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

[John Clark]

On Sun, Mar 29, 2026 at 10:40 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> 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.*
>

*That would be the probability if you assume 5,000,000 other intelligent
civilizations will eventually arise in the observable universe (I don't
know how you got that number, but never mind) and if you had no other
information to go on. But we DO have more information because we have
telescopes, and none of them have revealed any evidence that anything has
been engineered except for right here on the Earth, and we certainly should
have if we are not the first. Despite what Carl Sagan said, sometimes the
absence of evidence IS evidence of absence. **What we can observe is finite
so somebody has to be the first, and it looks like we are it. *

*And from the evidence that we have, complex multicellular life seems to be
difficult for evolution to come up with, and intelligent life even more so.
Life first originated on the Earth about 3.8 billion years ago but for the
first 3.3 billion years you'd need a microscope to observe any living
being. And it's interesting that flight evolved independently 4 times, and
the eye at least 40 times and perhaps as many as 60, but intelligence,
defined as the ability to make something as complex as a radio telescope,
evolved only once; and in the nearly 4 billion year history of life this
planet that ability has only existed on this planet for about a century,
and yet we are on the verge of a singularity with a greater cosmic
significance than the Cambrian Explosion.*

*> 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).*
>

*I see no reason to think that BOTH Dyson style megastructures AND **Drexler
style Nanotechnology **won't happen because I assume you can never have too
much computational ability. Yes, more efficiency means more computation,
but so does more energy. And in the last couple of years it should be
obvious why those who think ET will not want vast amounts of energy because
they will upload is not a tenable hypothesis; unless you assume that a sort
of electronic drug abuse is the inevitable consequence of any mind if it
becomes powerful enough because it becomes completely hedonistic and is
completely satisfied by a never ending orgasm and wants nothing more. If
that is the case then T.S. Elliot was wrong and the world will not end with
a bang or a whimper but with a moan of pleasure.*

*> 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?*
>

*You make a very good point. There is no reason to think that at all. *

*> Consider: if the asteroid they wiped out dinosaurs never hit, would
> dinosaurs have had their own space program millions of years ago?*
>

*Probably not. The era of dinosaurs lasted for 165 million years but the T
Rex only became extinct 66 million years ago, so we are closer in time to
the era of a T Rex than a T Rex was from the era of an early dinosaur like
the Stegosaur. However I don't think a T Rex was significantly closer to
building a spaceship than a Stegosaur was. *

*Apparently evolving intelligence is hard, and if it wasn't for that random
asteroid there wouldn't be any intelligent beings in the observable
universe. *

*John K Clark   *
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