[ExI] More Advanced Extraterrestrials

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Thu Dec 25 17:47:53 UTC 2014


On Wed, Dec 24, 2014 at 10:57 PM, Robin D Hanson  wrote:
> I agree they would be far more advanced from us; that was key to my
> latest comment there. But why should being far more advanced mean
> that we should "be unable to understand what they will be like"? We
> don't understand everything, but we do understand some things, so why
> can't we make use of what we do understand?
>

I assume that they will be post-Singularity entities. They won't be
cowboys with spaceships and laser guns like Star Trek. Their advanced
tech will be like magic to us.

I don't believe we will be able to understand post-Singularity aliens.
We may not even be able to see them. As we don't see massive
engineering redesigning star systems, they may go the nano-tech route,
or disappear near black holes.

To quote Seth Shostak of SETI "You don't spend a whole lot of time
hanging out reading books with your
goldfish. On the other hand, you don't really want to kill the
goldfish, either."


BillK



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list