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

[Jason Resch]

On Sun, Mar 29, 2026, 8:19 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> 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.
>

There is a probability bound to the "were the first" hypothesis. If you
assume there are, say 5,000,000 other intelligent civilizations that will
eventually arise in our observable universe, the. The chance that we would
be the first one is 1 in 5,000,000. It isn't impossible, but it isn't
likely.



> 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).


Even if they proceeded us, the probability is very low that say, across the
billions (or perhaps trillions) of years that life will spontaneously
emerge in this universe, we happen to be one of the first to emerge within
the first 100,000 years.


>
> 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.
>

The bigger issue with John's analysis is he assumes the Kardashev scale
(greater expansion and energy use) will rule rather than the Barrow scale
(greeter miniaturization, speed and efficiency). In other words, John
assumes the transcension hypothesis is false.


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

We can't rule out that we're among the first, but we can establish tight
probabilistic bounds for a given number of other civilizations we expect to
emerge, and how distributed their emergence is across time.

I think expecting many civilizations will emerge simultaneously across the
galaxy is highly unlikely, given what we know about variable and sensitive
Earth's history has been to random events.

Consider: if the asteroid they wiped out dinosaurs never hit, would
dinosaurs have had their own space program millions of years ago? Or if it
came 50 million years earlier, would mammalians evolution have been that
much fire advanced?

If the library of Alexandria hasn't burned, would we have skipped the dark
ages and had a singularity in the year 1,000 A.D.?

If we had a nuclear war in 1960, might we have to wait another 10 million
years for octopuses to evolve into a intelligent species and start a space
program?

The smallest events in history can push the timeframe back or forwards by
millions of years. Why then, should it be likely that all intelligent
civilizations across the galaxy invent rockets and computers at the same
approximate time?



> 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.
>

It happens a lot in history of earth because there are dependecies on
preceding technologies, mathematics, scientific discoveries, new needs
brought about by new tools and technologies, and so on, since all activity
in earth is causally interactive.

But then we discover uncontacted tribes and civilizations and find they are
behind by thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years in development.
Because this pocket of civilization was not part of the same causal
interaction process. There was no risk of someone in such an isolated tribe
inventing the telephone before Bell, or the radio before Marconi.

Accordingly I think the isolated, uncontacted civilization model is a
better fit when it comes to considering whether alien civilizations. They
may be very far ahead of very far behind us.

I think only if we had frequent communication and interaction with a bunch
of other alien civilizations could we expect a situation where our
technology is all on par, and co-developing along similar lines at the same
time.


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

But if John is right this illusion could not last long. A civilization bent
on building a Dyson swarm around every star in the galaxy could colonize
the entire galaxy in less than a million years. This is an eye blink on
geological time scales.


>
> *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.
>

That is interesting. I think if we wanted we could find a way, but there
will be such better options with robotics.

The idea that we will adapt the whole universe to fit us is insane, when we
could instead adapt ourselves to fit the universe. It is like the parable
of the inventor of the shoe. Instead of covering the whole surface of the
earth in leather, he simply tied a small piece of leather to the bottom of
his feet.

Jason

P.S.
The new season of For all Mankind just started. It is about life on a Mars
colony.
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