I don’t expect humanity to ever encounter any aliens—I would guess that the explanation for the Fermi Paradox is that life is rare, but I can easily see how a civilization built out of colliding values could continue to occupy the fun border between complexity and chaos. If one of the contributing species valued that sort of thing, and the others didn’t object.
It could be the case that civilization always goes down something like the super happy route, but without such rationality. So rather than getting disappointed about not achieving space travel, they just turn off such disappointment. There would be no reason for ambition, you can just give yourself the feeling of satisfied ambition without actually achieving anything. Once you have access to your own source code, perhaps thing always end up that way.
No. I personally exhibit a viable human idiogenetic strain which places no value on comfort or pleasure as end-goals—a living counterexample. I try to adhere to the essence of the dictum of life as closely as possible; survive and explore. I’d expect that to be a more enduring invariant shared by distinct lineages than a fear of pain.
Though if humanity were a species for which our agents truly couldn’t resist merging thoughts in every moment- and we very nearly are- I wouldn’t exist. But that still only speaks of humanity.
I don’t expect humanity to ever encounter any aliens—I would guess that the explanation for the Fermi Paradox is that life is rare, but I can easily see how a civilization built out of colliding values could continue to occupy the fun border between complexity and chaos. If one of the contributing species valued that sort of thing, and the others didn’t object.
It could be the case that civilization always goes down something like the super happy route, but without such rationality. So rather than getting disappointed about not achieving space travel, they just turn off such disappointment. There would be no reason for ambition, you can just give yourself the feeling of satisfied ambition without actually achieving anything. Once you have access to your own source code, perhaps thing always end up that way.
No. I personally exhibit a viable human idiogenetic strain which places no value on comfort or pleasure as end-goals—a living counterexample. I try to adhere to the essence of the dictum of life as closely as possible; survive and explore. I’d expect that to be a more enduring invariant shared by distinct lineages than a fear of pain.
Though if humanity were a species for which our agents truly couldn’t resist merging thoughts in every moment- and we very nearly are- I wouldn’t exist. But that still only speaks of humanity.