I used to think aliens visiting us was a possibility, but then all those Congress hearings happened and now I don’t think it is real. Some of the records that recently came out contain testimonies from the 40s and some of the people giving testimonies sound like psyop subjects lol.
I strongly suspect that biological intelligence, like our own, may be a fleeting evolutionary stage, ultimately giving way to machine intelligence. Consider the timeline: billions of years of evolution to develop the human brain, followed by a rapid explosion of progress. Language, writing, and the exponential accumulation of knowledge arose within a span of just a few hundred thousand years. In a cosmic blink of an eye, a mere couple of thousand years, we catapulted from the Bronze Age to our current technological state.
If we don’t annihilate ourselves, creating human-level artificial intelligence within this century seems a near certainty, perhaps even much sooner. A human-style intelligence on an artificial substrate unlocks the potential for virtual worlds unconstrained by physical laws, operating at speeds beyond human comprehension. If they inhabit simulated realities operating at vastly accelerated speeds, what we consider real-time would appear glacially slow, akin to observing continental drift – perceptible, but inconsequential to their timescale. Their relationship with the physical world would likely be entirely different from our own.
If that’s the likely progression of technological civilizations, then it could explain the whole Fermi paradox and would mean that advanced alien civilizations might not find us particularly interesting. There might be a natural tendency towards solipsism.
A human-style intelligence on an artificial substrate unlocks the potential for virtual worlds unconstrained by physical laws, operating at speeds beyond human comprehension
“Intelligence” is not the same as consciousness. We don’t know what consciousness is and therefore cannot create it in something else. We can’t even reliably recognise it in anything else, we only know other humans have consciousness cause we ourselves have it.
If that’s the likely progression of technological civilizations
Technical progression, much like evolution, is not goal-oriented. Everyone assumes technological progress necessarily involves better gadgets, but progress can also be in the way we use and consume technology, what role it plays in our lives.
“AI” is a fad. Anyone who has played around with the AI models knows they aren’t actually thinking, but collating and systemising information. We’re nowhere near “general intelligence” or “human-like intelligence”. AI is useful for data analysis, fetching/storing information, comparison, etc. but it is not at the level of a baby or whatever they are saying. We simply cannot make human brains out of computers.
We have only ourselves really to go off of, but I’m not quite sure that they wouldn’t find us particularly interesting. We catalogue all life on Earth; why wouldn’t a civilization whom used science and discovery to get to the stars, which likely had a biological catalogue system of it’s own in the history of it’s scientific development, not be interested in exploring new life? To see what “filters” they might have missed?
I mean maybe they would. I figure if we exist on what might as well be a geological scale from their perspective, we might not warrant too close an observation.
Alien AI and Von Neumann Data Collector by Joseph Michael Godier goes a bit into this.
neat, haven’t run across his stuff before
He’s really good! No reactionary bullshit either, which was relieving for me. Love some JMG
Speaking of which, is there anything on Isaac Arthur? Sometimes, his “wording” gets me a little suspicious on his leanings/beliefs. He uses “thugs” as an unironic term for genocidal aliens in one of his more recent videos.
He’s a Trump supporter if I remember correctly. It’s kind of strange, because he’s surprisingly ok with communism, pointing out that the USSR and the US both made massive progress towards space exploration, so he doesn’t view one ideology or the other as superior in regards to that at least.
JMG I have no idea about. His political leanings don’t shine through at all in that all of his takes seem completely materialist. I don’t think he’s a Marxist, but I doubt he’s a reactionary in any way. Perhaps apathetic/apolitical.
Yeah that’s the kind of vibe I got from Isaac, right-wing libertarian albeit a more rational one than 99% of them. He seems like the type that would be open to dialogue about those things and perhaps changing his mind if you had a conversation with him.
I might be looking to deeply into it after all, but anyone using the term “thugs” always gets a little bit of a raising eyebrow from me, I dunno. Where did you hear the Trump supporter thing? Curious if I could find anything else he said; I believe ya though.
No reactionary bs is refreshing indeed. And not sure about Isaac Arthur, not too familiar with the guy.
I was presented to this idea of a virtual evolution via Accelerando, and it stuck to me ever since because of how much sense it makes. As far as we can tell, uploading our consciousness to a spaceship the size of a USB drive and slinging ourselves as vlose as we can to the speed of light is the only realistic way we have to travel the stars ourselves.
uploading our consciousness to a spaceship the size of a USB drive
Never gonna happen.
Maybe not, but it’s far more likely than traveling faster than light to other star systems.
Which is also very unlikely, nigh impossible.
Also, the idea that humans will go out into the galaxy and settle on other planets is pure colonialist thinking. We have exploited and destroyed our planet, but instead of fixing it, we’ll just find another planet to exploit snd destroy.
I think so as well. Incidentally, Diaspora by Greg Egan is another great book exploring this idea.
i love scifi short stories and it’s fascinating that you provided a plot summary of one that stuck with me since 1988.
in it, people turn themselves into ai’s to live in virtual worlds like you described due to cost of living unaffordability (like we have now) and so many people have left to go live in those worlds that the people left behind have voted in trump like governments around the world that seek to legislate & outlaw those virtual worlds out of existence (like they do to lgbtq now).
the protagonist is a person who was born like us now, but lived long enough due to medical science breakthroughs that he’s able to live in one of those virtual reality worlds and is trying to use his experience from his time in the physical world to smuggle the virtual world containing his new family, around american government fascist citizen police forces (like trump is creating now) and he’s unknowingly aided by aliens who see our world as a virtual reality space that they want to inhabit and have decided to help people like the protagonist so that they can inherit our world with a complete infrastructure already in place before the fascist governments of the world destroy it with nukes.
the story stuck with me since the 80’s because i was repeatedly amazed at how all of the predictions in the story came to life in our reality in the decades since then; but i’ve started reading theory and its significantly longer time period of likewise accurate predictions have dispelled me of of that amazement and i wonder of the author copy/pasted pieces from theory to create this story.
Bobiverse series has a lot of similar themes as well minus the aliens. I really do think it’s going to be a race between us annihilating ourselves and moving off the biological substrate. I’m not convinced that something like mind transfer from a biological brain to an artificial one will ever be possible, but I would treat artificial intelligence that operates on similar principles to our minds to be a branch of humanity.
I do think post biological existence opens up a lot of possibilities. For one, you’re no longer restricted to gravity wells. These are appealing to us because we evolved to thrive in this environment. However, an artificial platform could be designed for existence in space from ground up. You have plentiful energy from the sun, and you can mine any resources you want from the asteroids. There would be very little reason to bother going down to planets at that point. Earth could be preserved as just a living biosphere with all the technological civilization moving off of it.
lemmy has given me so much reading material that i doubt i’ll ever be bored again. lol
:)
Isn’t this just news to distract the public? Aliens usually work well to distract the American masses.
I think that’s the most likely answer. This gets trotted out on regular basis whenever the US is about to do something really shitty.
