News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Discovery of peculiar modulations in a small fraction of solar type stars. Parent comment

Re:Discovery of peculiar modulations in a small fraction of ... by brenschluss on Thursday October 20, 2016 @01:40PM (#12754386)
If you use the earth as an analogy: why isn't every island on the earth populated with people, since humans are probes, self-replicating beings that communicate with others?

There's a lot of reasons there. Certain areas are unhabitable, or at least annoying to create a habitat (the arctic tundra, for example). Beings may want to cluster together (cities). There may be no interest in going to one territory over another - why bother spreading to all places, where there's so much out there?

Finally, you could have situations in which a probe or a highly advanced civilization could deliberately not contact a lesser-advanced civilizations. How do we know that we're not the less-advanced civilization? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Discovery of peculiar modulations in a small fraction of ... by rdlecler1 on Thursday October 20, 2016 @02:26PM (#12754862)
Not every island is populated by people, but every island is populated with life. Any kind of self replicated probe should take on similar ubiquity.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Discovery of peculiar modulations in a small fraction of ... by pklausler on Thursday October 20, 2016 @01:44PM (#12754418)
The thing about B-vN probes is that it just takes one.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Discovery of peculiar modulations in a small fraction of ... by disconcision on Thursday October 20, 2016 @04:31PM (#12755884)
I'm not sure how this is a counter to the human analogy? I'm assuming you're assuming probes reproduce and propagate perfectly, but if we assume a 'human reproductive unit' (be it a pregnant individual, a couple, a minimum viable population, whatever) has perfect genetics which can be perfectly replicated, then 'it just takes one' as well. While some sort of b-vn scenario seems plausible, at this point in technological development the practical contingencies of such a scheme are pretty up in the air. I mean, look at it from the other end. If we assume arbitrary technological progress, it's possible probes are everywhere, but we wouldn't even recognize them as technological artifacts if we were starring directly at them.
[ Parent | on HN ]