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After decades of searching, we still haven't discovered a single sign of extraterrestrial intelligence. Probability tells us life should be out there, so why haven't we found it yet?
The problem is often referred to as Fermi's paradox, after the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Enrico Fermi, who once asked his colleagues this question at lunch. Many theories have been proposed over the years. It could be that we are simply alone in the universe or that there is some great filter that prevents intelligent life progressing beyond a certain stage. Maybe alien life is out there, but we are too primitive to communicate with it, or we are placed inside some cosmic zoo, observed but left alone to develop without external interference. Now, three researchers think they think they[sic] may have another potential answer to Fermi's question: Aliens do exist; they're just all asleep.
According to a new research paper accepted for publication in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, extraterrestrials are sleeping while they wait. In the paper, authors from Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute and the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong, and Milan Cirkovic argue that the universe is too hot right now for advanced, digital civilizations to make the most efficient use of their resources. The solution: Sleep and wait for the universe to cool down, a process known as aestivating (like hibernation but sleeping until it's colder).
Understanding the new hypothesis first requires wrapping your head around the idea that the universe's most sophisticated life may elect to leave biology behind and live digitally. Having essentially uploaded their minds onto powerful computers, the civilizations choosing to do this could enhance their intellectual capacities or inhabit some of the harshest environments in the universe with ease.
[Related]:
The idea that life might transition toward a post-biological form of existence
Sandberg and Cirkovic elaborate in a blog post
The Dominant Life Form in the Cosmos Is Probably Superintelligent Robots
Where even 3 degrees Kelvin is not cold enough, do you think that we would ever make contact with any alien ?
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Tuesday July 18 2017, @07:16AM (2 children)
This isn't a meaningful solution to the Fermi paradox. So long as sapience persists, it's form doesn't matter. Even if SkyNet wiped us all out tomorrow, it's own existence would be continuation of our "civilization" in the sense that it would produce potentially detectable activity for external observers.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Tuesday July 18 2017, @08:56AM (1 child)
Good point but I can't help but think that a civilization would have to see self-interest in storing their brain scans in this way. Because it's the sort of thing that would require so many different forms of research along that path for the purpose of correctly interpreting consciousness so it can be simulated reasonably. It contributes no real value that such a civilization wouldn't already have with their own AI. Why wouldn't they pursue the more realistic method of preservation and do cybernetics that basically make it so it's only the brain that needs to be maintained?
I suppose at a certain level this becomes semantics because if we're going to assume they're capable of doing this with consciousness we also have to assume they're good at preserving cells. Brains can be frozen.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Tuesday July 18 2017, @06:58PM
At least as far as humans are concerned, we've been inventing things we don't strictly need since the dawn of time. A rather disconcerting proposition is that one day we may invent full digitization just so that weebs can be united with their waifus and husbandos. There are of course less tongue-in-check reasons, some people will no doubt be okay with surviving as a "copy" if that allows them to exist as a supercomputer AI.
The thing about advanced civilization is that they can be really big and at some point they will be out of things to invent (subjective experiences such as art notwithstanding of course). If humanity ascends to a type 2 Kardashev civilization without ever leaving the gravity well of the Sun, we could potentially have a civilization size measured in pentillions, and that's assuming we continue to exist as the same biological meatbags with no efficiency jumps at all. To such a powerful post-scarcity civilization, inventing digitization would be as trivial of an investment as it would be for you to buy steak for dinner, and since they would presumably also be post-scarcity society it would have a lot of time to spend on such frivolous pursuits.