On Sunday, February 11, 2018 at 2:21:15 AM UTC-6, telmo_menezes wrote: > > On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 6:25 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com > <javascript:>> wrote: > > > > > > > Right, ET might prefer to become a > > navel gazer > > and spend eternity in the electronic equivalent of a crack house, but > even > > if 99% chose that path if just one individual in one civilization choose > to > > make > > one > > Von Neumann Probe > > then we'd see evidence of that fact. But we see nothing. > > It could be that this idea that the external space is more interesting > than the internal is just an obsession characteristic of our stage of > development. Perhaps the mysteries of the external space are exhausted > in a few millennia past our current point, and then all that is left > is to invent new things within artificial computational environments. > Who knows? >
We are mostly already there. Human expansion into virtual space is far greater than outer space. In fact with the end of the shuttle program we may have passed what might be called peak astronaut. The number of astronauts going up is declining. There has been a great expansion of course with space science done with probes, astronomical instruments and robots in space, but no such with humans in space. Further, it is pretty clear that humans are preferring the computer generated virtual realities to the far more difficult business of actually going into space. > > >> > >> > > >> (c) That galactic civilizations are observable by us. > > > > > > If its not observable to a blind man in > > a fog bank then it doesn't deserve to be called a galactic civilization. > > Well... you talked about Von Neumann probes. I also imagine that as a > way to expand a civilization. But then, who knows what transformations > the entities go through? Do they merge with machines, or opt to be > totally emulated by machines? At what time scales will they operate > then? And needing which type of resource? And how do they obtain them? > Aren't you expecting that something absurdly advanced in relation to > us is readily recognizable by us? > As I have said I think humans in space are mostly about technology, industry and commerce. If that can be made to work and humans start to make a long term or permanent presence in space humans out there will merge with their machines. For that matter I suspect humans down here on Earth will merge as well. We are half way there, in case you might have noticed people walking around with their eyes cast down on their phones. I suspect in 25 years that will start to interlink directly with the brain. Humans moving into space might come to resemble the BORG on Star Trek NG. LC -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
