can't apply here.

The conclusion that we are 'the first' could also apply to a million other intelligent life forms all over the galaxy.


*I was reading recently that we need at least 0.85g (I think, I can't find the reference just now, but it was depressingly high, certainly > 0.6g) to prevent bone density problems, so it seems that between radiation and this, not to mention our resource needs, there's no realistic prospect of (biological) humans ever 'colonising space'. Even Mars has less gravity than we need to stay healthy.

-- 
Ben