On Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 07:20:19AM -0800, Thaths wrote: > > Why should they hack us when they can overrun us in person, > > with a better ROI? > > Maybe because the ET are worried about the impact the number of body > bags they send back home to Omicron 8 have on them getting reelected?
If you're looking at selection in the pioneer organism wavefront you'll see it's a convergent niche only favoring fastest replicators and travellers -- nobody else. After a few 10^8 lightyears worth of interstellar agar you'd get something fast and deadly, but definitely not smart (even if it started out pretty damn brilliant). It's not a trait pioneers are selected for. If we continue as we do now it can't be more than about a century before we spawn our own pioneer wavefront. > My point is that the ET may not be that radically different from you > and I. Not all ET are Borg, you know. They are not all marauding Borg are irrelevant. Solid-state will assimilate them. Expanding pioneer wavefronts are even unobservable, by virtue of being relativistic and restucturing matter in their wake to prevent observer emergence (anthropic principle). The time window during which you can see them come before they hit you is extremely narrow, if we're a typical culture. The time window is ending, because we're about to start expanding ourselves. Two expanding waves would only see indistinguishable organisms, and will only cancel out. Postpioneer followup waves eventually result a fluctuating background of omega biota, very close to the ceiling. > Mongol or Chinese hoards. They might have to use their version of > smart bombs to minimize collateral damage too. No need for smart bombs. What will you do if the sun will cease to shine three months after tomorrow? Hey, no harsh feelings. Just our normal metabolism. The postpioneers will burrow for frozen critters in the blue snow. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org";>leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
