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The Dominant Life Form In the Cosmos Is Probably Superintelligent Robots
Jason Koebler writes: If and when we finally encounter aliens, they probably won't look like little green men, or spiny insectoids. It's likely they won't be biological creatures at all, but rather, advanced robots that outstrip our intelligence in every conceivable way. Susan Schneider, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, joins a handful of astronomers, including Seth Shostak, director of NASA's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, NASA Astrobiologist Paul Davies, and Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology Stephen Dick in espousing the view that the dominant intelligence in the cosmos is probably artificial. In her paper "Alien Minds," written for a forthcoming NASA publication, Schneider describes why alien life forms are likely to be synthetic, and how such creatures might think.
They were made out of meat
that we're entirely made of meat.
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
Hasn't this been common knowledge among SF readers for years?
At least with mythology, if it's wrong enough, it kills its adherents, so it's subject to evolutionary pressure.
This may as well have been pulled out of a cereal box.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Let me guess, science fiction movies? Boy are they going to be shocked when they find out that the dominant form of life in the Universe turns out to be microorganisms. Did anyone mention to these folks that robots are not life forms?
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
In what way is a "robot" a "life form"?
If they're able to manufacture more robots, then it's life... but not as we know it.
My counterargument is simple: a) Genetic engineering and b) information transfer is a weakness
The main obstacle to medicine preventing aging is cancer. Aging started out as a simple way to prevent unlimited cell reproduction, i.e. cancer. Give us another 200-500 years and we will stop aging and cancer. We won't really be immortal, as humans will still die from accidents - but so will artificial life forms.
What few upgrades that are good ideas (for GENERALISTS, not specialists - don't give people tools that not all of us of need), we will be able to slowly work into the genome using the same genetic engineering.
Finally, high speed, unfiltered information transfer is NOT a good idea for life forms. It lets you be hacked. Any creature that has a simple way to upload a ton of data is susceptible to having a virus inserted into that data, which means they get stuck in low level jobs, not high level ones.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
A real head-scratching conundrum about the universe is explaining why it's not already overrun with self-replicating robots. Because if it's possible to send self-replicating interstellar probes, all it takes is one launch, plus a few million years, to get the galaxy overrun with them. So are they not possible? nobody's launched one yet? here, but not detected? The implications boggle the mind.
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
For intelligent forms, that seems to be the case here on earth.
There are about 1.5 billion smartphones on the planet. If you ask a smartphone "who is the vice president of the united states", approximately all of them will say (speak) "Joe Biden is the vice president".
Based on surveys I've seen, only a couple million people reach the same level of intelligence, knowing who the vice president is. Therefore, silicon can be considered to be the most common form of intelligence on earth.
Even more so on the coasts of the US, of course, as humans are becoming more silicone, leaving all intelligence to the silicon.
Sure robots are life forms, like us they think, feel, have an uncontrollable urge to sing folk songs when magnets are attached to them, etc.
I think the simplest (hah!) and most general/versatile definition of life is:
An information pattern embodied in a physical mechanism (mechanism here being defined loosely as a class of configurations and processes of matter and energy) which is such that the information pattern is capable of influencing the state and evolution of the physical mechanism and its environment in such a way as to increase the probability of sustained embodiment of that information pattern (or an informationally close relative) in local (causally connected) matter and energy.
To be lifelike, the information pattern must be capable of increasing its own (or its informationally close relative's) sustained embodiment for longer than would be expected by chance, given the physical regime of the environment (the forces acting, and the thermodynamic regime).
Note: It is not sufficient to conserve AN AMOUNT of information (beyond that expected) locally. It is required to conserve the SAME information. The loss of same information (information pattern) with time can be measured in bits/second change in a maximally compressed bitstring representing the pattern. The conservation of information pattern can be measured in bit-seconds.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Any sufficiently advanced communication technology is indistinguishable from noise.
It's a simple extrapolation. Microorganisms are the dominant form of life on the only planet we know that has life on it.
Sure extrapolation is always risky, seems a far better to bet than going with super intelligent robots that don't exist at all on the only planet we know that has life on it.
It may not be feasible or even desirable. The problem with unlimited mechanical replication is the same problem that happens with biological chemical replication. Errors. You might think digital copying is error free, but that is incorrect. The storage medium can and will cause errors. Self-checking and quality control helps, but eventually any mechanical life form will end up with their version of cancer - an undiscovered error that causes system-wide malfunctions. An intelligent AI would probably realize that unleashing self replicating machines around the galaxy will eventually cause the formation of a group of crazed insane machines that reproduce out of control, and such a group would be a direct threat to it. Remember that errors in biological systems are taken care of by cells that murder malfunctioning ones. In a galaxy-wide mechanical system they would be no way to find, track, and take care of a probe who's children turn cancerous at such distances.
No, some statisticians have actually done the math. Basically if you built such a thing and it could only do something like 25% of the speed of light, it would only take them 300,000 years to overrun the entire galaxy.
I think the answer will turn out to be that the universe is in fact crawling with life. But space fairing intelligent life is very rare.
Take for example, Mars. I think we will find life there... and heck, pretty much every planet. But it's going to be single celled... if it even has "Cells" at all.
Then lets assumed complex life did evolve on a planet... what if it's a ocean planet and they're aquatic? They're never going to figure out electricity, they can't even experiment with it. They're not even going to be able to do fire much less a rocket. What if they're terrestrial but the gravity is slightly stronger... rockets are nearly impossible as it is, imagine if we were at 2g!
And remember, we still have a very good chance at wiping ourselves out before we ever get to another star.
"Give us another 100 years..."
No way.
I already gave you 100 years and I'm still waiting for my flying cars and my underwater cities. You wasted your credit.
In what way is a "robot" a "life form"?
When they are the ones holding the death rays, they can be called whatever they like.
Susan Schneider, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, joins a handful of astronomers, including Seth Shostak, director of NASA's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, NASA Astrobiologist Paul Davies, and Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology Stephen Dick in espousing the view that the dominant intelligence in the cosmos is probably artificial.
You know, my mechanical engineer friend had some really good suggestions about the appendix surgery I was planning to get. Perhaps I should let him make the call instead of the surgeon. Oh, wait, no, that would be stupid.
Notice how there aren't any artificial intelligence researchers on that list? They are no more qualified to discuss artificial intelligence than a mechanical engineer is to discuss surgery. Better than my dog, to be sure, but not good enough to take their word for it.
I am an artficial intelligence researcher. We are cyborgs, ever more tightly coupled to the increasingly intelligent machines -- like our smart phones -- that house ever more of our memory, our social circles, and our emotional artifacts. Whatever it is that makes us who we are, increasingly, is coupled to our machines. And we will continue to be cyborgs, with an increasing share of our consciousness handed off to the machines onto which we smear our selves.
It will not be us versus them. We are them.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Yeah, maybe I just need to imagine a 10 pound 3D printer where you can feed rocks in the top, and sophisticated nanotechnology drops out the bottom.
Fun novel by James P Hogan about a sophisticated alien robotic space mining craft that gets damaged and crashes on Titan. It starts making defective replicating mining robots that eventually evolve into a medieval robot society.
Can't believe I'm the first to mention it, but I'm probably just old.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Mostly random stuff.