6 ms·

The flaw in our approach to the Fermi paradox is that we are looking for intelligent life which resembles us as we are now. Big, corporal bodies made of protein

The flaw in our approach to the Fermi paradox is that we are looking for intelligent life which resembles us as we are now. Big, corporal bodies made of proteins communicating with big, inefficient, slow frequency vibrations. But this is just a transitory phase in our evolution which will pass in the astronomical blink of an eye. Consider if you agree with these propositions: - Consciousness is an emergent property of computation - Computation is possible in any media - Computation is more efficient in smaller, less massy media - We are already beginning to fiddle with our own brains and this will accelerate - Our bodies in general have huge room for optimization and eventually will be completely unrecognizable or even unnecessary as we currently imagine them - Progress is exponential as our population grows in education, size and free time If these are true, what does that mean for our destiny as a species in 100k years? 1M years? I think we can all agree we will become cyborgs, but I think we still imagine our bodies having the same form factor. But that's the flawed assumption. Really we will shrink down. And what's the limit to how far down we shrink and how efficient and massless our bodies/brains get? How would we even be communicating in 1M years? Through entangled qubits? Vibrations in subspace? Who knows, but it's probably not something 21st century earth would even notice with a radio telescope. So the answer to the Fermi paradox isn't that intelligent life snuffs itself out after a few million years. That's terribly unimaginative. The answer is that from our perspective intelligent civilizations disappear because they change themselves so radically that they transcend our concept of what to look for.

mentos 4y ago
I imagine civilization will just be a solar powered server box floating through space running unreal engine 6.0x10^27
- stormfather 4y ago
  inshallah
blizdiddy 4y ago
> I think we can all agree we will become cyborgs, Well, obviously! Who could imagine any other scenarios?! My mom just called me asking if i could replace her right foot with a hoverboard. I cant wait until I can no longer feel sunshine or grass. Living forever as a process in a virtual machine... my ancestors could have never dreamt of having such fulfillment.
- ewindal 4y ago
  You can only feel sunshine and grass because your brain interprets sensory signals from your body. It’s easy to imagine a world where your cyborg body can deliver those same signals. If the sensation is the same, why would you _not_ exhchange your fragile meat sack of a body with a far more versatile mechanical one?
  - 20after4 4y ago
    Mechanical devices don't repair themselves. Living bodies do. I think you underestimate the highly optimized and resilient nature of a meat-sack body.
    - ewindal 4y ago
      Perhaps, but imagine no need for surgery, no need for anesthesia, all wounds, illnesses and ailments fixed simply by switching the damaged part, or switching bodies entirely.
    - CamperBob2 4y ago
      Mechanical devices don't repair themselves. Only because we haven't bothered building any that do. A cynical take would be that it would be bad for the economy.
      - dwaltrip 4y ago
        We don’t yet know how to build self-repairing machines. That’s basically the same as creating new life forms.
        CamperBob2 4y ago
        Well, creating life forms would require us to create self-reproducing machines, which doesn't seem like the same thing. This will end up in a goalpost-shifting debate where the extent of self-repair capabilities necessary to qualify as "self-repairing" is argued. I'd say that a fault-tolerant system is at least 50% of the way there.
yieldcrv 4y ago
> I think we can all agree we will become cyborgs That was a leap. I think we will become more like mycelium, or a root system connected in the ground. Still limiting us to terrestrial communication on the planet the network is placed on, but an optional ability to blast messages out if necessary.
- stormfather 4y ago
  You don't think we're gonna want to move around?
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    We have need for stimuli not a need for movement. The movement being a surrogate for the need for stimuli or accessing where the stimuli is. We can reduce it directly to stimuli if that remains a need.
    - stormfather 4y ago
      I think we're gonna want to explore the cosmos though. I could imagine doing that via sensors that travel while we sit here, but you could just say that's an extension of our artificial body.
  - jimmygrapes 4y ago
    Have you seen the backlash to people being recalled to the office? Doesn't seem so far fetched to me...
- encoderer 4y ago
  The matrix. You’re describing the matrix.
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    The closest pop culture reference I've seen was depicted in Avatar, where the planet wide root system could be used for consciousness transfer. I'm describing that as there are various large networks on our planet already, whether fungi or plants, with some insect colonies acting similarly as a large single organism network. The matrix didn't have communication between the organic nodes in the world they physically existed on, and is primarily focused on a simulated world. I'm not describing that at all, but I can see how its the nearest skeumorph barring any other examples.
nycdotnet 4y ago
> I think we can all agree we will become cyborgs Sent from my iPhone
foobarian 4y ago
> - Consciousness is an emergent property of computation That is quite a leap. I hope it is true but you never know what kind of quantum/other shenanigans sneaky evolution has latched on to to end up with the brains of today.
- stormfather 4y ago
  Yeah, we don't know the first thing about consciousness really. But I imagine with enough time we will be able to build an artificial neuron that's smaller. And induct from there.
  - rmah 4y ago
    We know one very important thing: consciousness is not a binary state. We have learned that different animals experience sensations, emotions at varying degrees. That different animals can solve problems of varying difficulty. And more advanced animals can communicate at varying levels of richness. When you stop thinking of consciousness, intellect and awareness as binary states but gradients (perhaps multidimensional), then you can more easily accept the premise that consciousness is an emergent property of the complex biological systems.
- DesiLurker 4y ago
  FWIW I do think that if at all there is a quantum mechanism available and it has even a tiny evolutionary advantage it would end up being a significant part of rise of consciousness. from looking at things like photosynthesis its not too far fetched imo.
cletus 4y ago
> Consciousness is an emergent property of computation It's interesting to see the negative comments about this here because I agree with you. "Consciousness" or even "sentience" is notoriously difficult to define. Even defining what an organism is isn't entirely obvious (eg some might consider a colony of ants or bees as being organism-like). Our views tend to be extremely human-centric because we can relate. I imagine once we actually invent an AGI many will debate if it's truly sentient or conscious for a long, long time afterwards. > Computation is more efficient in smaller, less massy media There are physical limits on computation. A smaller package ultimately has a lower limit. That alone will (IMHO) keep a space for very large computational units. At the top end of this is Matrioshka Brains [1]. A digital existence looks highly likely in the black hole era of the universe [2]. This is the era after all the stars have faded out and will be much longer (based on current understanding) than the stellar era, so much so that the 13-14B year lifetime of the universe thus far will be like the blink of an eye. As for detecting communication, that's too narrow a focus. Whether we're miniscule cyborgs that communicate with qubits or living as virtual beings in a world-sized computer, the ultimate limits of what any such civilization can do is is the amount of energy they can consume. More energy means more is possible. So even if we end up living as a K2 civilization in a billion orbitals around our Sun or one of the alternatives or build a Matrioshka Brain or simply collect all the power with satellites, all of these will have a similar IR signature that will be extremely detectable. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef-mxjYkllw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef-mxjYkllw [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qam5BkXIEhQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qam5BkXIEhQ
tsimionescu 4y ago
> Our bodies in general have huge room for optimization and eventually will be completely unrecognizable or even unnecessary as we currently imagine them I think this is a huge leap, especially when it comes to computation. As far we can tell, the brain is amazingly energy efficient compared to to any electronic chip. It's hard to estimate exactly what kinds of computation our brains are doing so that we could compare in terms of teraflops, but the energy consumption is many times better than any processor that could come close in any reasonable estimation.

mentos 4y ago

I imagine civilization will just be a solar powered server box floating through space running unreal engine 6.0x10^27

stormfather 4y ago
inshallah

blizdiddy 4y ago

> I think we can all agree we will become cyborgs, Well, obviously! Who could imagine any other scenarios?! My mom just called me asking if i could replace her right foot with a hoverboard. I cant wait until I can no longer feel sunshine or grass. Living forever as a process in a virtual machine... my ancestors could have never dreamt of having such fulfillment.

ewindal 4y ago
You can only feel sunshine and grass because your brain interprets sensory signals from your body. It’s easy to imagine a world where your cyborg body can deliver those same signals. If the sensation is the same, why would you _not_ exhchange your fragile meat sack of a body with a far more versatile mechanical one?
- 20after4 4y ago
  Mechanical devices don't repair themselves. Living bodies do. I think you underestimate the highly optimized and resilient nature of a meat-sack body.
  - ewindal 4y ago
    Perhaps, but imagine no need for surgery, no need for anesthesia, all wounds, illnesses and ailments fixed simply by switching the damaged part, or switching bodies entirely.
  - CamperBob2 4y ago
    Mechanical devices don't repair themselves. Only because we haven't bothered building any that do. A cynical take would be that it would be bad for the economy.
    - dwaltrip 4y ago
      We don’t yet know how to build self-repairing machines. That’s basically the same as creating new life forms.
      - CamperBob2 4y ago
        Well, creating life forms would require us to create self-reproducing machines, which doesn't seem like the same thing. This will end up in a goalpost-shifting debate where the extent of self-repair capabilities necessary to qualify as "self-repairing" is argued. I'd say that a fault-tolerant system is at least 50% of the way there.

yieldcrv 4y ago

> I think we can all agree we will become cyborgs That was a leap. I think we will become more like mycelium, or a root system connected in the ground. Still limiting us to terrestrial communication on the planet the network is placed on, but an optional ability to blast messages out if necessary.

stormfather 4y ago
You don't think we're gonna want to move around?
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  We have need for stimuli not a need for movement. The movement being a surrogate for the need for stimuli or accessing where the stimuli is. We can reduce it directly to stimuli if that remains a need.
  - stormfather 4y ago
    I think we're gonna want to explore the cosmos though. I could imagine doing that via sensors that travel while we sit here, but you could just say that's an extension of our artificial body.
- jimmygrapes 4y ago
  Have you seen the backlash to people being recalled to the office? Doesn't seem so far fetched to me...
encoderer 4y ago
The matrix. You’re describing the matrix.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  The closest pop culture reference I've seen was depicted in Avatar, where the planet wide root system could be used for consciousness transfer. I'm describing that as there are various large networks on our planet already, whether fungi or plants, with some insect colonies acting similarly as a large single organism network. The matrix didn't have communication between the organic nodes in the world they physically existed on, and is primarily focused on a simulated world. I'm not describing that at all, but I can see how its the nearest skeumorph barring any other examples.

nycdotnet 4y ago

> I think we can all agree we will become cyborgs Sent from my iPhone

foobarian 4y ago

> - Consciousness is an emergent property of computation That is quite a leap. I hope it is true but you never know what kind of quantum/other shenanigans sneaky evolution has latched on to to end up with the brains of today.

stormfather 4y ago
Yeah, we don't know the first thing about consciousness really. But I imagine with enough time we will be able to build an artificial neuron that's smaller. And induct from there.
- rmah 4y ago
  We know one very important thing: consciousness is not a binary state. We have learned that different animals experience sensations, emotions at varying degrees. That different animals can solve problems of varying difficulty. And more advanced animals can communicate at varying levels of richness. When you stop thinking of consciousness, intellect and awareness as binary states but gradients (perhaps multidimensional), then you can more easily accept the premise that consciousness is an emergent property of the complex biological systems.
DesiLurker 4y ago
FWIW I do think that if at all there is a quantum mechanism available and it has even a tiny evolutionary advantage it would end up being a significant part of rise of consciousness. from looking at things like photosynthesis its not too far fetched imo.

cletus 4y ago

> Consciousness is an emergent property of computation It's interesting to see the negative comments about this here because I agree with you. "Consciousness" or even "sentience" is notoriously difficult to define. Even defining what an organism is isn't entirely obvious (eg some might consider a colony of ants or bees as being organism-like). Our views tend to be extremely human-centric because we can relate. I imagine once we actually invent an AGI many will debate if it's truly sentient or conscious for a long, long time afterwards. > Computation is more efficient in smaller, less massy media There are physical limits on computation. A smaller package ultimately has a lower limit. That alone will (IMHO) keep a space for very large computational units. At the top end of this is Matrioshka Brains [1]. A digital existence looks highly likely in the black hole era of the universe [2]. This is the era after all the stars have faded out and will be much longer (based on current understanding) than the stellar era, so much so that the 13-14B year lifetime of the universe thus far will be like the blink of an eye. As for detecting communication, that's too narrow a focus. Whether we're miniscule cyborgs that communicate with qubits or living as virtual beings in a world-sized computer, the ultimate limits of what any such civilization can do is is the amount of energy they can consume. More energy means more is possible. So even if we end up living as a K2 civilization in a billion orbitals around our Sun or one of the alternatives or build a Matrioshka Brain or simply collect all the power with satellites, all of these will have a similar IR signature that will be extremely detectable. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef-mxjYkllw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef-mxjYkllw [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qam5BkXIEhQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qam5BkXIEhQ

tsimionescu 4y ago

> Our bodies in general have huge room for optimization and eventually will be completely unrecognizable or even unnecessary as we currently imagine them I think this is a huge leap, especially when it comes to computation. As far we can tell, the brain is amazingly energy efficient compared to to any electronic chip. It's hard to estimate exactly what kinds of computation our brains are doing so that we could compare in terms of teraflops, but the energy consumption is many times better than any processor that could come close in any reasonable estimation.