Nick Bostrom wrote an interesting article for the MIT Technology Review about how he hopes that the search for
life on Mars finds nothing. In it, he reasons that inasmuch as we
haven't come across any signs of intelligent life in the universe yet,
advanced life must be rare. But since conditions for life aren't
particularly stringent, there must be a "great filter" that prevents
life from evolving beyond a certain point. If we are indeed alone, that
probably means that we have made it through the filter. But if life is
found nearby, like in our solar system, then the filter is probably
ahead of us, or at least ahead of the evolutionary stage of the life
that we find. And the more advanced the life form that we find, the
more likely that we have yet to hit the filter, which implies ultimate
doom for us.
But I wonder about some of the assumptions in this
argument. He argues that intelligent ETs must not exist because they
most certainly should have colonized the galaxy via von Neumann probes
but apparently have not done so because we do not observe them. It
seems to me, however, that it is certainly plausible that a
sufficiently advanced civilization can be effectively cloaked from a
far less advanced one. Mastery of some of those other 6 or 7 spatial
dimensions that string theory predicts comes to mind. Or invisibility
via some form of electromagnetic cloaking. And those are only early
21st century ideas. Imagine the possibilities of being invisible in a
couple hundred years.
Then there is the programmed reality
model. If the programmers placed multiple species in the galaxy for
"players" to inhabit, it would certainly not be hard to keep some from
interacting with each other, e.g. until the lesser civilization proves
its ability to play nicely. Think about how some virtual reality games
allow the players to walk through walls. It is a simple matter to
maintain multiple domains of existence in a single programmed construct! More support for the programmed reality model?...
(what do you think about the possibilities of life elsewhere? take our polls!)
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