Yep, I would agree that it would be very unlikely that a civilization capable of launching them, WOULD launch them. We are nowhere close to being able to build these probes ourselves, but already understand the dangers of doing so. Even assuming that VN probes WERE launched by some civs, who is to say that they aren't stopped by other even more advanced civs before they can become a problem?
Overall, my feeling is that there are 2 things which cause the 'dead' universe we see.
1. The Great Filter is the evolution of intelligence. Since we are here, its easy for us to assume the evolution of sentience is normal, but the dinosaurs were around for almost 200m years and got nowhere. And if not for a string of lucky events, we wouldn't even be here, wondering these things right now.
2. Advanced civilizations prefer simulation and dont need to colonize the universe at all, I think this would be even more likely if the first point is true, since once you understand the physics of the universe, see that its a cold dead place and you are bound by its physical laws, simulation has a lot more to offer. I would love to invent my own universes, simulate them, and be able to watch and manipulate them with omnipotence.
Oh yes, I agree, and I wasn't trying to imply that this would always be the case. I just meant that just because a civilization is simulated doesn't mean they have necessarily cut all ties with the physical universe. A civilization CAN be 100% simulated, but still be sending probes out to other stars etc.
I'm partial to the Great Filter being behind us as the evolution of sentience combined with tool use. There has been ample time and opportunity for 'us' to evolve on this planet, yet it took until now. The Dinosaurs were around for nearly 200 million years and got nowhere, and if that rock hadn't hit the Earth 65my ago, we wouldn't be here, and there are many other events which could also have put an end to our line. So my guess is human level intelligence is very, VERY rare, which would be very sad and I hope its not the case.
Yep, last time I made a comment about Accelerando, someone also pointed me to Diaspora. I finished it about 2 weeks ago, it was mind-blowing and I could not put it down. The reason I don't mention it though, is because its easier to relate our future to Accelerando than to the pure AI's in Diaspora.
There is no reason for there to definitely be that ONE 'colonize everything' type civilization.
I would assume that it would be incredibly common for a species capable to interstellar travel to have 'cured' aging before starting to colonize the universe. There is no way we can know how a being with eternity before them thinks. Perhaps they will just do it very very slowly? Perhaps immortal civilizations have very slow population growth and decreased pressures to colonize? Perhaps there is a lot of red tape in the Interstellar Colonization Bureau to go through before you can colonize planets? Perhaps the ONE civilization decides it can only colonize barren planets, in which case they have to terraform before they can settle, slowing the process of colonization down exponentially?
I really love this topic, there is so much room for imagination.
This has been my favourite explanation since I read Stross' book, Accelerando. The common argument I get against it is along the lines of "humans being too curious to abandon the real universe".
Of course simulation in this case doesn't answer the problem of Von Neuman probes and the like, as its still perfectly reasonable to expect a simulated race to have some physical presence and desire to explore the universe, however since we recognize the risks of these kinds of things so long before we even have the capability of launching our own VN probes, perhaps the vanishingly unlikely scenario is an advanced civilization actually doing it themselves?
Wow, Im pretty shocked at how many more features Postgres has over MySQL. I always just though of Postgres as 'a bit better, but not really worth the effort', I will definitely have to try it again.
No, thats not accurate, not having free will means we dont consciously choose what we do next - not that there is only one choice we will make in any given circumstance.
For example, I chose to ride a boat today, but it was raining, so I read a book instead.
I think the interesting and more important questions that stem from this are around the consequences of not having free will. Are we punishing people for doing things they were unable to NOT do? As Sam Harris said in his talk on free will, if a crocodile bit your hand off, you wouldnt 'blame' the crocodile, you wouldnt demand it be put down, and you may even take your family to see the crocodile saying 'See, thats the bugger who bit my hand off'. If we have no free will, then a human killer is as much to 'blame' for killing as the crocodile is.
Ive just realised how good AND bad finding life on Mars could be. On the one hand, we find LIFE on another planet. On the other hand, it makes it incredibly difficult for humans to ever move there and begin terraforming the planet into a second home.
It really hard to imagine the entire trillion dollars went into the development of the F-35. Maybe it did, or maybe there was another secret plane developed at the same time...
There could be cultural differences at play here I suppose. The British seem to have a knack for queuing which may be missing in other cultures.
I live in South Africa, and I have definitely seen improvements in traffic when certain lights are out during rush hour (4-way stops on highways in particular).