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The hypothesis of a prohibition on grabby aliens feels more plausible to me than most others. We’re relatively early on the scene. If one Von Neumann probe got

by ianai 4y ago

The hypothesis of a prohibition on grabby aliens feels more plausible to me than most others. We’re relatively early on the scene. If one Von Neumann probe got out from a civilization it could mean no other species evolve again in the universe. That’s surely disastrous since the universe will be around for trillions of years and survival will require adaptation over that period. So maybe they’re around and watchful to allow species to evolve on their relative own. Aside, I really wish we were already building the successor to JWST. And multiples of them for surety of success. For verification but also the universe is literally the largest thing we know. Lots of science to learn just by careful watching. It’s also work (astronomy) that does add to human knowledge with few negative externalities. So create jobs for astronomers!!

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
I think VN probes are impossibly hard and extremely unlikely. A working VN probe literally has to reproduce a significant part of an entire civilisation's industrial capacity - mining, refining, all levels of assembly - while improvising with a mix of raw materials which may not be similar to those available at source. And it has to do it in a way that is 100% guaranteed free from software bugs, hardware failures, and general space wear and tear. Over millions of years. (Assuming FTL isn't possible.) You may as well as just seed viruses everywhere and see what they evolve into. (What if we are the VN probe?)
- ianai 4y ago
  Life is a likely VN. Edit-not that life is anyone in particulars VN probe. But it’s clearly self replicating and can evolve to various conditions. Kind of the obvious example to prove the existence of VN probes as a logical concept.
  - nonameiguess 4y ago
    Life is self-replicating, but it can't just use any substrate. Nutrition and energy requirements are quite specific. Any life on earth that managed to survive an interstellar journey would need to find organic chemicals similar to what are found on earth in order to continue replicating, and I think at least water as well. There are only some tiny number of spores that can survive in a vacuum at all, and while I don't think it's impossible that something like them could actually survive an entire interstellar journey, I'm reasonably sure nothing we know of can do that. They also can't change course. Most space is empty, so the most likely place they end up is nowhere. The next most likely are the largest gravity wells, which are all stars and black holes, where they are not going to replicate. Then you get to planets, but giant gas planets are going to be the largest gravity wells among planets. Assuming even one manages to find a planet earth-like enough to support life like it, would it survive atmospheric re-entry? Spores don't have heat shields. What you're describing is something like the protomolecule from the Expanse books, which is a nice concept, but it required its creators to have the technology to locally alter the laws of physics as we know them to work, making it possible to use an asteroid with no propulsion system as a carrier vehicle, with energy sucked out of a different universe they figured out how to gain access to (not something that is likely to actually be possible).
    - bluGill 4y ago
      Fortunately water is extremely common in the universe, as are the other building blocks of life. Every proposal I've seen for life not based on carbon, water, and the other building blocks of life here relies on chemistry that is hard to pull off in a lab (or impossible, though in theory is seems like it should be possible). Water and Carbon have some very interesting chemical properties that make it the mostly likely building blocks for life. Of course since we are talking about unknowns, I can't say for sure that life elsewhere isn't made of something else, but our current knowledge of chemistry makes the idea unlikely.
      - pajko 4y ago
        Wikipedia has a quite interesting article about non-carbon-based lifeforms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemi...
- ben_w 4y ago
  Even if the traditional image of a VN probe were impossible, and I doubt that, the effect of a traditional VN probe is unambiguously also achievable with a big enough group of humans and tools. On this scale, 10 MT of industrial equipment and 100k people that self-replicates in 35 years, isn't particularly different from a fancy hypothetical atomic 3D printer that masses 1kg, needs another 1kg of support equipment, and which self-replicates in 6 months.
  - ianai 4y ago
    The VN probe thing was mostly a mechanism to make the point for having a prohibition on a civilization becoming too grabby. Maybe the UFOs and such are the local galactic “police” looking for civilizations that would want to participate in a vast diversity of life in the future universe and acting as a backstop in case someone gets too grabby.
    - trashtester 4y ago
      > Maybe the UFOs and such are the local galactic “police” Greg Bear had a series on this. I think this concept may depend on FTL travel/communication, though, at least in order to work well. Or at least on communication being much faster than travel. (In other words, if the speed of light is the limit, if VN probes are restricted to much slower speeds, the "Police" may be able to contain them, but if they're too fast, the probles will spread faster than the "Police" may stop the spread). And if the Policing is not done by a single civ, but is something that was set up by a coalition of civs that may exists 100s of thousands of light years apart, I think FTL communication is basically required to be able to even create such a coalition in the first place. My personal gut feeling, is that we're simply first in this area of Space.
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  "You may as well as just seed viruses everywhere" A virus needs a host cell to replicate, so they likey would not get far. But bacteria survive in space quite well, and I would just send them. Or like you said, maybe some asteroid with bacterias was send to us on purpose and got successful.
- tomrod 4y ago
  You and I almost fit the definition of VN probes if you allow for mutation. Stephen Baxter's writing covers that notion on his book Evolution as a minor point.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  > A working VN probe literally has to reproduce a significant part of an entire civilisation's industrial capacity - mining, refining, all levels of assembly - while improvising with a mix of raw materials which may not be similar to those available at source. The optimization target here is a minimum-complexity design that's able to reproduce itself using in-situ materials. This is still an unsolved problem, but I don't see a reason the probe would have to "reproduce a significant part of an entire civilsation's industrial capacity" - it doesn't have to build anything else other than its own copy (and whatever it needs for that). It has to do one thing, and thus we could cut corners in the design. > And it has to do it in a way that is 100% guaranteed free from software bugs, hardware failures, and general space wear and tear. Over millions of years. (Assuming FTL isn't possible.) This is not a hard requirement. You don't need 100% reliability - you only need enough so that, on average, one probe turns into more than one. Beyond that, more reliability only speeds things up. This is how biology does it: reliability is achieved by doing more things than necessary and rejecting (recycling) failures.

by ianai 4y ago

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago

I think VN probes are impossibly hard and extremely unlikely. A working VN probe literally has to reproduce a significant part of an entire civilisation's industrial capacity - mining, refining, all levels of assembly - while improvising with a mix of raw materials which may not be similar to those available at source. And it has to do it in a way that is 100% guaranteed free from software bugs, hardware failures, and general space wear and tear. Over millions of years. (Assuming FTL isn't possible.) You may as well as just seed viruses everywhere and see what they evolve into. (What if we are the VN probe?)

ianai 4y ago
Life is a likely VN. Edit-not that life is anyone in particulars VN probe. But it’s clearly self replicating and can evolve to various conditions. Kind of the obvious example to prove the existence of VN probes as a logical concept.
- nonameiguess 4y ago
  Life is self-replicating, but it can't just use any substrate. Nutrition and energy requirements are quite specific. Any life on earth that managed to survive an interstellar journey would need to find organic chemicals similar to what are found on earth in order to continue replicating, and I think at least water as well. There are only some tiny number of spores that can survive in a vacuum at all, and while I don't think it's impossible that something like them could actually survive an entire interstellar journey, I'm reasonably sure nothing we know of can do that. They also can't change course. Most space is empty, so the most likely place they end up is nowhere. The next most likely are the largest gravity wells, which are all stars and black holes, where they are not going to replicate. Then you get to planets, but giant gas planets are going to be the largest gravity wells among planets. Assuming even one manages to find a planet earth-like enough to support life like it, would it survive atmospheric re-entry? Spores don't have heat shields. What you're describing is something like the protomolecule from the Expanse books, which is a nice concept, but it required its creators to have the technology to locally alter the laws of physics as we know them to work, making it possible to use an asteroid with no propulsion system as a carrier vehicle, with energy sucked out of a different universe they figured out how to gain access to (not something that is likely to actually be possible).
  - bluGill 4y ago
    Fortunately water is extremely common in the universe, as are the other building blocks of life. Every proposal I've seen for life not based on carbon, water, and the other building blocks of life here relies on chemistry that is hard to pull off in a lab (or impossible, though in theory is seems like it should be possible). Water and Carbon have some very interesting chemical properties that make it the mostly likely building blocks for life. Of course since we are talking about unknowns, I can't say for sure that life elsewhere isn't made of something else, but our current knowledge of chemistry makes the idea unlikely.
    - pajko 4y ago
      Wikipedia has a quite interesting article about non-carbon-based lifeforms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemi...
ben_w 4y ago
Even if the traditional image of a VN probe were impossible, and I doubt that, the effect of a traditional VN probe is unambiguously also achievable with a big enough group of humans and tools. On this scale, 10 MT of industrial equipment and 100k people that self-replicates in 35 years, isn't particularly different from a fancy hypothetical atomic 3D printer that masses 1kg, needs another 1kg of support equipment, and which self-replicates in 6 months.
- ianai 4y ago
  The VN probe thing was mostly a mechanism to make the point for having a prohibition on a civilization becoming too grabby. Maybe the UFOs and such are the local galactic “police” looking for civilizations that would want to participate in a vast diversity of life in the future universe and acting as a backstop in case someone gets too grabby.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    > Maybe the UFOs and such are the local galactic “police” Greg Bear had a series on this. I think this concept may depend on FTL travel/communication, though, at least in order to work well. Or at least on communication being much faster than travel. (In other words, if the speed of light is the limit, if VN probes are restricted to much slower speeds, the "Police" may be able to contain them, but if they're too fast, the probles will spread faster than the "Police" may stop the spread). And if the Policing is not done by a single civ, but is something that was set up by a coalition of civs that may exists 100s of thousands of light years apart, I think FTL communication is basically required to be able to even create such a coalition in the first place. My personal gut feeling, is that we're simply first in this area of Space.
hutzlibu 4y ago
"You may as well as just seed viruses everywhere" A virus needs a host cell to replicate, so they likey would not get far. But bacteria survive in space quite well, and I would just send them. Or like you said, maybe some asteroid with bacterias was send to us on purpose and got successful.
tomrod 4y ago
You and I almost fit the definition of VN probes if you allow for mutation. Stephen Baxter's writing covers that notion on his book Evolution as a minor point.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
> A working VN probe literally has to reproduce a significant part of an entire civilisation's industrial capacity - mining, refining, all levels of assembly - while improvising with a mix of raw materials which may not be similar to those available at source. The optimization target here is a minimum-complexity design that's able to reproduce itself using in-situ materials. This is still an unsolved problem, but I don't see a reason the probe would have to "reproduce a significant part of an entire civilsation's industrial capacity" - it doesn't have to build anything else other than its own copy (and whatever it needs for that). It has to do one thing, and thus we could cut corners in the design. > And it has to do it in a way that is 100% guaranteed free from software bugs, hardware failures, and general space wear and tear. Over millions of years. (Assuming FTL isn't possible.) This is not a hard requirement. You don't need 100% reliability - you only need enough so that, on average, one probe turns into more than one. Beyond that, more reliability only speeds things up. This is how biology does it: reliability is achieved by doing more things than necessary and rejecting (recycling) failures.