3 ms·
The counterargument to that I have heard is that if any civilization ever managed to unleash self-replicating probes in the past couple of million years, we sho
by phreeza 6y ago
The counterargument to that I have heard is that if any civilization ever managed to unleash self-replicating probes in the past couple of million years, we should be able to see those, or their effects on our galaxy. And such probes seem to be not that hard to build, even at our current technology level.
- simonh 6y agowe're nowhere close to building anything sophisticated that's mechanically self-replicating. Imagine how much infrastructure we would need on Mars say, in order to have a self sufficient civilisation capable of building robot probes. They'd need ore extraction and refining, smelting, chemical synthesis for a huge range of materials, silicon chip fabrication. Now package all of that into a single vehicle. The management system alone for all of that under automatic control would likely have to be a functional strong AI and we're a very long way from knowing how to build one of those.