Re: Is SETI dangerous?

From: Aleksei Riikonen (aleksei@iki.fi)
Date: Wed Sep 26 2007 - 07:35:57 MDT


On 9/26/07, Алексей Турчин <avturchin@mail.ru> wrote:
> And not only self-reproducing, but preparing bases for colonization wave or preventing
> other wave to use Earth as a base - are good goals. Also just exploring the universe.
>
> But self relicating wave has good chances to eat almost all resourses. So, the probability
> to meet signal from selfreplicating wave are high.

It seems extremely unlikely that us or any civilization is hit with an
extrasolar Singularity Wavefront in the short period of time in which
they have sufficient scientific and technological understanding to
think about space travel, but have not yet triggered a Singularity --
and the corresponding expanding Wavefront into space -- themselves (or
self-destructed).

On the other hand, it is of course not at all impossible that we have
already been hit with an extraterrestrial Singularity Wavefront
millions of years ago. Such a thing having happened might even be
hugely probable, if we assume that we are not living in a simulation,
but in a real universe. (Can anyone point to high-quality analysis and
calculations available on this topic? I've never bothered to get
familiar with the Drake Equation etc.)

We might of course wonder, why it doesn't seem like a Singularity
Wavefront has gotten here long ago... I would argue that the fact that
our resources have not been converted to computronium, or whatever, is
not surprising. The universe is so full of resources that many
Singularity Wavefronts would probably mostly spare solar systems that
have interesting biological evolution going on. I think I'd do that
myself. *Not* doing that would be essentially equivalent to wanting to
get hostile towards my fellow humans after our own possible
Singularity, converting their small amount of matter into something
more efficient.

Otherwise, having been hit with an ancient Singularity Wavefront is
essentially equivalent to living in a simulation. Like, the question
of "Why is there nasty stuff going on?" is answered with "Either the
intelligences running the show don't care, or then there actually
isn't nasty stuff going on; you are just given that false impression."
The false impression could in practice mean e.g. that every individual
is seamlessly uploaded right before they would have a life experience
they would not approve of in retrospect, and replaced with a
philosophical zombie.

-- 
Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei


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