And this life form could take great pains never to interfere or be observed, otherwise the experiment would become contaminated.
If we discover this being, maybe it will flush us and start over being more careful next time.
Is this to blame for the Fermi paradox?
- Thread starter RAMA
- Start date
And this life form could take great pains never to interfere or be observed, otherwise the experiment would become contaminated.
If we discover this being, maybe it will flush us and start over being more careful next time.
Who knows? It could be sitting right outside the jar watching us? We just don't know how to see it or what to look for.
And I'm not talking about God in the religious sense. We could simply be someone/thing's science experiment. I don't think it as likely. As human beings are the apex of evolution (at least in this petri dish).
This is certainly true...as I've pointed out before, using Von Neuman probes you could colonize a galaxy of our size in 500,000 to 1.5 million years without light speed or exotic drives. That time is really a mere speck in universal history. However, as the universe is 13+ billion years old, there should have been plenty of time for species to have made it across our galaxy several times over...
My explanation was that they are out there somewhere, and as you suggest, are simply too hard to detect. We've only been looking for objects in space a few decades, and have had no systematic search until recently.
I still feel that any species sufficiently advanced enough will have passed the Singularity stage and may simply take more time than we think to get back to "exploring" outwardly.
There could be lots of reasons, including them not finding anything interesting in the corner of the galaxy.
Kepler 452b is 1,400 light years away.
At our stage, it means a lot to find we aren't alone. For a species that has mastered intergalactic travel and spread out? They likely answered those questions long ago.
And yet time is not the only factor in this. The survival/attrition rate of those machines is another factor in the equation; they cannot colonize the galaxy if they die faster than they can reproduce.
Still assuming the singularity is a "stage" that a species would inevitably reach. You still haven't demonstrated to anyone's satisfaction that HUMANS will actually reach that stage.
Its not religious at all, and yes any society advanced enough is likely to reach it...just as any society in it's development will reach a time when it's capable of destroying itself. Simple.
RAMA
This statement not based on any example of such a thing having actually happened.
I don't buy that theory..an advanced galactic faring species will eventually dig around under the rug. Even a "quiet" spiral arm has a lot of stars
It's based on mathematics. The time when computers reach human level intelligence and surpass it is a given. We can quibble with the time frame but it's inevitable barring disaster.
This is probably the biggest area where Ray goes wrong when talking about the singularity. Calculating when computers will be faster than a human brain is not the same as being able to predict if and when they will actually be intelligent in the sense that he needs them to be.
Yet another statement not based on any known example of such an occurrence.
Sitting out here, a race may have no need to come out this far. If they've managed to overcome the speed of light limitation, they probably have figured out how to renew their resources. And, they've likely found other anthills just like this one.
We are projecting our need to know on races that are probably thousands, if not millions, of years ahead of us. I just don't see the "need" for them to come find us. We just aren't that important if the universe is teeming with life and other, more advanced, civilizations.
I think the projecting is in the form of assuming a high probability that advanced civilizations exist beyond Earth.
And what if the rest of the universe is sterile? Don't be in such a rush to diminish your importance.
---------------
No, it's based on an as-yet unproven hypothesis about the future progression of digital computing, an hypothesis that also includes multiple glaring logical fallacies.
The Singularity is a philosophical and metaphysical construct, not a mathematical one.
Problem #1: the assumption that "human level intelligence" can be quantified to the point that a machine can be simply compared to it in a simple IQ test.
Problem #2: the assumption that machines can/will reach "human level intelligence" purely as a function of processing power.
Problem #3: the assumption that human level or HUMANLIKE intelligence is even possible in a digital system
Problem #4: The assumption that humanlike intelligence would actually be NECCESARY for machines to surpass humans in capability.
And those are just the SMALL problems with the singularity hypothesis; any one of them remaining unsolved renders the entire concept a nonstarter. The much bigger problem -- the assumption that exponential growth must continue indefinitely and that a saturation point cannot/will not be reached that stems the growth curve -- remains a problem.
And here you are taking it a step farther by not only handwaving away all of these problems, but by claiming that alien civilizations -- about which absolutely nothing can be known -- would ALSO be immune to these problems because Kurtzweil.
For one, I think it's EXTREMELY unlikely that Earth is the only life-bearing planet in the universe.
But even in that very unlikely scenario, objectively speaking we are STILL unimportant as far as the rest of the universe is concerned. Really, we're all just a biochemical film clinging to damp, tepid surface of a dwarf planet orbiting around a tiny yellow star. As a matter of cosmic history, our entire existence is not even the blink of an eye; the end of that existence would not affect the rest of the universe one iota.
We are supposedly going to reach a Singularity a little later this century.
I don't know if such is possible. Even if it is, I doubt that digital computers would do it. They have an architecture very different from a biological brain. These digital computers are a sort of idiot savant, and might very well remain such by the time Moore's law ends.
Conceivably there could be a Singularity with an artificial neural net of extreme complexity. I understand these have been limited by the problem of wiring them together.
Well, maybe with a technological revolution an AI (Artificial Intelligence) could reach a Singularity?
There are a few other concepts for super intelligence:
1. Biological-expansion of the human brain through biotechnology.
2. Intelligence Amplification (IA). Of a human mind through interaction with a sophisticated computer.
3. Collective intelligence-a team of humans and IT idiot savants. I think this the most likely in the near term.
Because Version 1.0 human minds are key to the system, neither 2 or 3 results in a true Singularity.
I don't know if such is possible. Even if it is, I doubt that digital computers would do it. They have an architecture very different from a biological brain. These digital computers are a sort of idiot savant, and might very well remain such by the time Moore's law ends.
Conceivably there could be a Singularity with an artificial neural net of extreme complexity. I understand these have been limited by the problem of wiring them together.
Well, maybe with a technological revolution an AI (Artificial Intelligence) could reach a Singularity?
There are a few other concepts for super intelligence:
1. Biological-expansion of the human brain through biotechnology.
2. Intelligence Amplification (IA). Of a human mind through interaction with a sophisticated computer.
3. Collective intelligence-a team of humans and IT idiot savants. I think this the most likely in the near term.
Because Version 1.0 human minds are key to the system, neither 2 or 3 results in a true Singularity.
Last edited:
Even if simple life abounds in the Galaxy it does not follow that there will be other species with high enough intelligence and technology to be detected.
