This is very similar to the idea Charles Stross presents in his 2005 novel Accelerando which in turn used the idea of a Matrioshka Brain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain).
Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens
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Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens
#22A terrible article. So let's say something more interesting. There are several important ideas intertwined together around the Fermi Paradox: 1) Fermi Paradox Why haven't we seen any evidence in the observable universe of megascale activities and exponential growth comparable to those that we know that our descendants will be capable of, and fairly soon? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox 2) The Outer Bounds…
Wow, thanks for links 3 and 4. I bet just about everyone here has had a similar idea to the the "Simulation Argument." I could never find any official name for it though.
How hilarious would that be if reality was in fact a simulation and the ones watching us get the biggest kick out of everyone trying to figure out why we're here. I guess that assumes that the creators of this simulation have a sense of humor.
Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens
#23The physicist David Deutsch makes the point that there is no real way to distinguish a consistent, convincing virtual reality from reality itself. Therefore, there is no real moral difference between richly populating such virtual worlds (once we can construct them--we can't quite, yet) and populating actual other planets. Nick Bostrom would say that even using the word "actual" is probably wrong, since we're likely…
There's gotta be a paradigm shift at some point where we start seeing VR not as an illusion but simply more living space.
Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens
#24Let's imagine there are billions of planets out there (a true Sagan-esque billions) which have spawned intelligences that have achieved interstellar travel - ie. they have the ability to actively seek out and communicate with others of similar ability. Perhaps like the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek, except many, many of these, separated from others by various degrees of intelligence or ability.
Let's imagine there are far more planets like ours that have life - let's throw intelligence out, because that is defined by some relative standard - which has not yet reached that capability. Why would we be interesting in the scope of these far more advanced extraterrestrial societies?
Perhaps they don't reach out because it would be as fruitless as us trying to communicate with ants. Perhaps they don't care to study us because we seem about as interesting as primordial soup (ie. a nuclear holocaust might be a trait of that). Perhaps intelligences like ours are well understood, well classified in the genus of the universe, and we are about as ordinary as a barnacle on the hull of a tug boat.
Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens
#25[deleted]
Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens
#26tl;dr: They're too busy playing World of Warcraft to fart around with spaceships.
Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens
#27Honestly if the human race discovered a less evolved colony on the moon, I wouldn't want to know what we would end up doing to them. Most likely Nike would figure out a way to put them in cages and force them to make shoes every day. I think the reason why we fear aliens is because its a reflection of what we know we would likely end up doing to a lesser lifeform.
Oddly enough, I think its an optimistic outcome if we play video games and never meet aliens in that if they function like us, it will be either us exploiting them or them exploiting us unless we amazingly are right on par with each other. Sorry to be so pessimistic, its just that we have consistently failed pretty hard as a race in how we treat other creatures and the environment.
Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens
#28Almost everything good and bad that humans have done is due to the drive of a SMALL number of (or single) individuals (American Decl. of Independence, Soviet revolution, Indian freedom struggle, race to colonize the world, WW2, 9/11, Iraq invasion). That is why it doesn't matter if 99.999% of the world is pre-occupied with one mindvirus or other. It's the 1-in-100k person who really takes humanity to the next level o…
The whole "great men made history" meme is kind of discredited. It's true to a point, and it's certainly a lot more interesting (therefore easy to remember) if you say that WWII was Hitler vs. Churchill and Stalin, but it's not entirely correct.
In science, it might just be 1% of the top 1% who make the big breakthroughs - how many times did one guy make more than one really huge breakthrough? I can think of one big fuzzy-haired counterexample.
Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens
#29The physicist David Deutsch makes the point that there is no real way to distinguish a consistent, convincing virtual reality from reality itself. Therefore, there is no real moral difference between richly populating such virtual worlds (once we can construct them--we can't quite, yet) and populating actual other planets. Nick Bostrom would say that even using the word "actual" is probably wrong, since we're likely…
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Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens
#30He rather defeats his point at the last by pointing out that subcultures that specifically deny artificial or damaging fitness indicators would then take over. It seems unlikely that some few out of billions wouldn't make a different choice, and pass that choice on to their children.