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IMHO the aliens will not be specifically seeking life that is intelligent. Singularities and interstellar traveling alien civilizations share a problem. If one

IMHO the aliens will not be specifically seeking life that is intelligent. Singularities and interstellar traveling alien civilizations share a problem. If one is in essence immortal the only purpose that can endure forever is the pursuit of new knowledge. Even if alien entities are able to learn all there is to know about all the other sciences, biology will be inexhaustible as the novel patterns that can be produced by evolution are effectively infinite. The biosphere of just our planet where the latest estimates are that there are a trillion species if you count all the microorganisms, probably contains more information than all the lifeless planets and stars in the galaxy combined. The aliens will value biodiversity more than we do. And if they arrive they will oppress us "only" to the extent required to counteract our propensity to cause species extinctions (including our suicidal alteration of the planet's climate). I actually would prefer that the Singularity or the aliens arrive sooner rather than later as I have less and less hope of our species getting its act together on its own.

njharman 10y ago
Thinking that pursuit of knowledge is only activity for immortal is naively idealistic. Elimination of of all life not like me. Or simply eliminate life that might singularity and become a threat. Even if, who's to say one aliens pursuit of knowledge latest experiment dose not require and earth sized amount of raw materials.
- mkstowegnv 10y ago
  Our aggression reflects the zero sum physical resource context of our evolutionary past. Knowledge in contrast grows fastest through cooperation. As power including the power to defend oneself grows with knowledge, knowledge seeking entities will quickly evolve to maximize cooperation. And as many have pointed out, unlike most of our sci fi, it is very unlikely for two alien civilizations to meet where their technology levels are similar - one will be permanently vastly advantaged over the other. Aggression will be pointless - the pecking order will be obvious. As to your last point I am sure lifeless planets will do for any experiments.
int_19h 10y ago
>> biology will be inexhaustible as the novel patterns that can be produced by evolution are effectively infinite But why do you assume they would be interested in observing the patterns that actually have been produced, instead of running high-precision evolutionary emulators that can generate patterns that could be produced at a much higher rate, and maybe even some automated filters to condense it down to "interesting" stuff? It's still knowledge, and there's no innate value scale for knowledge which says that things that have "actually happened" are more valuable. In fact, how's that for Fermi paradox? Civilizations that are sufficiently technologically advanced to communicate, much less travel, across the stars, are also sufficiently technologically advanced to simulate the things they are interested about and get answers faster that way. Basically, the end result of any civilization is creating, maintaining and expanding a simulation of the universe. Which, of course, goes recursive...
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  In a similar vein, a possible Fermi paradox solution would be that civilizations sufficiently technologically advanced to travel between stars are also advanced enough to develop good VR and learn which buttons of their brains to push, so they all end up stuck in virtual worlds, or even wireheaded. A counterargument to that would go along the the similar lines as to why we don't, and can't, resolve wars by e.g. playing chess (or StarCraft). Even if all nations mutually agreed that the shall will be won bloodlessly by some other kind of competition, the first nation to nuke its enemies would be a winner. In conflict situations, you want to seek as much advantage from the "most real" reality as you can get. So, in your recursion example, you'd travel up the call stack...
- Symmetry 10y ago
  Thermodynamics still limits what you can compute and, given the output of a single star, you're still limited in what can be computed. But I think it's a mistake to try to characterize any civilization by a single motivation. People on Earth do things for many different reasons and I think we should expect the same of alien civilizations even if single motivations tax our imaginations less. The questions is if any of the motivations driving a stellar civilization would be enough to prompt the establishment of colonies. I don't think you can say that the answer will be 'no' reliably for every civilization that might arise and it only takes on to colonize a galaxy in short order (by cosmic standards). Hence sophisticated life is probably very rare.
pavel_lishin 10y ago
> If one is in essence immortal the only purpose that can endure forever is the pursuit of new knowledge. That's making a lot of assumptions about alien psychology, believing they're going to have the same goals as us. Why not 1. Propagation of your species, forever 2. Expansion of your territory until the entire Universe is yours 3. Endless pursuit of pleasure 4. Propagating religious beliefs, or something we'd recognize as such. 5. Escaping this Universe, which will eventually end.
- mkstowegnv 10y ago
  My unprovable assumption is that only beings who value knowledge and cooperation highly enough will get to the point of crossing the difficult technological threshold of achieving singularity or space travel. I think the more likely Achilles heel for my scenario is sexual selection - the trap that perpetuates selfish behavior in both sexes even when there is no resource scarcity. Even in this, humans at least are sometimes able to escape the trap by being meta enough to see kindness as strength and beauty. I think the fastest, and most likely first, route to our singularity will start with reverse engineering one human mind, and I will hold onto hope that that mind will hear the call of light, and the truth and beauty feedback loop will be unstoppable. It helps that I also believe that as information increases, morality converges on a process for maximizing the long term preservation of information (where on this planet, human minds are the most information dense and therefore the most valuable things we can preserve). /end sci fi sermon
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    An anthill-like species can value cooperation among themselves without necessarily valuing knowledge for knowledge's sake - imagine the Hive Queens from Ender's Game, or MorningLightMountain.

njharman 10y ago

Thinking that pursuit of knowledge is only activity for immortal is naively idealistic. Elimination of of all life not like me. Or simply eliminate life that might singularity and become a threat. Even if, who's to say one aliens pursuit of knowledge latest experiment dose not require and earth sized amount of raw materials.

mkstowegnv 10y ago
Our aggression reflects the zero sum physical resource context of our evolutionary past. Knowledge in contrast grows fastest through cooperation. As power including the power to defend oneself grows with knowledge, knowledge seeking entities will quickly evolve to maximize cooperation. And as many have pointed out, unlike most of our sci fi, it is very unlikely for two alien civilizations to meet where their technology levels are similar - one will be permanently vastly advantaged over the other. Aggression will be pointless - the pecking order will be obvious. As to your last point I am sure lifeless planets will do for any experiments.

int_19h 10y ago

>> biology will be inexhaustible as the novel patterns that can be produced by evolution are effectively infinite But why do you assume they would be interested in observing the patterns that actually have been produced, instead of running high-precision evolutionary emulators that can generate patterns that could be produced at a much higher rate, and maybe even some automated filters to condense it down to "interesting" stuff? It's still knowledge, and there's no innate value scale for knowledge which says that things that have "actually happened" are more valuable. In fact, how's that for Fermi paradox? Civilizations that are sufficiently technologically advanced to communicate, much less travel, across the stars, are also sufficiently technologically advanced to simulate the things they are interested about and get answers faster that way. Basically, the end result of any civilization is creating, maintaining and expanding a simulation of the universe. Which, of course, goes recursive...

TeMPOraL 10y ago
In a similar vein, a possible Fermi paradox solution would be that civilizations sufficiently technologically advanced to travel between stars are also advanced enough to develop good VR and learn which buttons of their brains to push, so they all end up stuck in virtual worlds, or even wireheaded. A counterargument to that would go along the the similar lines as to why we don't, and can't, resolve wars by e.g. playing chess (or StarCraft). Even if all nations mutually agreed that the shall will be won bloodlessly by some other kind of competition, the first nation to nuke its enemies would be a winner. In conflict situations, you want to seek as much advantage from the "most real" reality as you can get. So, in your recursion example, you'd travel up the call stack...
Symmetry 10y ago
Thermodynamics still limits what you can compute and, given the output of a single star, you're still limited in what can be computed. But I think it's a mistake to try to characterize any civilization by a single motivation. People on Earth do things for many different reasons and I think we should expect the same of alien civilizations even if single motivations tax our imaginations less. The questions is if any of the motivations driving a stellar civilization would be enough to prompt the establishment of colonies. I don't think you can say that the answer will be 'no' reliably for every civilization that might arise and it only takes on to colonize a galaxy in short order (by cosmic standards). Hence sophisticated life is probably very rare.

pavel_lishin 10y ago

> If one is in essence immortal the only purpose that can endure forever is the pursuit of new knowledge. That's making a lot of assumptions about alien psychology, believing they're going to have the same goals as us. Why not 1. Propagation of your species, forever 2. Expansion of your territory until the entire Universe is yours 3. Endless pursuit of pleasure 4. Propagating religious beliefs, or something we'd recognize as such. 5. Escaping this Universe, which will eventually end.

mkstowegnv 10y ago
My unprovable assumption is that only beings who value knowledge and cooperation highly enough will get to the point of crossing the difficult technological threshold of achieving singularity or space travel. I think the more likely Achilles heel for my scenario is sexual selection - the trap that perpetuates selfish behavior in both sexes even when there is no resource scarcity. Even in this, humans at least are sometimes able to escape the trap by being meta enough to see kindness as strength and beauty. I think the fastest, and most likely first, route to our singularity will start with reverse engineering one human mind, and I will hold onto hope that that mind will hear the call of light, and the truth and beauty feedback loop will be unstoppable. It helps that I also believe that as information increases, morality converges on a process for maximizing the long term preservation of information (where on this planet, human minds are the most information dense and therefore the most valuable things we can preserve). /end sci fi sermon
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  An anthill-like species can value cooperation among themselves without necessarily valuing knowledge for knowledge's sake - imagine the Hive Queens from Ender's Game, or MorningLightMountain.