[ExI] Lethal future was Watson on NOVA

[Samantha Atkins]

On 02/16/2011 09:41 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote:
> Keith Henson wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 12:38 AM,  Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 03:13:18PM -0500, David Lubkin wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm still pissed at Sagan for his hubris in sending a message to the
>>>> stars without asking the rest of us first, in blithe certainty that 
>>>> "of
>>>> course" any recipient would have evolved beyond aggression and
>>>> xenophobia.
>>> The real reasons if that they would be there you'd be dead, Jim.
>>> In fact, if any alien picks up the transmission (chance: very close
>>> to zero) they'd better be farther advanced than us, and on a
>>> faster track. I hope it for them.
>>
>> I have been mulling this over for decades.
>>
>> We look out into the Universe and don't (so far) see or hear any
>> evidence of technophilic civilization.
>>
>> I see only two possibilities:
>>
>> 1)  Technophilics are so rare that there are no others in our light 
>> cone.
>>
>> 2)  Or if they are relatively common something wipes them *all* out,
>> or, if not wiped out, they don't do anything which indicates their
>> presence.
>>
>> If 1, then the future is unknown.  If 2, it's probably related to
>> local singularities.  If that's the case, most of the people reading
>> this list will live to see it.
>

Well, the message sent by Sagan was a single transmission aimed at a 
globular cluster 25,000 light years away.  Traveling at near light speed 
to send a ship back is very expensive and would not happen for a long 
time.  And for what?  A lower level species that may or may not survive 
its own growing pains long enough to ever be any kind of threat at 
all?     The chances that a highly xenophobic advanced species would 
pick it up and choose to mount the expense to act on it is pretty small.

Hmm.  Of course if they are particularly advanced they could just 
engineer a super-nova aimed in our general direction from close 
enough.    Or as some film had it, send us the plans to build a wonder 
machine that wipes us out or turns us into more of them.

> Well, not really an extra one, but I count four items in your 2-item 
> list:
>
> 1)  Technophilics are so rare that there are no others in our light cone.
>
> 2)  If they are relatively common, there is something that wipes them 
> *all* out (by the time they reach this stage they foul their own nest 
> and die), or
>
> 3)  They are relatively common and they don't do anything which 
> indicates their presence, because they are too scared that someone 
> else will zap them, or
>
> 4)  They are relatively common and they don't do anything which 
> indicates their presence, because they use communications technology 
> that does not leak the way ours does.
>

My theory is that almost no evolved intelligent species meets the 
challenge of overcoming its evolved limitations fast enough to cope 
successfully with accelerating technological change.   Almost all either 
wipe themselves out or ding themselves sufficiently hard to miss their 
window of opportunity.  It can be argued that it is very very rare that 
a technological species survives the period we are entering and emerges 
more capable on the other side of singularity.

- samantha