Where lies the great filter, i.e., the obstacles that make it extremely unlikely that any one chunk of pre-organic matter originates a visibly expanding interstellar civilization? While it seems unlikely
If life can so easily spread between stars, then it should have no trouble at all going from planet to planet. By this logic, our own Solar System ought to be teeming with Earth-descended life. Yet we see no sign that this is the case. Granted, our explorations have been limited so far, but we have yet to find the slightest hint of life on any other planet or moon in the Solar System.
The obvious conclusion is that panspermia is much harder than you make it out to be. Abiogenesis remains a plausible candidate for the Filter.
I am quite sure that the entire idea of a hyper strong AI that can increase its own intelligence and so become exponentially more intelligent is wrong. The problem isn't that electronic systems can't support intelligence, I am quite sure that they can. The problem is how does the AI recognize an intelligence greater than its own and then adopt changes to produce such an intelligence?
The only way to recognize something is via pattern recognition. To recognize a pattern, a pattern recognition system must have a facsimile of that pattern to compare against. How can an AI tell that parameters that do not map onto its existing intelligence facsimile are superior intelligence and are not madness? I don't think there is any way to distinguish between them, even in principle.
I am not worried about existential threats to future human interstellar civilizations. I am worried about existential threats right now, global warming being a gigantic one, environmental endocrine and genome disrupting chemicals is another, global conflict due to mass starvation is another. The reason all of these problems are happening is because individuals prioritize their own wants ahead of other peoples needs, and enormously prioritize those wants against the needs of future generations.
They are prioritizing their wants ahead of solving human race existential threats. In any kind of competition, the group that devotes zero effort to solving human race existential threats will have an advantage over those who devote some effort. The easiest way to ignore existential threats is to be unable to perceive them. Then, being ignorant of existential threats makes one a superior competitor to those who are aware of existential threats. Unless we find some way to change that dynamic, those who are unaware or choose to ignore existential threats will be the most successful, and so will be those at the top in charge of any top-down power structure. Looking at current politics I am not encouraged.
I gave some more thought to the possibility of a "mind collective" singleton that is as non-totalitarian as possible (with regards to personal freedoms) while enforcing the rules and control necessary to prevent the ramifications of open evolution.
Imagine a world in which people's minds are connected to each other and to the internet at all times for coordination and communication purposes. Add to this biological immortality and safety back-ups of each person's connectome. In such a world, everyone would have a potentially unlimited personal life span and therefore a strong self-interest in creating and maintaining a peaceful, sustainable world.
Reproduction would no longer be necessary to maintain population - it would only be needed to replace lives that decide to end their existence or that happen to be completely destroyed by accidents (including backup). Additional reproduction could be used to expand population to whatever limit will be sustainable, but this could be done as a collective decision, not as a decision of individuals like today (hence no selection pressure of individuals to reproduce).
Traditional families and their generations would be replaced by a global collective of immortal individuals deciding what number of additional immortal individuals should come into the world. Defectors to such rules would be detected quickly (due to global integration and communication of all minds) and punished accordingly.
Uploads, dangerous AI projects or other existential threats could be outlawed. Alternatively, existing persons could upload, but copies of uploads would be outlawed unless the collective decides to allow a given number of them. People (or ems) who prefer to reproduce could be given the option to concede biological immortality and\or accept scheduled death to keep population stable and prevent selection pressure.
Alternatively, the nature of reproduced individuals could be influenced by the collective so that no selection pressure results in undesirable evolutionary paths (from the collective's perspective). Population numbers could end up lower, or significantly higher than today while sustainability and evolutionary stability is guaranteed. Memetic evolution would run slower due to longevity (no generational shifts).
At the same time, all existing persons could enjoy strongly enforced personal rights and proper above-subsistence lifestyles. Digital post-scarcity could provide an abundance of VR experiences and other types of creative work whose creation does not rely on wages because people have free time on their hands and the products can be copied without incremental costs.
This scenario is still improbable given how different people's world views and preferences are currently. But imagine the memetic drive for convergence in a globally connected world like this, combined with the self-interest of immortal individuals for sustainability and security. Collective personal self-interest has always gone a long way, and this could be the key to enforce the rudimentary ground rules to prevent undesirable evolutionary shifts, wars, bioterrorism etc. in a world of globally connected immortals.
tl;dr: If everybody's immortal and globally connected, maybe there can be the democratic decision to centrally plan and control reproduction, and therefore keep darwinian dynamics in check.
daedalus2u, I acknowledge all the problems you describe. By "quality control" of minds, I meant something like telepathy implants + a metric to measure well-being, request immediate help, cognitive pain relieve, fix mental disorders etc.
But you're right, due to the top-down approach, and due to the darwinian nature of memetics, mind control would probably involve thought control too at some point. OTOH, the singleton would still need to be a very complex functional decision-maker, and without singular super-AI, that would require the global collective of transhuman minds to think rationally (and "slave hive" collectives aren't rational decision-makers).
Despite the critical points you raise about this scenario, it seems all possible alternatives are equally gloomy. Roughly, I see only these three:
1) Singleton, then controlled evolution (Inefficient, existential risk in building it, essentially totalitarian in nature)2) Open darwinism (Unpredictable outcomes, high expected value of suffering, torture, wars, massive desire frustration, "race to the bottom" dynamics; only with gradients solution as improbable, but possible remedy)3) Collapse/extinction.
Now calculate expected ethical value. There is no really good solution that I can see. If you can point me to one, I'm very interested.
If a civilization such as you describe, with “controlled evolution” were to meet a “wild-type” civilization (such as ours), their only recourse would be to destroy and sterilize it. That is the only approach such a civilization can have to things that it does not understand and which it does not control. That is exactly what xenophobia is, the compulsion to hate and destroy that which one does not understand and what one does not control.
I don't think that many humans today would allow that sort of control, i.e. would voluntarily submit themselves to it. To institute that type of control, those individuals would have to be destroyed first. How are the initial stages of that transformation distinguishable from any other form of absolute life or death dictatorial centralized control?
What would compel those who first institute the destruction of those who would not submit to the “quality-control of all sentient minds” (i.e. mind control far beyond what 1984 and Brave New World ever imagined) to submit to it themselves? In other words, once they have mind control over everyone else, why would they surrender themselves to mind control?
The problem is in a top-down control scheme. Every top-down control scheme has to prioritize its own survival over all other things. It has to destroy what ever it does not understand because what is not understood might be or become an existential threat.
Very much agreed - we certainly need some form of control to avoid a "race to the bottom", to avoid a malthusian dystopia - particularly if ems are developed, and the timescale for selection abruptly drops from decades to minutes.
Controlled evolution is probably the most likely solution to this type of problem, starting with a singleton on earth which cares about the utility function of all sentient life. Interstellar colonization is undertaken only if it can be designed so that free evolution is impossible.
This can be done by creating colonziation systems such as self-replicating spacecraft in a way that effectively prevents spontaneous mutation. Colonization would then follow a coordinated long-term plan that focuses on keeping peace and quality-control of all existing sentient life. Xenophobia and free random speciation would not be factors in such a plan.
Similarly, the singleton could control evolution on earth in order to minimize suffering and prevent a hedonistic "race to the bottom". Such a singleton could come about via integration of human brains and specialized AI modules through wireless communication implants connecting to an enhanced version of the internet, enabling extremely efficient global coordination, quality-control of all sentient minds, sustainable management of the ecosphere (without wildlife suffering), control of populations and genomes, longevity and universal basic rights of all existing persons, and complete global transparency of all agency to prevent effective attempts to undermine the system.
I would expect such an approach to be less efficient than open darwinian evolution in terms of growth and resource efficiency, but far preferable from an ethical hedonistic perspective, especially in the long run.
To produce a galaxy spanning civilization, the problem of xenophobia has to be solved. Unless it is, then as populations on different planets genetically drift apart (as they must), and they become different species, they will exhibit xenophobia and make genocidal war on each other.
It only takes one new species exhibiting genocidal xenophobia to wipe out all the non-xenophobic species. Then as that xenophobic species drifts and forms new species, some of them will be xenophobic too.
The patriarchal alpha male phenotype has to express the equivalent of xenophobia to be able to compete against other males for females (or for anything). The alpha male has to take resources for himself and deny them to other males or he isn't the alpha male. When those taken resources are used to take and maintain more resources, the alpha male has to exhibit xenophobia to deny resources to others because those resources might be used against him.
If we do find a galaxy spanning civilization, it won't be a patriarchy, or any other kind of oligarchy. Unless we find a way to permanently and irreversibly shape human society into a non-oligarchy, we will filter ourselves out.
Another point that's typically neglected in discussion of this topic is the opportunity costs of very advanced beings. E.g., "Advanced races could re-configure the galaxies themselves. Why don't we observe that?" (How do we know we're not observing it, for one thing?) But suppose a civilization is so advanced that it could reshape its home galaxy. Yeah, but there are other uses of their resources that might be much better, precisely because they're so advanced.
Suppose I have the technological capacity to turn a desert into a forest in 10 years. But what if I can simply reconfigure myself so that I'm perfectly suited for a desert in 1 day?
Analogously, expending time and other resources reshaping galaxies is not necessarily worthwhile for a very advanced civilization with tons of other options.
Another point to keep in mind: Even assuming that we could identify intelligent life if we saw it, we can't actually say there is no intelligent life in the universe now. Rather, given the lightspeed lag with which we observe the distant universe, we must say there was no intelligent life as of X years ago.
E.g., if we're observing a galaxy 100 million light years away, we can only say there was no intelligent life there as of 100 million years ago. Maybe right now it's got intelligent life up the wazoo.
How probable is a eukaryote that can survive (perhaps dormant) a transplanetary or interstellar journey?
If it's non-negligible then this doesn't explain the radio silence as you still get panspermia and almost no filters preventing development of civilization.
That is unless you assume the Earth is singular...which leads to sort of empty arguments.
The evolution of the Eukaryote is probably such a single, rare event that it only happened once in the Milky Way. That's us. Then, it takes the Eukaryote to make enough Oxygen in the atmosphere such that we can breath it. Prokaryotes can't do this.
Even if we get the FTL or wormholes, we still have to terraform whatever planets we go to out there so that we can live on them and relax on the beaches without having to use breathing gear just like someone with COPD.
I really hope I'm wrong. Not because I like aliens (I don't), but because I want to get the hell out of here and I would like some decent place to go to.
My ideal universe is where there's lots of Earth-like planets (ones that I can actually breath the air and hang out on the beach) but where there are no intelligent aliens. I want the galaxy for myself and the rest of you.
Hamilton's commonwealth (Pandora's Star, Judas Unchained), but without the aliens, is my ideal universe.
if multi-cellularity arose many times on Earth, then if there is a big associated filter it would have to be regarding a particular kind of multi-cellularity, e.g., animals.
The serious points behind my joke about leprechauns are that these "ETI are common but cleverly hiding" theories are (1) extremely unlikely because they assume each of billions or trillions of replicating entities in billions or trillions of civilizations in the galaxies we can do detailed spectroscopy of move in lock-step, all of them hiding and none of them either shouting or expanding in Malthusian fashion in the visible universe, thus never producing any widespread surfaces or radiation transmissions with starkly artificial spectra, and worse (2) they are unfalsifiable. Your basement universe example introduces a third problem, namely that imaginative physics can explain away anything.
But let's focus on the first two problems which occur whether the physics is imaginative or otherwise. Why has absolutely no leprechaun ever rebelled and revealed himself and offered some poor human some gold from his pot? Why would absolutely no ETI ever start replicating in Malthusian fashion or shouting in a very visible way across the universe (very, very easy to do even at intergalactic distances)? The aliens may have such amazing technologies or be so "progressive" by some ideological definition that they all either choose (in contrast to all known life forms until at least the 19th century) not to expand in Malthusian fashion, or they can (through imaginative physics) expand their civilization in Malthusian fashion and still remain hidden. These theories require that every single subgroup chooses the same clever hiding approach in lock-step. Thus is the fabulous theory of common ETI (or of leprechauns right here on earth) be kept alive because it's impossible to do any experiment that would show it to be wrong. Occam and Popper caution us to put far greater weight on the much simpler and falsifiable theory to explain the lack of engineered galactic surfaces: that ETI are extremely rare (far less than one per galaxy) or absent from the universe.
If life can so easily spread between stars, then it should have no trouble at all going from planet to planet. By this logic, our own Solar System ought to be teeming with Earth-descended life. Yet we see no sign that this is the case. Granted, our explorations have been limited so far, but we have yet to find the slightest hint of life on any other planet or moon in the Solar System.
The obvious conclusion is that panspermia is much harder than you make it out to be. Abiogenesis remains a plausible candidate for the Filter.
People who become addicted to drugs usually initially choose to take them. Watch out! That's what i want to say here.
I am quite sure that the entire idea of a hyper strong AI that can increase its own intelligence and so become exponentially more intelligent is wrong. The problem isn't that electronic systems can't support intelligence, I am quite sure that they can. The problem is how does the AI recognize an intelligence greater than its own and then adopt changes to produce such an intelligence?
The only way to recognize something is via pattern recognition. To recognize a pattern, a pattern recognition system must have a facsimile of that pattern to compare against. How can an AI tell that parameters that do not map onto its existing intelligence facsimile are superior intelligence and are not madness? I don't think there is any way to distinguish between them, even in principle.
I am not worried about existential threats to future human interstellar civilizations. I am worried about existential threats right now, global warming being a gigantic one, environmental endocrine and genome disrupting chemicals is another, global conflict due to mass starvation is another. The reason all of these problems are happening is because individuals prioritize their own wants ahead of other peoples needs, and enormously prioritize those wants against the needs of future generations.
They are prioritizing their wants ahead of solving human race existential threats. In any kind of competition, the group that devotes zero effort to solving human race existential threats will have an advantage over those who devote some effort. The easiest way to ignore existential threats is to be unable to perceive them. Then, being ignorant of existential threats makes one a superior competitor to those who are aware of existential threats. Unless we find some way to change that dynamic, those who are unaware or choose to ignore existential threats will be the most successful, and so will be those at the top in charge of any top-down power structure. Looking at current politics I am not encouraged.
I gave some more thought to the possibility of a "mind collective" singleton that is as non-totalitarian as possible (with regards to personal freedoms) while enforcing the rules and control necessary to prevent the ramifications of open evolution.
Imagine a world in which people's minds are connected to each other and to the internet at all times for coordination and communication purposes. Add to this biological immortality and safety back-ups of each person's connectome. In such a world, everyone would have a potentially unlimited personal life span and therefore a strong self-interest in creating and maintaining a peaceful, sustainable world.
Reproduction would no longer be necessary to maintain population - it would only be needed to replace lives that decide to end their existence or that happen to be completely destroyed by accidents (including backup). Additional reproduction could be used to expand population to whatever limit will be sustainable, but this could be done as a collective decision, not as a decision of individuals like today (hence no selection pressure of individuals to reproduce).
Traditional families and their generations would be replaced by a global collective of immortal individuals deciding what number of additional immortal individuals should come into the world. Defectors to such rules would be detected quickly (due to global integration and communication of all minds) and punished accordingly.
Uploads, dangerous AI projects or other existential threats could be outlawed. Alternatively, existing persons could upload, but copies of uploads would be outlawed unless the collective decides to allow a given number of them. People (or ems) who prefer to reproduce could be given the option to concede biological immortality and\or accept scheduled death to keep population stable and prevent selection pressure.
Alternatively, the nature of reproduced individuals could be influenced by the collective so that no selection pressure results in undesirable evolutionary paths (from the collective's perspective). Population numbers could end up lower, or significantly higher than today while sustainability and evolutionary stability is guaranteed. Memetic evolution would run slower due to longevity (no generational shifts).
At the same time, all existing persons could enjoy strongly enforced personal rights and proper above-subsistence lifestyles. Digital post-scarcity could provide an abundance of VR experiences and other types of creative work whose creation does not rely on wages because people have free time on their hands and the products can be copied without incremental costs.
This scenario is still improbable given how different people's world views and preferences are currently. But imagine the memetic drive for convergence in a globally connected world like this, combined with the self-interest of immortal individuals for sustainability and security. Collective personal self-interest has always gone a long way, and this could be the key to enforce the rudimentary ground rules to prevent undesirable evolutionary shifts, wars, bioterrorism etc. in a world of globally connected immortals.
tl;dr: If everybody's immortal and globally connected, maybe there can be the democratic decision to centrally plan and control reproduction, and therefore keep darwinian dynamics in check.
daedalus2u, I acknowledge all the problems you describe. By "quality control" of minds, I meant something like telepathy implants + a metric to measure well-being, request immediate help, cognitive pain relieve, fix mental disorders etc.
But you're right, due to the top-down approach, and due to the darwinian nature of memetics, mind control would probably involve thought control too at some point. OTOH, the singleton would still need to be a very complex functional decision-maker, and without singular super-AI, that would require the global collective of transhuman minds to think rationally (and "slave hive" collectives aren't rational decision-makers).
Despite the critical points you raise about this scenario, it seems all possible alternatives are equally gloomy. Roughly, I see only these three:
1) Singleton, then controlled evolution (Inefficient, existential risk in building it, essentially totalitarian in nature)2) Open darwinism (Unpredictable outcomes, high expected value of suffering, torture, wars, massive desire frustration, "race to the bottom" dynamics; only with gradients solution as improbable, but possible remedy)3) Collapse/extinction.
Now calculate expected ethical value. There is no really good solution that I can see. If you can point me to one, I'm very interested.
If a civilization such as you describe, with “controlled evolution” were to meet a “wild-type” civilization (such as ours), their only recourse would be to destroy and sterilize it. That is the only approach such a civilization can have to things that it does not understand and which it does not control. That is exactly what xenophobia is, the compulsion to hate and destroy that which one does not understand and what one does not control.
I don't think that many humans today would allow that sort of control, i.e. would voluntarily submit themselves to it. To institute that type of control, those individuals would have to be destroyed first. How are the initial stages of that transformation distinguishable from any other form of absolute life or death dictatorial centralized control?
What would compel those who first institute the destruction of those who would not submit to the “quality-control of all sentient minds” (i.e. mind control far beyond what 1984 and Brave New World ever imagined) to submit to it themselves? In other words, once they have mind control over everyone else, why would they surrender themselves to mind control?
The problem is in a top-down control scheme. Every top-down control scheme has to prioritize its own survival over all other things. It has to destroy what ever it does not understand because what is not understood might be or become an existential threat.
Very much agreed - we certainly need some form of control to avoid a "race to the bottom", to avoid a malthusian dystopia - particularly if ems are developed, and the timescale for selection abruptly drops from decades to minutes.
Controlled evolution is probably the most likely solution to this type of problem, starting with a singleton on earth which cares about the utility function of all sentient life. Interstellar colonization is undertaken only if it can be designed so that free evolution is impossible.
This can be done by creating colonziation systems such as self-replicating spacecraft in a way that effectively prevents spontaneous mutation. Colonization would then follow a coordinated long-term plan that focuses on keeping peace and quality-control of all existing sentient life. Xenophobia and free random speciation would not be factors in such a plan.
Similarly, the singleton could control evolution on earth in order to minimize suffering and prevent a hedonistic "race to the bottom". Such a singleton could come about via integration of human brains and specialized AI modules through wireless communication implants connecting to an enhanced version of the internet, enabling extremely efficient global coordination, quality-control of all sentient minds, sustainable management of the ecosphere (without wildlife suffering), control of populations and genomes, longevity and universal basic rights of all existing persons, and complete global transparency of all agency to prevent effective attempts to undermine the system.
I would expect such an approach to be less efficient than open darwinian evolution in terms of growth and resource efficiency, but far preferable from an ethical hedonistic perspective, especially in the long run.
The great filter is ahead of us.
To produce a galaxy spanning civilization, the problem of xenophobia has to be solved. Unless it is, then as populations on different planets genetically drift apart (as they must), and they become different species, they will exhibit xenophobia and make genocidal war on each other.
It only takes one new species exhibiting genocidal xenophobia to wipe out all the non-xenophobic species. Then as that xenophobic species drifts and forms new species, some of them will be xenophobic too.
The patriarchal alpha male phenotype has to express the equivalent of xenophobia to be able to compete against other males for females (or for anything). The alpha male has to take resources for himself and deny them to other males or he isn't the alpha male. When those taken resources are used to take and maintain more resources, the alpha male has to exhibit xenophobia to deny resources to others because those resources might be used against him.
If we do find a galaxy spanning civilization, it won't be a patriarchy, or any other kind of oligarchy. Unless we find a way to permanently and irreversibly shape human society into a non-oligarchy, we will filter ourselves out.
Another point that's typically neglected in discussion of this topic is the opportunity costs of very advanced beings. E.g., "Advanced races could re-configure the galaxies themselves. Why don't we observe that?" (How do we know we're not observing it, for one thing?) But suppose a civilization is so advanced that it could reshape its home galaxy. Yeah, but there are other uses of their resources that might be much better, precisely because they're so advanced.
Suppose I have the technological capacity to turn a desert into a forest in 10 years. But what if I can simply reconfigure myself so that I'm perfectly suited for a desert in 1 day?
Analogously, expending time and other resources reshaping galaxies is not necessarily worthwhile for a very advanced civilization with tons of other options.
Another point to keep in mind: Even assuming that we could identify intelligent life if we saw it, we can't actually say there is no intelligent life in the universe now. Rather, given the lightspeed lag with which we observe the distant universe, we must say there was no intelligent life as of X years ago.
E.g., if we're observing a galaxy 100 million light years away, we can only say there was no intelligent life there as of 100 million years ago. Maybe right now it's got intelligent life up the wazoo.
How probable is a eukaryote that can survive (perhaps dormant) a transplanetary or interstellar journey?
If it's non-negligible then this doesn't explain the radio silence as you still get panspermia and almost no filters preventing development of civilization.
That is unless you assume the Earth is singular...which leads to sort of empty arguments.
Guys, you want a "great filter"? I'll give you one.
Here's mine:
http://www.astrobio.net/pre...
http://sites.bio.indiana.ed...
Read them carefully.
The evolution of the Eukaryote is probably such a single, rare event that it only happened once in the Milky Way. That's us. Then, it takes the Eukaryote to make enough Oxygen in the atmosphere such that we can breath it. Prokaryotes can't do this.
Even if we get the FTL or wormholes, we still have to terraform whatever planets we go to out there so that we can live on them and relax on the beaches without having to use breathing gear just like someone with COPD.
I really hope I'm wrong. Not because I like aliens (I don't), but because I want to get the hell out of here and I would like some decent place to go to.
My ideal universe is where there's lots of Earth-like planets (ones that I can actually breath the air and hang out on the beach) but where there are no intelligent aliens. I want the galaxy for myself and the rest of you.
Hamilton's commonwealth (Pandora's Star, Judas Unchained), but without the aliens, is my ideal universe.
if multi-cellularity arose many times on Earth, then if there is a big associated filter it would have to be regarding a particular kind of multi-cellularity, e.g., animals.
Not so, mitochondria are critical for efficient energy production in complex life:
http://www.newscientist.com...
The serious points behind my joke about leprechauns are that these "ETI are common but cleverly hiding" theories are (1) extremely unlikely because they assume each of billions or trillions of replicating entities in billions or trillions of civilizations in the galaxies we can do detailed spectroscopy of move in lock-step, all of them hiding and none of them either shouting or expanding in Malthusian fashion in the visible universe, thus never producing any widespread surfaces or radiation transmissions with starkly artificial spectra, and worse (2) they are unfalsifiable. Your basement universe example introduces a third problem, namely that imaginative physics can explain away anything.
But let's focus on the first two problems which occur whether the physics is imaginative or otherwise. Why has absolutely no leprechaun ever rebelled and revealed himself and offered some poor human some gold from his pot? Why would absolutely no ETI ever start replicating in Malthusian fashion or shouting in a very visible way across the universe (very, very easy to do even at intergalactic distances)? The aliens may have such amazing technologies or be so "progressive" by some ideological definition that they all either choose (in contrast to all known life forms until at least the 19th century) not to expand in Malthusian fashion, or they can (through imaginative physics) expand their civilization in Malthusian fashion and still remain hidden. These theories require that every single subgroup chooses the same clever hiding approach in lock-step. Thus is the fabulous theory of common ETI (or of leprechauns right here on earth) be kept alive because it's impossible to do any experiment that would show it to be wrong. Occam and Popper caution us to put far greater weight on the much simpler and falsifiable theory to explain the lack of engineered galactic surfaces: that ETI are extremely rare (far less than one per galaxy) or absent from the universe.