New paper: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

[lpetrich]

Anders Sandberg et al. concede that their numbers are indeed biased toward optimism, because the more pessimistic Drake-equation evaluators often do not give numbers.

 

[lpetrich]

The Drake Equation edited by Douglas A. Vakoch: Estimating the Prevalence of Extraterrestrial Life through the Ages

It's in dead-tree form and payware form, though one can get the abstracts of each of the individual contributions.

It has contributions for all the Drake-equation parameters -- Rs, fp, ne, fl, fi, fc, L -- with separate contributions for before 1961 and for 1961 and after. Frank Drake proposed his equation in 1961, which is why that boundary was chosen.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

The answer is simple. It's Schrödinger's Alien.

 

[braces_for_impact]

I think the most logical explanation is that long before developing FTL (if that’s even possible), intelligent civilizations would develop the ability to upload consciousness (if that’s even possible), or otherwise develop fully realized artificial/vr/matrix-esque worlds that would be so immersive and exotic as to become complacent within them. As Lennon (John) once said, “thought is the best way to travel.”

Iow, if the prospect is leaving your loved ones on a journey that could take several generations to complete compared to uploading your consciousness into a little black eternity box, where you could live eternally in your own private “lucid” dream state, I’d pick black box and would fully expect our robot probes to find planets littered with them.

Why have just one copy? Make several copies of your consciousness. Have them all do something different for a few thousand, tens of thousands or whatever years, making them effectively very different versions of each other, then get them back together for an, ahem, "family reunion" and reintegrate them for fun. Now you have once consciousness that's lived many different lives. What I great idea? I think I'll write a novel.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Taking with a grain of salt. I'll fall back on a quote (Haldane IIRC):
"The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine."

What we call intelligence may not be the only sort of "intelligence" in the universe, and the mechanisms (and associated time requirements) whereby intelligence arose on this planet may not be the same for every kind of intelligent being. And in the end, it matters little; what matters are the chances of ever having contact with another intelligence. I still consider the possibility vanishingly smal that it might occur within the blink of an eye that is the duration of the human species.

Not terribly logical, that.

If we want to assume that the universe is really stranger than we can imagine then all bets are off and we should be prepared to get a very, very big surprise any time soon.

No need to panic, though. There's really nothing we could do about it so let's have tea at five and discuss cricket.
EB

 

[Angry Floof]

This Feynman quote seems appropriate here.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I think the most logical explanation is that long before developing FTL (if that’s even possible), intelligent civilizations would develop the ability to upload consciousness (if that’s even possible), or otherwise develop fully realized artificial/vr/matrix-esque worlds that would be so immersive and exotic as to become complacent within them. As Lennon (John) once said, “thought is the best way to travel.”

Iow, if the prospect is leaving your loved ones on a journey that could take several generations to complete compared to uploading your consciousness into a little black eternity box, where you could live eternally in your own private “lucid” dream state, I’d pick black box and would fully expect our robot probes to find planets littered with them.

Why have just one copy? Make several copies of your consciousness. Have them all do something different for a few thousand, tens of thousands or whatever years, making them effectively very different versions of each other, then get them back together for an, ahem, "family reunion" and reintegrate them for fun. Now you have once consciousness that's lived many different lives. What I great idea? I think I'll write a novel.

Well, isn’t that the concept behind multi-verses anyway? All possible versions of ourselves living out all possible experiences simultaneously? And wouldn’t the sum of all of those infinite versions be “god”? NOW we’ve got a novel.

 

[skepticalbip]

Well, isn’t that the concept behind multi-verses anyway? All possible versions of ourselves living out all possible experiences simultaneously? And wouldn’t the sum of all of those infinite versions be “god”? NOW we’ve got a novel.

The original concept behind the multi-verse was as a method for string theorists to account for all their solutions that can not fit in our universe. It was a way to keep string theory alive after they finally gave up trying to develop a method to find unique solutions to problems. Now they can claim that all the solutions are valid "in some universe" but they still have the same problem of determining (independent of other methods) which solution is valid in our universe.

 

[Bomb#20]

Well, isn’t that the concept behind multi-verses anyway? All possible versions of ourselves living out all possible experiences simultaneously? And wouldn’t the sum of all of those infinite versions be “god”? NOW we’ve got a novel.

The original concept behind the multi-verse was as a method for string theorists to account for all their solutions that can not fit in our universe. It was a way to keep string theory alive after they finally gave up trying to develop a method to find unique solutions to problems. Now they can claim that all the solutions are valid "in some universe" but they still have the same problem of determining (independent of other methods) which solution is valid in our universe.

That's not the original concept. Schroedinger proposed a multiverse fifty years before string theorists ran into their too-many-solutions difficulty.

 

[braces_for_impact]

Well, isn’t that the concept behind multi-verses anyway? All possible versions of ourselves living out all possible experiences simultaneously? And wouldn’t the sum of all of those infinite versions be “god”? NOW we’ve got a novel.

The original concept behind the multi-verse was as a method for string theorists to account for all their solutions that can not fit in our universe. It was a way to keep string theory alive after they finally gave up trying to develop a method to find unique solutions to problems. Now they can claim that all the solutions are valid "in some universe" but they still have the same problem of determining (independent of other methods) which solution is valid in our universe.

Is that accurate? I thought there were other reasons that are given for the plausibility of a multiverse. I thought I remembered that Sean Carol, who is not a string theorist, still thought the multiverse idea somewhat likely. I'll have to look into it later.

 

[skepticalbip]

Well, isn’t that the concept behind multi-verses anyway? All possible versions of ourselves living out all possible experiences simultaneously? And wouldn’t the sum of all of those infinite versions be “god”? NOW we’ve got a novel.

The original concept behind the multi-verse was as a method for string theorists to account for all their solutions that can not fit in our universe. It was a way to keep string theory alive after they finally gave up trying to develop a method to find unique solutions to problems. Now they can claim that all the solutions are valid "in some universe" but they still have the same problem of determining (independent of other methods) which solution is valid in our universe.

Is that accurate?

Yes and no. The idea, in different forms, had been around in philosophical considerations of QM for a while but was pretty much limited to philosophical arguments. An example would be the Schrodinger's cat dilemma of trying to describe the state of the cat before the box was opened. The idea of a multiverse didn't really take hold, especially in popular culture "explanation" of theoretical physics, until it was embraced by string theorists.

I thought there were other reasons that are given for the plausibility of a multiverse. I thought I remembered that Sean Carol, who is not a string theorist, still thought the multiverse idea somewhat likely. I'll have to look into it later.

The idea of a multiverse varies significantly among advocates. My understand of Carrol's meaning of multiverse is "pockets" of our universe at really, really, extreme distances that may have different physical laws. Other ideas vary from other "universes" right here but with different dimensions, to "universes" completely separate and closed from our closed universe, to parallel branes floating independently in some hyperspace, etc. There are a lot of ideas of what multiverse means among the advocates. So many that it would probably be a good idea to ask someone advocating a multiverse to describe what they mean by multiverse to get an idea of what they are talking about.