[ExI] FW: How fun could doom intelligent life to a blissful extinction

[Keith Henson]

On Tue, Jul 18, 2023 at 3:07 PM spike jones via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

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> From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat
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> >...If the pursuit of happiness is the primary explanation for our decreasing fertility rate, this tendency might be true not just for humans but for all intelligent life — providing a possible explanation for the Fermi Paradox.
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> <https://bigthink.com/the-future/pursuit-happiness-doom-intelligent-life-blissful-extinction/>
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> BillK
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> BillK, this is really as plausible an explanation for the Fermi Paradox as any I have heard, and perhaps the most pleasant one.  Having children is a way to experience happiness, but it is a risky bet indeed.

Spike, that's the case now, but given gene selection and nanomedicine,
having a child would be a low-risk project.

> If we find sufficient alternative routes to happiness, the notion of having children becomes ever less compelling.  If we find alternative routes to the pleasures of copulation and all those cool endorphins

We already have drugs> that stimulate endorphins.

> we get from love, that whole risky activity isn't worth the effort either.

I disagree.  I want to raise clones of da Vinci, Einstein, and Fineman
among others.

>  Result: not enough young people to run the world we already built for them.

Not a problem.  If we need more, we just run the ones we have through
the duplicator.  It's not entirely obvious what we need them for in a
world of nanotech though.

> But of course nuclear war could wipe out most of what we have done, creating the need for rebuilders and family people, so we might save our species in that horrifying way: radiation therapy.

Again, you are not thinking far enough about the problem.  Nanotech
can't help with a nuclear blast, but at least it can sort the
radioactive isotopes out of the environment.  *If* we give a hoot.  If
we want to stay in biological bodies, then we can either sort out the
radioactive stuff or use cell repair machines to stay healthy.

> Or the singularity could kill us, but I don't think it would kill people who have never seen a computer.  They might survive to build it all back.

If what we are seeing at Tabby's Star is a civilization approaching
K2, then they made it.  No reason we can't.

I must say the light curves from Tabby's Star have forced a wrenching
readjustment of my beliefs about the universe around us.  For at least
a decade I have been unable to stand SF that had aliens in it or FTL
travel.  FTL is still out, but it sure looks like someone has
constructed one heck of a lot of energy collectors.  Why?  From our
viewpoint, the only thing that makes any sense is computation,  If my
math is correct, it's over 400 times the area of the earth and
radiating at around 65 K.

I suspect that the size is limited by whatever they took apart to make it.

Keith

> spike
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