From: Gordon Worley (redbird@rbisland.cx)
Date: Mon Dec 23 2002 - 22:25:53 MST
On Monday, December 23, 2002, at 11:18 PM, Brian Atkins wrote:
> And of course I should point out I am not the first to bring this
> objection, many others including Tipler have come up with it before > me.
>
> Does anyone know of any good rebuttals to the "where are the Von
> Neumann
> Probes?" quandry? I find myself siding with Nick "we are Sims" Bostrom
> rather than believe all civs kill themselves off. THAT would be
> depressing.
Given what I believe, I think that only three things are possible:
1.) We are the first civilization to reach this level of technology.
2.) Other civilizations who have developed advanced technology or
reached the Singularity are so far away as to have been unable to reach
us yet since said level was reached.
3.) It's very very easy to blow yourself up.
If we are in a simulation, the whole thing is probably hopeless. If
we've already been contacted, human ideas of morality are 180 degrees
off the mark. Sure, it's depressing that civilizations might blow
themselves up all of the time, but that doesn't make it less likely to
be true.
-- Gordon Worley "Man will become better when http://www.rbisland.cx/ you show him what he is like." redbird@rbisland.cx --Anton Chekhov PGP: 0xBBD3B003
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