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Unless we find out that for some reason all life develops at more or less the same rate from the beginning of the universe. In which case our future could be ve

Unless we find out that for some reason all life develops at more or less the same rate from the beginning of the universe. In which case our future could be very crowded. That, or the window of technological development that we can detect and are capable of recognizing as intelligent is very small. It's possible that superintelligence is all over the place, but we're unable to perceive or comprehend it, in the same way that a nematode is completely oblivious to human society. Once a society creates superintelligence, they might even "clean up" after themselves, so that traces of previous stages of their civilization aren't available for us to observe.

Baeocystin 9y ago
So a cycle every 50,000 years or so?
- m3kw9 9y ago
  Yeah like in Mass effect
Houshalter 9y ago
>all life develops at more or less the same rate I don't think that's likely. Earth is billions of years old but we have just been around for a few thousand. If we an alien world had evolved just a few thousand years earlier, it could have colonized the galaxy by now. We can't possibly be synced that perfectly. All sorts of random events, like asteroid collisions, had a huge impact on the timing of our evolution. >we're unable to perceive or comprehend it That doesn't seem likely either. An advanced civilization could easily build many kinds of megastructures that would be detectable to us, like dyson spheres. I also think it's very unlikely they wouldn't interact with us. Either to help us if they were moral, or to exterminate us if they were not.
- dmix 9y ago
  Life and human intelligence hasn't only been around for a few thousand though... it's been a few billion for all life and 40-50k yrs for modern humans. The fact the circumstances for intelligent beings took so long may have been random circumstance. There's no guarantee it would take that long on other planets to go from general life -> intelligent beings. The environments could easily be more welcoming to it, they may have had fewer extinction events restarting growth, etc, etc.
- aalleavitch 9y ago
  Do you often care about what an innocuous population of nematodes are up to in the soil of your backyard? I think given the sheer differing scales of life it's more likely that superintelligence just really wouldn't care about any particular population of significantly less developed life for anything other than research purposes.

Baeocystin 9y ago

So a cycle every 50,000 years or so?

m3kw9 9y ago
Yeah like in Mass effect

Houshalter 9y ago

>all life develops at more or less the same rate I don't think that's likely. Earth is billions of years old but we have just been around for a few thousand. If we an alien world had evolved just a few thousand years earlier, it could have colonized the galaxy by now. We can't possibly be synced that perfectly. All sorts of random events, like asteroid collisions, had a huge impact on the timing of our evolution. >we're unable to perceive or comprehend it That doesn't seem likely either. An advanced civilization could easily build many kinds of megastructures that would be detectable to us, like dyson spheres. I also think it's very unlikely they wouldn't interact with us. Either to help us if they were moral, or to exterminate us if they were not.

dmix 9y ago
Life and human intelligence hasn't only been around for a few thousand though... it's been a few billion for all life and 40-50k yrs for modern humans. The fact the circumstances for intelligent beings took so long may have been random circumstance. There's no guarantee it would take that long on other planets to go from general life -> intelligent beings. The environments could easily be more welcoming to it, they may have had fewer extinction events restarting growth, etc, etc.
aalleavitch 9y ago
Do you often care about what an innocuous population of nematodes are up to in the soil of your backyard? I think given the sheer differing scales of life it's more likely that superintelligence just really wouldn't care about any particular population of significantly less developed life for anything other than research purposes.