Re: Existential Risk and Fermi's Paradox

From: Kevin Peterson (kevinpet@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Apr 17 2007 - 00:46:42 MDT


On 4/16/07, Jeff Herrlich <jeff_herrlich@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I'm starting to believe more and more, that a very large "fraction" of the
> paradox, is that an evolved intelligence like us is simply extremely rare in
> this Universe.
>

This is my take on Fermi's paradox as well. There doesn't seem to be much
pushing evolution towards intelligence as we have it. If not for the
coincidence of the complex social organization and recent arboreal origin
giving us hands that can use tools, we wouldn't be here. Consider that our
only relatives similar enough to speak of are endangered and we see that
while having, say, agriculture, fire and spears may be a distinct survival
advantage, the precursor to that level of technology/intelligence isn't that
big a deal.

I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out going from amino acids to a
replicator is hard as well. I'm pretty confident that replicator to wide
variety of multi-cellular life is just a matter of waiting a couple billion
years.



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