It would then make sense that, if they were to find a habitable planet, the probes would stick around and monitor things while reporting back to the home planet. Under this theory the probes might avoid contact with humanity while they wait for instructions from the home planet[8] (which could take thousands of years given the distances involved[9]). On the other hand, it’s hard to say why a Superintelligent AI wouldn’t delegate some actions to a self-replicating probe (unless maybe the alignment problem is impossible to solve?) so that counts as some evidence against the hypothesis.
It might also make sense for the probes to behave strangely. After many thousands (or millions) of replications the probes might degrade from their original state and start to malfunction in various ways. The UAPs we see today could be the entropy-riddled craft of very distant civilizations.
Instead of waiting and hiding, they could immediately begin converting the solar system into useful structures such as more probes, Dyson swarms, habitats, etc. Why would they need to await further instructions? With advanced technology they can have entire societies of superintelligent minds living on the probes, plus the home territory that sent the probes will presumably have anticipated various possibilities (and literally experienced many of them in the course of expansion) and based on those simulations + experiences given its probes instructions for how to handle the top billion or so most likely scenarios.
Preventing degradations due to entropy is a pretty solvable problem, I think. Just crank the Redundancy Dial and let the law of large numbers do the rest. Am I being naive here? I’d like to hear more on this. Sure, extra redundancy might slow things down a bit, but probably not much?
I think I agree (somewhat in contrast to what I said in the post) that I would expect vNM probes to take major action on finding a habitable planet. The fact that they are not taking action seems like the most damning critique of the theory.
It does seem like there are plenty of reasons they wouldn’t do something noticeable though. E.g. curiosity about a non-threatening species, ethics, etc. Granted this seems extra unlikely if there are vNM probes from many different civilizations present.
As far as degradations I have no idea… Haven’t though much about it. Seems like redundancy would be very helpful and that it’s a maybe solvable problem but could also imagine it being hard to solve given e.g. lot’s of radiation, many generations, etc.
And there would be vNM probes from many different civilizations present, unless somehow they could coordinate to block others from their territory… all while remaining in hiding...
Relatedly, even if they do await further instructions, why haven’t we been terraformed yet? If awaiting further instructions takes only a thousand years, this theory still predicts with high confidence that either they haven’t arrived yet or they have already terraformed us (and thus, updating on our observed lack of terraforming, they probably haven’t arrived yet.) If it takes a billion years to get further instructions, then OK, but that’s pretty darn implausible for reasons mentioned above.
Also they’d have to await further instructions not just in this star system but in the entire light-cone; they can’t convert Alpha Centauri into a Dyson swarm either because then Earthly astonomers would notice.
I generally agree. Though for what it’s worth it seems like it wouldn’t be hard to block others from the territory while remaining in hiding. Presumably any blocking could take place by intercepting ships well before they reach earth. We would have a very hard time noticing something like that.
Apparently there’s something like 7-8 million stars within 1000 light years so yeah, seems like there could have been some instructions sent. That said maybe life is super rare and only exists in 1 in a billion stars or 1 in a trillion. Then maybe any vNM probe would be coming from 10s of thousands of light years away or something.
Another possibility is that something about technological maturity tends to make species less interested in massive and aggressive expansion and/or species capable of making vNM probes tend to die off or become totally inward facing and/or there’s some intergalactic governance system preventing certain actions by vNM probes.
Overall I agree with it lowering probability for vNM probes on earth but I don’t think this reasoning invalidates the theory
Instead of waiting and hiding, they could immediately begin converting the solar system into useful structures such as more probes, Dyson swarms, habitats, etc. Why would they need to await further instructions? With advanced technology they can have entire societies of superintelligent minds living on the probes, plus the home territory that sent the probes will presumably have anticipated various possibilities (and literally experienced many of them in the course of expansion) and based on those simulations + experiences given its probes instructions for how to handle the top billion or so most likely scenarios.
Preventing degradations due to entropy is a pretty solvable problem, I think. Just crank the Redundancy Dial and let the law of large numbers do the rest. Am I being naive here? I’d like to hear more on this. Sure, extra redundancy might slow things down a bit, but probably not much?
I think I agree (somewhat in contrast to what I said in the post) that I would expect vNM probes to take major action on finding a habitable planet. The fact that they are not taking action seems like the most damning critique of the theory.
It does seem like there are plenty of reasons they wouldn’t do something noticeable though. E.g. curiosity about a non-threatening species, ethics, etc. Granted this seems extra unlikely if there are vNM probes from many different civilizations present.
As far as degradations I have no idea… Haven’t though much about it. Seems like redundancy would be very helpful and that it’s a maybe solvable problem but could also imagine it being hard to solve given e.g. lot’s of radiation, many generations, etc.
And there would be vNM probes from many different civilizations present, unless somehow they could coordinate to block others from their territory… all while remaining in hiding...
Relatedly, even if they do await further instructions, why haven’t we been terraformed yet? If awaiting further instructions takes only a thousand years, this theory still predicts with high confidence that either they haven’t arrived yet or they have already terraformed us (and thus, updating on our observed lack of terraforming, they probably haven’t arrived yet.) If it takes a billion years to get further instructions, then OK, but that’s pretty darn implausible for reasons mentioned above.
Also they’d have to await further instructions not just in this star system but in the entire light-cone; they can’t convert Alpha Centauri into a Dyson swarm either because then Earthly astonomers would notice.
I generally agree. Though for what it’s worth it seems like it wouldn’t be hard to block others from the territory while remaining in hiding. Presumably any blocking could take place by intercepting ships well before they reach earth. We would have a very hard time noticing something like that.
Apparently there’s something like 7-8 million stars within 1000 light years so yeah, seems like there could have been some instructions sent. That said maybe life is super rare and only exists in 1 in a billion stars or 1 in a trillion. Then maybe any vNM probe would be coming from 10s of thousands of light years away or something.
Another possibility is that something about technological maturity tends to make species less interested in massive and aggressive expansion and/or species capable of making vNM probes tend to die off or become totally inward facing and/or there’s some intergalactic governance system preventing certain actions by vNM probes.
Overall I agree with it lowering probability for vNM probes on earth but I don’t think this reasoning invalidates the theory