Posted by Bob on 7/27/2007, 12:15 pm, in reply to "Fermi's Paradox, Cosmology, and, Are We Alone?" Those who study the evolution of society include a group known as "trans-humanists." Their basic prediction is that, as technology advances, humans will begin to incorporate technological devices into our own bodies, to augment our abilities. We are already doing this, of course. Eye-glasses and hearing aids, pacemakers and artificial hearts, are just the avant garde of future bio-tech. Eventually, we will incorporate micro-chips into our brains. Digital angel technology (in an advanced form) might link all individuals into one electronic version of the super-ego, a collective persona which we might all share, linking our thoughts and consciousness. Eventually, we will have transformed our own species into something utterly unlike what we are now. This offers a solution to the great problem of the Fermi paradox. If exo-biological theory demands that life in the universe be ubiquitous, and if from that we can postulate that intelligence and technology must also proliferate, then what invariable, universal factor might cause the absence of inter-planetary conquest by any and all extra-terrestrial civilizations? It could be that all technological civilizations inevitably reach a stage where they become non-biological, at least to a large degree. Non-biological intelligences should completely abandon, as a matter of necessity, all the suddenly-obsolete drives and motivations so necessary to biological organisms. Reproduction, expansion, cultural imposition, indeed, even survival itself, might become completely irrelevant to the electro-creature. Even if these drives do not completely disappear, the enhanced intelligence of the new creatures would allow them to recognize the need for self-restraint, while giving them the ability to self-impose such restraint. It is to me a somewhat chilling prospect. But if indeed we are not alone in the universe, there must be a logical explanation as to why we do not detect any non-earthly visitors. The "zoo" explanation (that we are a laboratory under continual monitoring) is plausible, but does not establish a binding universal principle. The tranhumanist hypothesis does.
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In further reading, I came across a possible solution to Fermi's paradox. But it has disturbing elements.
