Could Earth be the only planet with intelligent life?

Re:Could Earth be the only planet with intelligent life? by ianai on Saturday October 07, 2023 @01:57PM (#37803976)

There doesn't need to be a why. With the time scales involved one successful Von Neumann probe civilization would quickly (at time scales of the universe) take over everything. That we don’t seem to see that is suggestive-either there’s no one else or there's a very strong, effective galactic or universal ban on VN probes.

This somewhat suggests or relies on humans not being uniquely territorial and resource hungry.

Kind of like the saying that if you see one cockroach you have many, many cockroaches.

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Re:Could Earth be the only planet with intelligent life? by qayxc on Saturday October 07, 2023 @02:51PM (#37804425)

Why doesn't there need to be a why? Outside of art (and even there I'm not sure), there's always a reason - especially if we are talking about an advanced civilisation. There's also no reason to believe this hasn't happened:

1) Galaxies far away are also far back in time - they could all be Dyson-sphered by now and we would be able to know for millions or billions years.

2) This also might have happened elsewhere - we have no means of detecting what's going on in nearby galaxy clusters, or even within our own Milky Way really.

3) In this line of thinking, alien civilisations are always a walking oxymoron or paradox themselves: so they are super-advanced, yet have to be detectable, and they think like us but also don't, because they know about the consequences but don't care about them. They also act without reason but at the same time with purpose. And they are superlong lived (or their machines are) yet feel the need to breed at insane levels to settle entire galaxies because of... of the resources they actually don't need if they wouldn't expand like crazy? - but wait, you said there is no reason - ah my head's spinning :)

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