Maybe the Aliens Are Addicted To Computer Games

Hugh Pickens writes "Geoffrey Miller has an interesting hypothesis in Seed Magazine that explains Fermi's Paradox — why 40 years of intensive searching for extraterrestrial intelligence have yielded nothing: no radio signals, no credible spacecraft sightings, no close encounters of any kind. All the aliens are busy playing computer games. The aliens 'forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they're too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual-reality narcissism,' writes Miller. He says the fundamental problem is that an evolved mind must pay attention to indirect cues of biological fitness, rather than tracking fitness itself, and that although evolution favors brains that tend to maximize fitness (as measured by numbers of great-grandkids), no brain has capacity enough to do so under every possible circumstance. 'The result is that we don't seek reproductive success directly; we seek tasty foods that have tended to promote survival, and luscious mates who have tended to produce bright, healthy babies. The modern result? Fast food and pornography,' writes Miller. 'Once they turn inwards to chase their shiny pennies of pleasure, they lose the cosmic plot.' Miller adds that most bright alien species probably go extinct gradually, allocating more time and resources to their pleasures, and less to their children, until they eventually die out." Who here doesn't think a TNG-style Holodeck would lead to the downfall of our civilization?

Comments

Re:Or maybe on the contrary, let's

[jonadab]

> And if c really is the speed limit, and space being that big

The speed of light is only theoretically the speed limit, an absolute upper bound. In practice, nothing with enough mass and complexity to be alive, much less intelligent, can travel at anywhere near c and hope to survive. Interstellar travel is wildly impractical. It makes for interesting fiction, but unless our understanding of physics is TOTALLY messed up (*way* more flawed than we currently think pure Newtonian physics was), there's absolutely zero practical application, ever.

Even interstellar *communication* is wildly impractical. I mean, come on, latency measured in *years*? What kind of conversation could you have, EVEN if you already spoke the same language? And if you don't, how are you going to learn it? Cultural immersion is NOT possible. Back-and-forth dialog isn't even really possible. With no pre-existing linguistic information to help you bridge the gap, *and* no interaction, how would you characterize an alien language? You could spend centuries analyzing a single hour's worth of message and get nowhere. It'd be like trying to read the Voynich manuscript, only much worse (because the Voynich manuscript was written by a *human*, and furthermore by a human who was obviously familiar with a number of popular human writing conventions that we understand; an alien message wouldn't be so comprehensible). You almost certainly wouldn't be able to figure out for sure if the signals you were getting were language and represented actual meaning or not.

If there were any *intelligent* aliens, they would eventually figure this out and give up on the idea.

That kinda gives me an idea

[Moraelin]

You know, actually that gives me an idea for a counter-hypothesis about how a first contact would go. I mean, if we're at attributing to aliens carricatures of human stereotypes...

April 5'th, 2063, 11:00 AM: The USS Phoenix, the first warp-capable Earth vessel, launches with Zephram Cochrane aboard.

April 5'th, 2063, 11:30 AM: The USS Phoenx deploys the warp generators and breaks the warp barrier.

April 5'th, 2063, 11:35 AM: The warp surge is detected by the Vulcan ship T'Plana-Hath.

April 5'th, 2063, 11:45 AM: After a brief attempt at hailing it, the Vulcans conclude that the alien craft must contain tentacled aliens intent on raping their women, as documented in the several Hentai transmissions they had intercepted.

April 5'th, 2063, 11:50 AM: The T'Plana-Hath unloads all its fore torpedo tubes into the Phoenix.

April 5'th, 2063, 11:55 AM: The T'Plana-Hath deploys several quarantine beacons beyond Jupiter's orbit to warn other ships to stay away from the newfound menace.