[ExI] taxonomy for fermi paradox fans:

[Giovanni Santostasi]

We already have period of unconsciousness: sleep. It is not idle time.
If there is a process that is not interesting to attend, like a long
interstellar trip going to sleep is a possible solution as you noted. One
could even update the mind software while doing that. Plus downloading
information directly to the brain would not be unfeasible for an advanced
civilization, so the problem of adapting to the future is not a problem at
all (by the way there are Australian aborigine that got adapted quickly to
modern life (differential of thousand of years from their previous
condition) maybe with some social problem but their head didn't explode.

Even most of an ET society maybe be lost in a VR world nothing stops them
from launching self replicating probes that as noted by others would cost
almost nothing for an advanced civilization. Even a bored ET kid could do
that.

As I said there is only one reasonable solution to the Fermi's paradox. We
are the first and very likely only ones.

Giovanni


On Sun, Feb 1, 2015 at 1:51 PM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 1 February 2015 at 18:37, John Clark wrote:
> > ET doesn't need to travel to the stars, ET just needs to send one Von
> > Neumann probe to one star, and then almost instantly from a cosmic
> > perspective (less than 50 million years, perhaps much less) the entire
> > Galaxy would be unrecognizable. And it's not as if this would take some
> huge
> > commitment on the part of ET's civilization, in fact even a individual
> could
> > easily do it. If Von Neumann probes are possible at all, and I can't
> think
> > why they wouldn't be, then they're going to be dirt cheap, you buying a
> bag
> > of peanuts would be a greater drag on your financial resources.
> >
> > I am having difficulty grasping the argument that the reason we can't see
> > any changes that ET made to the universe with even our biggest
> telescopes is
> > because ET can make changes a million times faster than we can.
> >
> >
>
> It is because ET *thinks* a million times faster than us. But chemical
> reactions still take the same time. If it takes a subjective 10,000
> years to do one spot-weld, then you are not going to do many. In
> theory, robots could do the job, but building the robots takes too
> long (subjective time). That's why ET probably retreats into virtual
> reality that reacts at the same speed as their thinking.
>
> Humans are finding the same thing already. It is far easier (and
> safer) to make a virtual reality SF world than actually build physical
> stuff to go to Mars. (World of Warcraft?).
>
> As for voluntarily slowing down their processing, I think that is a
> rather obvious non-idea. It would be like voluntarily 'dying' for
> thousands of years. Humans could almost do that already. We can't stop
> ageing yet, but you could travel into the future as soon a workable
> hibernation technique is developed. (NASA are already looking at this
> for Mars trips). But would there be many takers for this trip into the
> future? A human from only 100 years ago would face considerable
> problems re-educating themselves to the modern environment. They would
> probably need a 'carer' to look after them while they tried to adjust.
> As for thousands of years - forget it. You would never adjust.
>
> BillK
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