F-ZeroOne wrote:"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."
Three possibilities exist.
Either we're alone in the universe or we are not.
...or the universe is so unbelievably gargantuan in size - and so unbelievably sparsely populated, even if it is populated - with such vast unreachable distances between things, that it actually doesn't matter. That the point actually becomes moot, whichever is true.
Because, with absolutely no remote chance of ever establishing contact, we might as well be alone, even if we're not.
Or, if you like, there could be life throughout the universe - all over the place - but we still remain functionally all alone in the universe anyway, as there's no possible way of breaching these vast chasms between us.
Which is also terrifying in a wholly different way.
For example, imagine that we knew, for a fact, that there actually was another intelligent alien species out there, but it lives in a galaxy that's 20 million lightyears away. So even if we headed straight for them at ten times the speed of light in our FTL ships - and the aliens also headed straight for us at ten times the speed of light to meet us from the other direction - this is still taking a million fucking years.
It's not happening. Even with "generation ships" to get past the fact that neither human nor alien can actually live for a million years, how realistic is it to be able to maintain a 10x FTL ship - in the midst of deep intergalactic space, where there's absolutely nothing whatsoever for millions of lightyears, so there are no available resources of any kind but that which you bring with you - for a million years?
The obstacles here are effectively impossible to overcome. And, remember, I'm granting 10x FTL warp drives here. Even if I granted 1000x FTL warp drives, this is still 10,000 years - which is many times more than all of human recorded history right there.
You get the gist.
The third possibility is that, whether there's life out there or not, it's all completely irrelevant - the point is moot - because the odds that two intelligent lifeforms are anywhere near each other, in a universe of this truly gargantuan size, is pretty much zero.
So, you know, maybe they are there, maybe they're not. It kind of doesn't matter. As we'll probably never find out - and certainly not accidentally encounter them - at any point.
As an aside, I had a mad sci-fi idea for why the universe appears to be empty - though, you know, what I actually believe is what I've just detailed above, that even if it is populated, which it probably is, then it's so ridiculously sparsely populated, there's very little to no chance that two intelligent lifeforms are anywhere near each other to ever find out.
It's a variant on
Terry Bisson's "They're made out of meat". in that the aliens are just ignoring us, while we're "meat out of meat" as this is just so disgustingly primitive to them that they're not interested.
They are ignoring us as "not significant" in the same way that we ignore ants. We don't stop to try to have "communication" with some ants scurrying around, because there's no point - they're not anywhere near our level of intelligence for that to even work. I mean, you can talk to the ants, if you like, but nothing will result from it.
And the idea is that, unlike Star Trek, where they make first contact when you've developed warp drives - as the idea is that, once you've got warp capability, you're now capable of meeting others and interfering in interstellar affairs, so now's the time to invite you to join the Federation of Planets - what they're actually waiting for is humans to develop AI and then, as Elon Musk dreams of, using "neural links" to connect with the AI. And then we'll eventually be brains inside robot bodies, and then even the brains can be replaced with robot brains - with minds being downloaded / uploaded into them. And, therefore, can also be "backed up", so we effectively become immortal.
And that's the thing. All the aliens out there who're zooming around the universe in their FTL ships are no longer organic. They've all developed AI and robot bodies, and then "merged" with it, to become this "higher level" of immortal being, with incredible super-intelligence from being fused with advanced AI and so forth.
To them, we're just ants. Not worth bothering with. Organic beings - things "made of meat" - are just "primitive animals" to them.
That's just the "larval stage" that all eventually-immortal robotic beings first go through, before they develop the tech to "transcend" and cease being weighed down by "nature" and the planet they originated from.
We're made out of meat and that's not interesting. Meat dies. And to effectively immortal beings, any finite lifespan seems pointless bothering with.
Note that such beings could spend 10,000 years travelling somewhere. They don't die, so why not? And they don't require organic food or oxygen or anything, just electricity, so they actually exist in space, no problem. Just need a few replicators to fix any broken robotic parts. If there's a terrible accident, then you just download someone's mind into a new robot body and they "respawn", just like in a computer game.
That's the stage that all these super-advanced alien beings have reached - because, hey, we're on that path too - and only at that point are you "interesting" as a species. Indeed, when you've kind of ceased being an organic "species" and now have complete control over your destiny. You no longer die, as long as you maintain your robot bodies and choose to keep "downloading" your mind into a new robot body every once in a while.
The idea that this is, in fact, the inevitable conclusion of technical progress. That it's always being about "conquering nature" and making our lives better and easier. So the ultimate destination is achieving total control - we've already exited the Animal Kingdom with our intelligence, so we eventually exit "nature" and our organic nature with our technological progress.
it's not "humans vs. AI" but that we develop means to more and more "fuse" this tech to us, until we merge. I mean, we all walk around with mobile phones. Imagine if we develop "neural link" technology to the point where you totally replace a person's arm with a robot arm, and it's just as good (if not better) than their original organic arm and is controlled by their nervous system in exactly the same way as their organic arm.
At first, you'd develop that for folks who've lost arms. But then, ah, they'll end up as better arms than the organic ones we're born with, and people will get robotic arms as an "upgrade". Then robot legs, robot torsos (that can keep your brain going without requiring any organs or digestive system anymore).
You get the gist. We become the machines and the machines become us. Then, with your robot body, you're merged with the advanced AI and can access the Internet in your mind.
And then there's the prospect that, as long as you keep replacing your body parts, you don't die of old age. There's a question of how long the human brain could keep functioning. But there's the idea that AI tech and biology gets so good, that we can just "read" minds, store them and then "download" them into artificial brains that function just as well as your organic brain ever did. Then you become effectively immortal, as you can keep replacing your body parts and "download" a backup of your mind to a new body, should your robot body become destroyed.
(And, hey, once you've become this non-organic life form, you don't necessarily have to have a bipedal humanoid shape anymore. You could even change bodies for different purposes, or develop Terminator-like shape-shifting powers.)
That the universe is not full of organic aliens. But it's full of robot AIs - the ultimate "evolution" of once-organic lifeforms. Because they are effectively immortal and have zero problems with travelling in space for long periods of time. It's nothing to them, when you can essentially live forever.
And that's how you eventually square the circle. The "rise of the robots" is an inevitable stage in evolution, and they are the real destination. And all the robot AI beings out there just ain't interested in meeting finite organic beings. What's the point? They do that inconvenient thing of dying. You can't take them anywhere, they can't handle travelling for 10,000 years without dying somewhere along the way. How useless.
Basically, all the aliens are "toasters", to reference Battlestar Galactica.
And this is how it always inevitably goes every single time, given sufficient billions of years of evolution. "Organic" is just a larval stage you pass through on the way to evolving into a robot species. And, hey, maybe the robot stage is just another "larval stage" for some even higher more god-like stage after that (the Q?).
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
