Actually, I don’t find these conjectures desperate or crazy at all, because it’s what I’d do. Moving off this biological substrate onto something more reliable, hardy, efficient, and copyable seems like a no-brainer level “Good Idea”. If there’s any advanced intelligent life out there at all, one of its highest priorities is going to be finding more durable substrate to live in than sloppy, unoptimized and non-designed biochemistry.
More and more (as we continue to move up the ladder of technological progress) this is seeming like a valid and plausible hypothesis. Which is very disconcerting to me.
Having a dyson-sphere-building alien race right next door would be worrisome, but not having any such civilizations at all? That’s very worrisome, because it means the Great Filter could be waiting for us.
I heard a story about a guy in the UK who has spent a fortune to make his “biological substrate” look like Kim Kardashian’s. Just because humans can think of doing all kinds of things, it doesn’t follow in the least that (1) nonhuman things vaguely analogous to humans exist elsewhere in the universe; and (2) these things would want to do anything to themselves like what you imagine.
Basically this whole ET idea has turned into a waste of time for people who have the IQ’s to do more productive things with their minds. ET’s live beyond our world, they live forever, and they can assume different “substrates.” For a site devoted to exploring cognitive biases, why don’t you explore how this ET fantasy has basically become a replacement for god beliefs rationalists would reject in other contexts?
Actually, I don’t find these conjectures desperate or crazy at all, because it’s what I’d do. Moving off this biological substrate onto something more reliable, hardy, efficient, and copyable seems like a no-brainer level “Good Idea”. If there’s any advanced intelligent life out there at all, one of its highest priorities is going to be finding more durable substrate to live in than sloppy, unoptimized and non-designed biochemistry.
Point is, most likely there aren’t any advanced (that is, starfaring, dysonspherebuilding and so on) civilizations at all.
More and more (as we continue to move up the ladder of technological progress) this is seeming like a valid and plausible hypothesis. Which is very disconcerting to me.
Wouldn’t the opposite be more disconcerting?
Having a dyson-sphere-building alien race right next door would be worrisome, but not having any such civilizations at all? That’s very worrisome, because it means the Great Filter could be waiting for us.
I heard a story about a guy in the UK who has spent a fortune to make his “biological substrate” look like Kim Kardashian’s. Just because humans can think of doing all kinds of things, it doesn’t follow in the least that (1) nonhuman things vaguely analogous to humans exist elsewhere in the universe; and (2) these things would want to do anything to themselves like what you imagine.
Basically this whole ET idea has turned into a waste of time for people who have the IQ’s to do more productive things with their minds. ET’s live beyond our world, they live forever, and they can assume different “substrates.” For a site devoted to exploring cognitive biases, why don’t you explore how this ET fantasy has basically become a replacement for god beliefs rationalists would reject in other contexts?