From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Mon Jun 05 2000 - 02:04:51 MDT
At 11:13 PM 4/06/00 -0700, Jeff Davis wrote:
>that the universe shows no signs of abundant life seems
>analogous to looking at one's immediate surroundings and supposing that
>because we can't see them--they're too small-- the billions of microbial
>particles swarming all about us don't exist.
I recall arguing that we *can* detect microorganisms once the idea occurs
to us, using quite simple apparatus. We can even detect nanobes (forms of
`life' too small, on the face of it, to *be* life - still a goer, according
to an interview on Aussie radio this last weekend,
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s132235.htm
despite appropriate caution not to say ridicule expressed at the claim here
a year or so back).
>You responded by saying that
>Kardeshev civilizations types 1,2, and 3 must evidence themselves
>unquestionably due to the altered features of the cosmos.
Well, that *some* of them surely would, unless they all instantly take
themselves down to the nanoscale, hyper-souped up clockspeed and all, and
remain sequestered in their own navels.
...but...
>from this pre-singularity K.75 vantage, all bets are cancelled by that
>imminent event--The Spike,
>the Kardeshev One Two Three is ambitious and pleasingly impressive, it
>cannot escape the fact of its rude origins. [...]
>The first guess is never right. The proof of which is
>that hard on its heels it is trumped by The Spike.
Could well be. I suppose it depends on whether the post-Spike future is
*literally unimaginably strange* (perhaps with `magic physics', etc), or
just *strictly unpredictable in detail* but functioning within today's
rules, more or less (given a better fusion of QT and relativity, say).
I do have a hunch that even more advanced science isn't going to show us
that the Earth is actually a gigantic tetrahedron. Will it teach us rules
of game theory and economics that *altogether* escape the strictures known
to us? Maybe, in which case you're probably right. But if so, the
post-Spike ET cultures are likely to be beyond our cognitive event horizon,
aren't they? So even if they're *there*, you can't get there from here -
*except* via a Spike of your own... Does this disable the Great Filter
model? Dunno. Over to Robin... :)
Damien
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