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If I had to guess, I'd subscribe to the "Random Voyager" theory. That is, there are tons of somewhat sophisticated civilizations in the galaxy. For the ones tha

If I had to guess, I'd subscribe to the "Random Voyager" theory. That is, there are tons of somewhat sophisticated civilizations in the galaxy. For the ones that don't self-destruct or entertain themselves into extinction, it's quite common to create long-lived interstellar probes. These probes would be as intelligent or more intelligent than people, be able to move much better than anything we have, and not interested in being detected or having any interaction at all with the flora and fauna of a planet aside from refueling and making recordings. Contact like that would be intermittant, difficult to document, and perplexing to a species that wants to talk to everybody it runs into. Which kinda describes where we are with some of this odd aerial phenomenae we've been documenting for decades now.

JBlue42 9y ago
>entertain themselves into extinction Do you think this is an actual possibility? For ours or any other sort of civilization?
- brianpgordon 9y ago
  Imagine a world where everyone's consciousness has been uploaded to computers. People play sports, knit sweaters, whatever- all in virtual reality. It's much safer and cheaper than maintaining a physical body, after all. Now each person might have some real human friends, but they're more likely to have AI friends who are smarter, more charming, more interesting. Or maybe there's just a lot more of them. You may not even know which of your friends are "real." It might be considered insulting to ask. You spend more and more time playing alone or tittering with a circle of sycophantic AIs. Over time people decide to pass on by ritualistically committing data-suicide, or overdose on data-drugs, or get squeezed out by increasing scarcity of computing resources, or whatever. And so the species gradually dies out until you just have some AI routines running in a hot server room on a dead planet. The last human might not even realize that she's the last. The same situation could occur without mind uploads if you could build very realistic androids, but I like the mind upload scenario. And of course this is all very chauvinistically assuming that those AI routines slash robots don't qualify as human even though they're indistinguishable. The AIs could be conscious, or not, I suppose, depending on how they're implemented.
  - JBlue42 9y ago
    Damn, that's well thought out. Are you working on a near-future sf book? ;-)
    - brianpgordon 9y ago
      No, I just cobbled that together from other SF I've read. If you want more of that, try: - Permutation City by Greg Egan (Imagine a world where everyone's consciousness has been uploaded to computers.) - Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (People play sports, knit sweaters, whatever- all in virtual reality.) Note: this book is corny as hell and borderline YA but still fun - Blindsight by Peter Watts (You spend more and more time playing alone or tittering with a circle of sycophantic AIs. ... squeezed out by increasing scarcity of computing resources) - https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football (Over time people decide to pass on by ritualistically committing data-suicide) Just for the impact of functional immortality on common people
      - JBlue42 9y ago
        Thanks for the recs! Will check them out.

JBlue42 9y ago

>entertain themselves into extinction Do you think this is an actual possibility? For ours or any other sort of civilization?

brianpgordon 9y ago
Imagine a world where everyone's consciousness has been uploaded to computers. People play sports, knit sweaters, whatever- all in virtual reality. It's much safer and cheaper than maintaining a physical body, after all. Now each person might have some real human friends, but they're more likely to have AI friends who are smarter, more charming, more interesting. Or maybe there's just a lot more of them. You may not even know which of your friends are "real." It might be considered insulting to ask. You spend more and more time playing alone or tittering with a circle of sycophantic AIs. Over time people decide to pass on by ritualistically committing data-suicide, or overdose on data-drugs, or get squeezed out by increasing scarcity of computing resources, or whatever. And so the species gradually dies out until you just have some AI routines running in a hot server room on a dead planet. The last human might not even realize that she's the last. The same situation could occur without mind uploads if you could build very realistic androids, but I like the mind upload scenario. And of course this is all very chauvinistically assuming that those AI routines slash robots don't qualify as human even though they're indistinguishable. The AIs could be conscious, or not, I suppose, depending on how they're implemented.
- JBlue42 9y ago
  Damn, that's well thought out. Are you working on a near-future sf book? ;-)
  - brianpgordon 9y ago
    No, I just cobbled that together from other SF I've read. If you want more of that, try: - Permutation City by Greg Egan (Imagine a world where everyone's consciousness has been uploaded to computers.) - Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (People play sports, knit sweaters, whatever- all in virtual reality.) Note: this book is corny as hell and borderline YA but still fun - Blindsight by Peter Watts (You spend more and more time playing alone or tittering with a circle of sycophantic AIs. ... squeezed out by increasing scarcity of computing resources) - https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football (Over time people decide to pass on by ritualistically committing data-suicide) Just for the impact of functional immortality on common people
    - JBlue42 9y ago
      Thanks for the recs! Will check them out.