From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Sun Jan 09 2000 - 20:47:22 MST
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky writes:
> If the Powers are that hungry, why didn't the first sentient species to
> transcend eat the Universe? *Bzzzt* Fermi Paradox.
Maybe we're not in the lightcone of a voracious Power. (Corollary: if
you see their signatures, they're knocking on your front door
already). Given that our higher biosphere would have only 200-500 Ma
to exist before being cooked by Sun starting to visibly move on
Hertzsprung-Russel, the probability that sentient must eventually
evolve on an Earthlike planets is not so very obvious. We don't know
why Cambrian explosion happened and cannot predict the exact
extraterrestrial evolution dynamics reliably, just the overall
pattern.
I'm also looking forward to definite data on Earthlike planets. We
seem to be finding an awful lot of Jovian-type fatties in damn low
orbits around nearby stars. I don't think this forebodes well for
density of earthlike planets. Both in respect of formation and orbit
stability once/if formed.
Maybe Fermi's paradoxon is not a paradoxon at all. Sentient life is
just awful scarce. The more power to us, then.
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