X-Message-Number: 21632
From: "Joseph W. Morgan" <>
Subject: The Fermi Paradox and the Technological Singularity
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2003 09:02:44 -0700

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In "Musings on the Singularity" (Cryonet 21607), Francois argues that the 
absence of obvious interstellar colonization and visible engineering works on 
the stellar or galactic scale suggests that alien civilizations have not 
experienced a technological singularity and therefore may not exist.


Given the same observations, others argue that technological singularities 
explain the Fermi Paradox.  The reasoning being that post-human entities be they
machine, biological, or hybrids are so superior to humans that we cannot even 
imagine what they are doing or thinking.  Picture an ant trying to understand 
tensor calculus.  Picture gods as the products of alien technological 
singularities.  Therefore, our vision of the future as fleets of spaceships 
colonizing the galaxy and construction projects on the scale of Dyson spheres 
may not be accurate.


Francois is right about future shock.  The universe may be stranger than we are 
capable of imagining.


A hint of that can be found in the May 2003 issue of Scientific American.  
"Parallel Universes" by Max Tegmark is a truly mind-boggling article.


Joseph W. Morgan





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