3 ms·

No, it's nearly the opposite assumption: that it's not possible for advanced technical civilizations to prevent, forever, the launch of such a probe.

krapp 11y ago
We don't even know that such probes are technologically feasible. The closest examples we have in the real world are forms of life which are incredibly power-hungry, fragile and prone to mutation. The more complex life is, it appears, the more fragile it becomes, so I would assume this would apply to probes as well, since they would essentially be life. It's entirely possible that, even if such probes exist, they inevitably fail due to entropy, inefficiency or lack of a stable source of fuel/replication mass over a few generations. Not every civilization capable of trying may retain such technological capability forever, either. Even if attempting the trick is relatively rare in the life cycle of civilizations, those that can may not care to do so within the window of their capabilities. You could just as well argue that it's not possible for a civilization exactly as advanced as our own to prevent the launch of a deadly bioweapon which leads to their extinction. You could argue any number of logically sound things which may simply not shake out due to chance in the real universe. Maybe only a few such civilizations have actually arisen, and by pure chance, none of them have done it.
- pklausler 11y ago
  Come on, it's not that much of a stretch from where we are today. We're basically talking about a 3-D printer capable of printing itself, solar panels, an ion engine, and whatever it takes to grind up asteroid surfaces to gather raw materials for the printer. In another comment, I described the odds of these probes arising as P(probes) = 1 - (1 - P(a civ can launch a probe)) ^ N(civ) and unless P(can launch) is zero, not just really small, I think that we can conclude that N(civ) is not a very large number.
  - krapp 11y ago
    >We're basically talking about a 3-D printer capable of printing itself, solar panels, an ion engine, and whatever it takes to grind up asteroid surfaces to gather raw materials for the printer. ...and continuing to do so reliably for millions of years, somehow being able to efficiently fabricate arbitrary components of exceeding strength and complexity out of dust and ice, without any appreciable loss in quality of hardware or software, even in the radioactive environment of interstellar space. Just because a model is mathematically consistent doesn't mean it's practically feasible.
  - noselasd 11y ago
    It takes the combined work of millions of people to even create the simplest 3D destktop printer as of today, you're not going to produce one that travels to extraterrestrial bodies and replicates itself anytime soon.

krapp 11y ago

We don't even know that such probes are technologically feasible. The closest examples we have in the real world are forms of life which are incredibly power-hungry, fragile and prone to mutation. The more complex life is, it appears, the more fragile it becomes, so I would assume this would apply to probes as well, since they would essentially be life. It's entirely possible that, even if such probes exist, they inevitably fail due to entropy, inefficiency or lack of a stable source of fuel/replication mass over a few generations. Not every civilization capable of trying may retain such technological capability forever, either. Even if attempting the trick is relatively rare in the life cycle of civilizations, those that can may not care to do so within the window of their capabilities. You could just as well argue that it's not possible for a civilization exactly as advanced as our own to prevent the launch of a deadly bioweapon which leads to their extinction. You could argue any number of logically sound things which may simply not shake out due to chance in the real universe. Maybe only a few such civilizations have actually arisen, and by pure chance, none of them have done it.

pklausler 11y ago
Come on, it's not that much of a stretch from where we are today. We're basically talking about a 3-D printer capable of printing itself, solar panels, an ion engine, and whatever it takes to grind up asteroid surfaces to gather raw materials for the printer. In another comment, I described the odds of these probes arising as P(probes) = 1 - (1 - P(a civ can launch a probe)) ^ N(civ) and unless P(can launch) is zero, not just really small, I think that we can conclude that N(civ) is not a very large number.
- krapp 11y ago
  >We're basically talking about a 3-D printer capable of printing itself, solar panels, an ion engine, and whatever it takes to grind up asteroid surfaces to gather raw materials for the printer. ...and continuing to do so reliably for millions of years, somehow being able to efficiently fabricate arbitrary components of exceeding strength and complexity out of dust and ice, without any appreciable loss in quality of hardware or software, even in the radioactive environment of interstellar space. Just because a model is mathematically consistent doesn't mean it's practically feasible.
- noselasd 11y ago
  It takes the combined work of millions of people to even create the simplest 3D destktop printer as of today, you're not going to produce one that travels to extraterrestrial bodies and replicates itself anytime soon.