The Fermi Paradox: Where are They?
Some experts think They became AI, some that They were killed by their AI, and others say They never existed. Who’s most likely right?:
Science fiction writer Matt Williams delves into seven hypotheses into which scientists and science fiction writers have put a lot of thought…
4. The Aestivation Hypothesis: “aliens are not dead (or non-existent), they’re just resting!” (August 7, 2020) Just as many life forms on Earth go into torpor during hot and dry conditions, they are awaiting more favorable conditions before they emerge.
It makes the most sense for the aliens to have become artificial intelligences, say many theorists:
Indeed, an increasing number of futurists, astrobiologists, and SETI experts are starting to think that advanced intelligence eventually transitions into a digital mode of existence. Living as digital beings within powerful supercomputers, post-biological aliens (or future posthumans) will demand unhindered access to powerful and efficient means of information processing—a hypothetical mode of existence known as “dataism.”
But as Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong, and Milan Ćirković argue in their new JBIS paper, there’s a cost to information processing, particularly when the computer performing those calculations is temperature dependent. As computer scientists and information physicists know, the potential for information processing increases as temperature decreases (energy is required to cool a blazingly fast computer, after all). So rather than squander energy and resources in the current era, Sandberg and company believe it makes more sense for an advanced, computer-based civilization to aestivate and wait until the Universe is much colder than it is today. – George Dvorsky, “Hibernating Aliens Could Explain the Great Silence” at Gizmodo
The paper, “That is not dead which can eternal lie: the aestivation hypothesis for resolving Fermi’s paradox,” is open access.
News, “Seven reasons (so far) why the aliens never show up” at Mind Matters News
The sheer number of reasons should tell us something. If the aliens did show up, no one would bother about their reasons.
See also: Tales of an invented god
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They’ll always be Out There. As long as there’s an Out There out there.