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> I'm coming around to the Dark Forest theory, personally, as terrifying as it is. Perhaps it's just that advanced technology is extremely rare given another c

> I'm coming around to the Dark Forest theory, personally, as terrifying as it is. Perhaps it's just that advanced technology is extremely rare given another comment's supposition that there could be other intelligent life, just unable to make advanced technology, or along those lines: if they have the appendages to do so, maybe their environment doesn't have the resources. If you couple the above with the idea that FTL communication/travel is difficult or impossible, then it could take a long time for us to find evidence, and maybe by then we'll be extinct due to natural causes or devices of our own. Or maybe there's some theistic evolution component and we are the only species in the universe with divine providence. It seems to me that it would be impossible to prove or disprove any of those possibilities unless we actually discover extraterrestrial advanced intelligent life. (And even then, who is to say that God didn't create Edens on other worlds? So meeting aliens still might not disprove any divinity.)

philipov 2y ago
A really simple answer to the Fermi paradox is that we're the first, or in the first wave, of intelligent species, and it's just too early for the light from the others to have reached us yet. We're not just looking into the distance, we're also looking into the past. Life is less likely the farther we look. It took a long time for the universe to create the conditions for a solar system like ours to exist in the first place, and why would have this happened so much faster elsewhere? The trend towards higher entropy/complexity is like a universal clock. The universe might look big, but our view of it is not homogeneous. We wouldn't even see ourselves if we tried to find us, unless we were a close neighbor.
- Earw0rm 2y ago
  Possible, but in terms of the galaxy vs evolutionary time, we're not looking very far into the past. The Milky Way is of the order of 100K light years, which for evolution is the blink of an eye.
semi-extrinsic 2y ago
> the idea that FTL communication/travel is difficult or impossible Not just FTL. My hypothesis is that any type of substantial interstellar travel is going to be so enormously expensive, complicated and time consuming, an advanced civilisation will only do it once in a billion years. In the form of mass exodus when there are no more habitable planets in their system or their star is going nova. As this never gives exponential growth, it is enough to resolve the Fermi paradox.
- dbspin 2y ago
  But that's simply not the case. We likely very close to the technology needed to get tiny objects to a decent fraction of lightspeed using laser arrays. Assuming genuine AGI is possible and miniaturisation continues, there's no physical reason a digital intelligence couldn't rapidly (on interstellar time scales) colonise the galaxy. Source - https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/initiative/3 https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/initiative/3
  - semi-extrinsic 2y ago
    Okay, let's say I grant your two extremely optimistic assumptions. Then what? You can send a bunch of tiny sentient brains hurtling through the universe. They will have a very high chance of hitting interstellar dust and turning into a blob of plasma before they reach the target solar system. They also have no way at all to slow down once they reach the target system. Interstellar travel requires not just being able to accelerate to incredible speeds, but also to carry enough energy and reaction mass to slow down again to (essentially) zero.

philipov 2y ago

A really simple answer to the Fermi paradox is that we're the first, or in the first wave, of intelligent species, and it's just too early for the light from the others to have reached us yet. We're not just looking into the distance, we're also looking into the past. Life is less likely the farther we look. It took a long time for the universe to create the conditions for a solar system like ours to exist in the first place, and why would have this happened so much faster elsewhere? The trend towards higher entropy/complexity is like a universal clock. The universe might look big, but our view of it is not homogeneous. We wouldn't even see ourselves if we tried to find us, unless we were a close neighbor.

Earw0rm 2y ago
Possible, but in terms of the galaxy vs evolutionary time, we're not looking very far into the past. The Milky Way is of the order of 100K light years, which for evolution is the blink of an eye.

semi-extrinsic 2y ago

> the idea that FTL communication/travel is difficult or impossible Not just FTL. My hypothesis is that any type of substantial interstellar travel is going to be so enormously expensive, complicated and time consuming, an advanced civilisation will only do it once in a billion years. In the form of mass exodus when there are no more habitable planets in their system or their star is going nova. As this never gives exponential growth, it is enough to resolve the Fermi paradox.

dbspin 2y ago
But that's simply not the case. We likely very close to the technology needed to get tiny objects to a decent fraction of lightspeed using laser arrays. Assuming genuine AGI is possible and miniaturisation continues, there's no physical reason a digital intelligence couldn't rapidly (on interstellar time scales) colonise the galaxy. Source - https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/initiative/3 https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/initiative/3
- semi-extrinsic 2y ago
  Okay, let's say I grant your two extremely optimistic assumptions. Then what? You can send a bunch of tiny sentient brains hurtling through the universe. They will have a very high chance of hitting interstellar dust and turning into a blob of plasma before they reach the target solar system. They also have no way at all to slow down once they reach the target system. Interstellar travel requires not just being able to accelerate to incredible speeds, but also to carry enough energy and reaction mass to slow down again to (essentially) zero.