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No answer to the Fermi Paradox works if it requires all aliens to uniformly come to the same end state or satisfy some boundary condition without exception. All

No answer to the Fermi Paradox works if it requires all aliens to uniformly come to the same end state or satisfy some boundary condition without exception. All it takes is the one exception, one small group in one suitably advanced civilization, and you have self-replicating probes building an expanding wave of computronium, dismantling even the stars themselves as soon as the economics favor a better use for that matter. Such as more computronium. The Fermi Paradox is more the Wilderness Paradox: why is everything, everywhere we look, wild and unmodified? Why are there still stars, when a simple economic analysis of our future tells us that we will tear them down in favor of more efficient arrangements of matter and energy? https://www.exratione.com/2015/05/the-cosmological-noocene/ https://www.exratione.com/2015/05/the-cosmological-noocene/ "Per our present understanding of physics and intelligent economic activity, we will turn every part of the great span of the universe into our descendants if not diverted or stopped by some outside influence, stars and all. The cosmological noocene, an ocean of intelligence. That the natural universe remains present to be used by us indicates that something is awry, however, that some vital and important understanding is missing, and as a species we are still just making the first fumbling explorations of the bounds of the possible with regards to what it is that we don't know."

Florin_Andrei 11y ago
> dismantling even the stars themselves It's unclear whether that's actually feasible from an energy balance perspective. You'll need a lot of energy to re-arrange things on that scale. Each star is already sitting at the bottom of its own local energy well. Maybe the far future will discover radically new ways to produce energy - but until then, this whole thing about the wave of computronium flooding the universe is pure speculation.
- reasonattlm 11y ago
  Agreed, but stars are very fragile in some ways; surprisingly small disruptions in some of their transitional layers can cause novas. Stellar modeling is entertaining in that way. So in place of "dismantle star" perhaps "provoke extreme mass loss" would be a more obviously net energy-positive goal for the engineers. Still, one should run the back of the envelope calculations on what you'd have to do with a stellar mass to produce greater energy than it emits in its current form, and whether the difference can be enough to make it a net positive to nova the star. My intuitive belief is that the difference in efficiency of use of materials can be huge, more than enough to justify large investments in stellar engineering at the stage when technologies means molecular nanotechnology plus nucleosynthesis: factories capable of taking in hydrogen and turning out anything.
losteric 11y ago
> simple economic analysis of our future tells us that we will tear them down in favor of more efficient arrangements of matter and energy? What tells us this is the case? How do we know there isn't an upper limit on the amount of computing resources a civilization desires, even if it's an absurdly high limit like "disassemble all the inner planets"? How do we know there is an incentive to build interstellar civilizations, versus independent civilizations? Is computronium even worth spreading? Analogous to r/K selection, is there more incentive to replicate a particular way of life (eg civilizations uploaded to a particular computronium implementation), or is it more beneficial to simply shotgun probs with very primitive seeds capable of bootstrapping new implementations of life? Is the interstellar competition between civilizations, or is the competition between different fundamental forms of life where civilizations simply mark a system developing to the point it can reproduce? Given the distances between solar systems, why would a civilization span multiple systems? Wouldn't each system become culturally and economically isolated, evolving independent from the parent civilization? If that's the case, why invest in cloning the parent civilization when they could bootstrap native life from-scratch?
- reasonattlm 11y ago
  Again, you are looking for bounds on voluntary behavior that every civilization - and all its members - must satisfy. It only takes one to choose self-replicating probes to make the wilderness disappear in very obvious ways, visible in neighboring galaxies.
hyperpallium 11y ago
Reminds me of how some animals were domesticated several times, and some only once, because they spread with technology (cats, I think). So, whether alien computronium reaches us before we start our own depends on hsppenstance, of who happened to start first. PS: Sorry; accidental mobile downvote when trying to upvote :(

Florin_Andrei 11y ago

> dismantling even the stars themselves It's unclear whether that's actually feasible from an energy balance perspective. You'll need a lot of energy to re-arrange things on that scale. Each star is already sitting at the bottom of its own local energy well. Maybe the far future will discover radically new ways to produce energy - but until then, this whole thing about the wave of computronium flooding the universe is pure speculation.

reasonattlm 11y ago
Agreed, but stars are very fragile in some ways; surprisingly small disruptions in some of their transitional layers can cause novas. Stellar modeling is entertaining in that way. So in place of "dismantle star" perhaps "provoke extreme mass loss" would be a more obviously net energy-positive goal for the engineers. Still, one should run the back of the envelope calculations on what you'd have to do with a stellar mass to produce greater energy than it emits in its current form, and whether the difference can be enough to make it a net positive to nova the star. My intuitive belief is that the difference in efficiency of use of materials can be huge, more than enough to justify large investments in stellar engineering at the stage when technologies means molecular nanotechnology plus nucleosynthesis: factories capable of taking in hydrogen and turning out anything.

losteric 11y ago

> simple economic analysis of our future tells us that we will tear them down in favor of more efficient arrangements of matter and energy? What tells us this is the case? How do we know there isn't an upper limit on the amount of computing resources a civilization desires, even if it's an absurdly high limit like "disassemble all the inner planets"? How do we know there is an incentive to build interstellar civilizations, versus independent civilizations? Is computronium even worth spreading? Analogous to r/K selection, is there more incentive to replicate a particular way of life (eg civilizations uploaded to a particular computronium implementation), or is it more beneficial to simply shotgun probs with very primitive seeds capable of bootstrapping new implementations of life? Is the interstellar competition between civilizations, or is the competition between different fundamental forms of life where civilizations simply mark a system developing to the point it can reproduce? Given the distances between solar systems, why would a civilization span multiple systems? Wouldn't each system become culturally and economically isolated, evolving independent from the parent civilization? If that's the case, why invest in cloning the parent civilization when they could bootstrap native life from-scratch?

reasonattlm 11y ago
Again, you are looking for bounds on voluntary behavior that every civilization - and all its members - must satisfy. It only takes one to choose self-replicating probes to make the wilderness disappear in very obvious ways, visible in neighboring galaxies.

hyperpallium 11y ago

Reminds me of how some animals were domesticated several times, and some only once, because they spread with technology (cats, I think). So, whether alien computronium reaches us before we start our own depends on hsppenstance, of who happened to start first. PS: Sorry; accidental mobile downvote when trying to upvote :(