> It's more efficient to send von Neumann probes A fun mental activity: you could posit that life as we know is a von Neumann probe, with simple life supportin

> It's more efficient to send von Neumann probes A fun mental activity: you could posit that life as we know is a von Neumann probe, with simple life supporting each more complex level (from the microbes that made a young Earth's toxic atmosphere oxygen-rich, multicellular machines etc) until you reach the human who, by being able to engineer their local environment, shifts intelligence from biology to machines that are able to coordinate solar-scale engineering, i.e. Dyson swarms, which can power mass-drivers that send out more von Neumann probes lined with organic terraforming seeds thus creating a forever repeating process until the universe sinks into darkness.