We’ll never be able to make up for it. But I wouldn’t worry about it anyway, if there was just one hard take-off in the visible universe we should be able to detect it (soon) as it would have transformed entire galaxies and super-clusters if you believe current ideas (even without a hard take-off I guess). But there seems to be nothing, so either technological life is rare (once in the visible universe) or there are other more important risks than paperclipping.
Given that Burning the Cosmic Commons is already portrayed as a risk from uFAI that are paperclipping I don’t think it is unreasonable to ask why we don’t see any effects of such outcomes in the visible universe if the risk of such events is >70% for technological civilisations. I’m just looking for empirical evidence here that might support the conclusions. Of course, it might take one or two decades before we are capable of detecting such anomalies. Still, given the age of the universe you’d expect to see some artifacts if your premise is that technological civilizations haven’t evolved only once in the visible universe. If there are other reasons, then as I said before there might be other risks more important than uFAI to explain the fermi-paradox, which would be an importing observation too.
I don’t think you could see any of those things very easily in other galaxies if they were there. What you can see in other galaxies is chemical compounds—through mass spectroscopy. That shows some of them are rich in “life-like” stuff. Also, there is no shortage of darkish matter out there.
If there’s only one, we could perhaps run away from it at near the speed of light—while developing technologically—and building our strength.
We’ll never be able to make up for it. But I wouldn’t worry about it anyway, if there was just one hard take-off in the visible universe we should be able to detect it (soon) as it would have transformed entire galaxies and super-clusters if you believe current ideas (even without a hard take-off I guess). But there seems to be nothing, so either technological life is rare (once in the visible universe) or there are other more important risks than paperclipping.
How would a hard-takeoff galaxy look different from ordinary galaxies?
Very dim? Or very unusually given paperclipping?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroengineering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megascale_engineering
Given that Burning the Cosmic Commons is already portrayed as a risk from uFAI that are paperclipping I don’t think it is unreasonable to ask why we don’t see any effects of such outcomes in the visible universe if the risk of such events is >70% for technological civilisations. I’m just looking for empirical evidence here that might support the conclusions. Of course, it might take one or two decades before we are capable of detecting such anomalies. Still, given the age of the universe you’d expect to see some artifacts if your premise is that technological civilizations haven’t evolved only once in the visible universe. If there are other reasons, then as I said before there might be other risks more important than uFAI to explain the fermi-paradox, which would be an importing observation too.
I don’t think you could see any of those things very easily in other galaxies if they were there. What you can see in other galaxies is chemical compounds—through mass spectroscopy. That shows some of them are rich in “life-like” stuff. Also, there is no shortage of darkish matter out there.
The Carina Nebula and the Orion Nebula may well be full of advanced life. We don’t really know what that looks like yet, though.