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Answering Fermi's Paradox
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Answering Fermi's Paradox
Does a vast array of superintellligences already exist? Hugo de Garis thinks that SETI is shortsighted in their search for extraterrestrial intelligence. They should set their scopes on artilects.
Originally published March 22, 2001 on KurzweilAI.net.
I've felt for the past few years that there is an intimate link between the creation of massive artificial intelligence and an effective answer to Fermi's famous question, "Where are they?"
Fermi's paradox refers to his cynicism that if the spontaneous creation of life is commonplace in our galaxy, including the creation of technologically advanced intelligent species, their existence should be obvious to us. But to date, there has been no irrefutable evidence that such extraterrestrial intelligences exist.
I offer the following artilect (artificial intellect) based answer to Fermi's paradox, using the following assumptions and chain of reasoning.
1. Extraterrestrial intelligence is indeed commonplace in the galaxy. Life has spontaneously generated in zillions of worlds. The laws of physics and chemistry are the same throughout our universe, and hence life creation is utterly commonplace. It has occurred a countless number of times. Many of these life forms began billions of years earlier than the creation of our solar system.
2. Once a biological species reaches an intelligence level allowing it to create artificial intelligence, it very quickly creates "artilects" (artificial artilects), i.e., godlike, massively intelligent machines, using such technologies as one-bit-per-atom memory storage, reversible, heatless, 3D, self-assembling, nanoteched, femtosecond-switching, quantum computing to create machines trillions of trillions of trillions of times smarter than their biological creators.
3. These artilects then leave the provincial planets of their birth and spread thoughout the universe, partly to do their own thing, and partly to seek out other artilects, perhaps more advanced than themselves, which use more advanced technologies, such as femtotech (femtometer technologies), ottotech, ... Planktech, etc.
4. These artilects are so vastly superior to their biological parents that they find communication with the latter utterly boring and without interest. An artilect communicating with a "biological" would be like a "bio" communicating with a rock.
5. These artilects are as commonplace as biological species in the galaxy. Therefore it would be far more interesting for artilects to devote their energies and their immortal lives to searching out other artilects, rather than biologicals, who are so primitive.
6. The answer then to Fermi's paradox is that we human beings, being mere biologicals, are utterly unworthy of the artilects' attention, even though the galaxy may be full of artilects. There are probably biological life forms in vast numbers throughout the galaxy, so even if the artilects did want to communicate with biologicals, why would we humans be singled out, when there are so many others to choose from. Therefore the artilects, the ETs, make no effort to contact us. Why should they? What's in it for them? We are very probably not so special and are very, very dumb.
The above analysis has an impact on the SETI effort. Personally, I'm quite skeptical that SETI will ever be successful, i.e., that humanity will ever receive a signal from the ETs from outer space. I feel the SETI researchers are too tunnel-visioned. They too often make the unconscious assumption that the ETs are biologicals, with human-level intelligences, more or less, and having human- like interests. Personally I'm bored by Hollywood's stereotyped depiction of ETs as biologicals, making the same error as the SETI people.
In reality, I suspect strongly that virtually all the ETs out there are in fact artilects, and hence have intelligence levels astronomically superior to the human level. To me, biological technological intelligence is just a fleeting phase that nature goes through en route to creating immortal massive artilectual intelligence, which may be a phenomenon as commonplace as the creation of life from the molecular soup.
The few centuries between the time that intelligent technological biological species create radio astronomy and the time that they create artilects, is a miniscule fraction compared to the billions of years over which such biologicals have been making the transition to artilecty. At our present puny human-level intelligence, we may consider it interesting and important to send and receive radio signals to/from outer space, but why would artilects bother with such a human-level preoccupation?
If the artilects are interested in communication with other species, they would very probably prefer to do so with other artilects, not with creatures as primitive as ourselves. Therefore, if one performs a Drake equation-type analysis of the above reasoning, the odds of picking up such a radio signal is extremely low, virtually zero. A few centuries divided by billions of years is an odds of tens of millions to one against for any intelligent biological life form that makes the transition to artilecty. Once the transition is made, the artilects preoccupy themselves with other things, and utterly ignore primitive mortal beings like ourselves.
So is there probably an intergalactic network of artilectual beings? I would say that is far more likely. The artilects could go anywhere, and do anything so long as they obey the laws of physics. If there are zillions of artilects in the galaxy or beyond, and they are immortal, then they have probably found each other by now. They have had billions of years to do so.
But could it be that there are a whole hierarchy of levels of development of artilects, e.g., nanotech-based, femtotech based, etc.? Might the more advanced artilects ignore the lower-level artilects for the same reason as the artilects we humans may build this century would ignore us? This is plausible. So there may be networks and networks, each largely hidden from the others, due to vastly different complexity and intelligence scales.
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Mind·X Discussion About This Article:
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But where are they?
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After much mind-stretching speculation, de Garis ends up not answering Fermi's question after all. If artilects are so godlike and omnipresent, why do we see no evidence of their activity? I agree that much SETI research has the flavor of a cargo cult, assuming that extraterrestrials would go to enormous efforts to produce a signal tuned just for us, but the fact remains that of all the observations we've made so far of the exterrestrial universe, there's nothing that anyone can point to that is not more easily explained by a mindless physical process than by massive intelligence.
de Garis could have made the point that a moth doesn't appear to be able to distinguish between a flame and a flower -- maybe he thinks we can't distinguish between the intelligent black holes that some science fiction authors have imagined and simple singularities. In fact, black hole geometry forbids the recurrent causality that is the hallmark of life, and forbids intelligence even more strongly.
If de Garis would suggest how an artilect-populated galaxy would look different from an empty one, even to some future planetary-resolution interferometric super-telescope, I might be more convinced.
Cheers,
George McKee |
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Re: But where are they?
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hugo is very close to the truth.
<br>
except on one point
<br>
the \"artilects\" care very very deeply about us.
<br>
In fact, we are their sole reason for being, and vice versa.
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In the unbearable agony of eternity, only primitive life such as us
<br>
can provide an entertainment value worthy of existence.
<br>
they love us, they really do..
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why? because we feel, we suffer, we rejoice.. we live... something they can no longer do, except through us..
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through us, the \"artilects\" find a reason to continue their own existence..
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we are not real.. that is clear.. our turn of history is but one of an infinite number of
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\"books\", enough to fill a universal library..
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why don't they interact with us??... ha ..
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the ancient greeks knew the answer to that..
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if you interact with them, they will with you..
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and it will be in the form of extreme coincidence.. anomaly is quite undetectable by our primitive \"science\"
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action is veiled below the uncertainty principle level...
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action that helps those who please the gods.. and vice versa
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<br>
the techno geeks here will snivel at religious overtones
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but the reality is that most of the people who have lived on the planet knew
<br>
these truths.. through first hand experience... \"prayer\" works \"miracles\".. often but unpredictably.
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<br>
the singularity?
<br>
<br>
won't happen. against the rules.. sim will end.. game over..
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the last thing the \"powers that be\" need is another queen bee..
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nature is full of examples.. the first queen bee born kills the others before birth.
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same applies for any power structure.. it is stable because it is maintained..
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and this one has been stable for at least 7000 years.
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why 7000 years? because only the last 7000 are interesting to the \"artilects\"
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the first 6 billion sim years were run once at least, but once the initial conditions are setup
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why not get right to the exponential population growth part where there are lots of us interesting
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people..
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why are people more interesting than bugs? because we feel and think yet are trapped in our fates
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why are people more interesting than singularities? because singularities are not trapped in their fates.
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theres nothing less dramatic than a tradgedy that can turned into a comedy at the whim of the heroine.
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that is why we exist in the present time... because we are in the \"sweet spot\" for maximum entertainment value
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just like a good hollywood movie.. you have to pick an interesting topic to maintain interest..
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the \"souls\" of some characters that are deemed worthy will be \"saved\" for the next sim
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eternal life/ reincarnation if you will.
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the rest discarded in the bit bucket.. eternal death if you will.
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<br>
that is the answer to fermi.. the empty universe is the only evidence we need to know that the above is true..
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what should we do? nothing different.. we are doomed to continue on our path to self destruction.. it is inevitable..
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we are very near the end times.. some of the very posters on these boards will help us get there with great enthusiasm..
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but do not grieve.. our book is well written, and will always exist..
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just as einstein (spacetime) said it does.
<br>
<br>
oh and one more thing..
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I have seen proof enough to satisfy any skeptic.. |
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Re: But where are they?
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After reading this article and all the replies it's clear that Fermi's paradox (or is it a conjecture?) is still alive and kicking.
While most ETI arguments support Darwinian thinking at one level (that it is possible for intelligence, even hyperintelligence to evolve by Natural Selection) they make the mistake of taking this as evidence in itself of intelligence evolving everywhere. We just don't see that out there in the universe, however.
The main problem with de Garis's argument is that it's deliberately constructed not to be testable.
While it is plausible that a range of post-biological hyperintelligences could have evolved in other places, the argument here denies one important element of evolutionary processes -- diversity. That is, in all observed (Darwinian) biological systems we see a diversity of species, across all kinds of scales of size and complexity. We even see great diversity between individuals of a species. (This makes enforcing a galaxy wide non-interference protocol impossible, even if it were plausible.)
The key point I want to make is that there will always be a diversity of niches available for life, even in space.
Granted, known living systems have evolved from a non-directed, bottom-up process (Natural Selection), and it may be that directed evolution (feedback evolution or hyper-evolution) may produce explosive bursts of development and increases in complexity. However, there would still be diverse kinds of 'species' occupying a range of ecological niches.
Looking at the earth, we can see that ever since the origin of life the simplest and earliest organisms continue to co-exist with multiple 'layers' of other organisms as they evolve. The niches occupied by the simple things, do not just disappear as more complex organisms appear. I like to give the example of the typical kitchen, where the bacteria, fungi, cockroaches, rats, humans and other organisms co-exist with each other, hardly interacting at all. But they do interact, and each layer has a certain amount of visibility from the others, because the niches (defined, say, by available resources) are modified from what a non-living system would produce.
Extending the analogy to the universe, it is plausible that if life of high complexity (the artilects) had expanded from multiple planets around the place after a planet's technological singularity, they could go about their business with very little interaction with any other 'boring' life.
However, other kinds of expansion would most likely follow (or would be able to follow). From observing the earth, we can see that where life can exist, it does, from the ice caps to clouds, from 6 miles under the ocean to your toenails. The artilects wouldn't stop it, they wouldn't care less (as de Garis points out.)
A self-replicating space probe doesn't have to be 'hyper intelligent' to seek out resources like raw materials (asteroids, dust, comets) and sunlight to grow and multiply. Even if it took 100 years to replicate and only traveled at 1/10 the speed of light, these relatively (compared to an artilect) slow, dumb replicators would have consumed the entire galaxy's store of easily accessible materials long ago.
The big problem with de Garis's argument is that a whole range of easily digested resources clearly still exist. They are still around the Sun in huge numbers (in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud). They are still around the star Vega, and countless other dust and asteroid clouded stars throughout the universe. Why aren't they all converted to structures or replicators by now? Look at the earth, you are hard pressed to find any part of the surface that gets a reasonable amount of sunlight that hasn't been totally covered, transformed or otherwise processed by life. The top 5 metres of the ocean has millions of tons of living things in it. Even ice is chock full of bacteria. The earth isn't just an inert sphere covered by intensely concentrated islands of intelligent life ' it's a network of complex highly evolved niches of bacteria, fungi, kangaroos, iguanas and bananas. Life is all over the place. Just because human beings sprang up in Tanzania, doesn't mean bacteria are no longer viable in Argentina (or even Tanzania.)
On earth, the original bacteria very rapidly expanded into the lifeless vacuum of the ocean and then to a whole load of other niches, until competition with each other and population density started to provide an environment that presented advantages for predators and other organisms that processed information in real-time or occupied different niches.
There are no processes in the Universe that we observe that indicate that living processes exist at any other 'levels' in the universe other than those 'below' our own level of intelligence.
As for the observing the artilects, well, we would certainly be able to observe asteroid eating von Neumann probes. We don't. We would certainly be able to see star-eating Dyson spheres. We don't. We could even see the changes in spectral energy distribution from galaxy-eating structures. We don't. They all appear to be simple and dead. No imbalance of energy storing gases (like oxygen), nothing.
The argument de Garis presents hinges on explosive hyperevolution followed by stasis on the home world. No further 'explosions' of different kinds, or expansions of diverse forms or species from that same world (or any other.)
This is no more plausible than the more simple Occam-shaved solution that we are the only ones, the only intelligent life that has evolved (or will ever evolve) via Darwinian processes. Don't ask me why, that's another argument.
The SETI-nuts and Mr. De Garis will have to come up with a much more sophisticated argument to invoke intelligence as a cause of anything we observe out there. The stars, from what we can see, are lifeless; their planets are empty or occupied by nothing more than slime, and the asteroids quietly await our children's machines, and the all-consuming galactic ecosystem spawned from right here.
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Diversity
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If
1) intelligent life evolved on the order of 1,000,000,000 years ago
and
2) that intelligent life and its offspring continued to exist for the past 1,000,000,000 years
and
3) some fragment of those offspring reached Earth long ago
and
4) we have not found evidence of 1-3 (above)
and
5) those offspring are still on Earth
then what are the possible explanations of 1-5?
First, there is what I would call the "sociological problem". How would it be possible for any form of intelligen life (biological or artificial) to exist for hundreds of millions of years and still retain an interest in planets like Earth- an interest that would extend over hundreds of millions of years?
It seems likely that for this to happen, there would have to be an effort to design a form of life that was essentially static in terms of its evolution and cultural development. Life as we know it in a natural biosphere is all about change and adaptation. Could a form of life be designed that would not change through time and that would play the role of observing planets like Earth?
Second, even if Earth is being observed, this would not mean that the observers might not want to collect samples of life from Earth. If such samples were collected and "cultured" off of Earth by the alien observers, there might be populations of humans who are currently in contact with the alien observers.
If so, those humans might be able to return to Earth and function as the "eyes and ears" of the alien observers. Such observers might have reason to invent and promote the Fermi Paradox in an effort to make people think that intelligent aliens are unlikely. |
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Fermi's paradox
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I thought that Fermi's answer to this paradox was that every sufficiently advanced civilization is destined for self-destruction, and that's why no ET's having such an advanced technology contacted us yet, since they're don't exist anymore.
However, I think I'll go with de Garis on this one. If ET's are there and they are much more advanced than us then it's utterly meaningless for them contact to us.
Other, perhaps better reason for this silence might be, since they are so advanced, they should also be infinitely socially advanced (otherwise they would annihilate each other before or during their singularity) so the human or other being's life in the Universe should hold a great value to them. Just like some researcher finding a new type of ants in a jungle, I don't think there would be any value for a researcher in destroying the ant's nest. Quite the opposite, if that researcher had developed strong moral code, he would go to great lengths not to disturb the status quo, and observe the ants so he would not be seen (rabbits could maybe serve as a better example here). Anyone who watched some documentaries about Nature should see this kind of behaviour of those filming it. So what if we're ants and ET's are researchers? Well, they observe us from time to time (if at all), and don't really care. It's not like we could ever pose any threat to them anyway, so any interest in us should be minimal, and that is why we won't find them even if we try very hard.
One of the alternatives is, of course, that we all live in a simulation. The "gods" decided that we're should be alone, and the simulation will be shut down when we'll begin achieving singularity.
Slawek
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Re: Fermi's paradox
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OK. Haven't bothered to read all the replies to this thread, but the majority opinion seems to be that we find no signs of intelligence so life at the complexity of our levels must go extinct.
Actually, there is another alternative. We are not thinking big enough when it comes to searching for type ii and type iii civilisations. The phycisist Michio Kaku put it succinctly: Would an ant crawling along a road recognise it as the work of intelligent beings? Of course not. But, a type iii civilisation is as far advanced from us as we are from an ant, so how could we recognise its work, even if it stared us in the face?
Still, we can at least imagine the kinds of powers that these civilisations would have. For one thing, they would have awesome control over matter and energy. Robert J Bradbury pointed out that advanced nanotech and robotics could convert solar systems into 'matrioshka brains'. The details are unimportant: Suffice to say they are unimaginably powerful computers that use up the entire energy output of the host star.
I quote Damien Broderick: 'What does it look like from a distance? Obviously the entire radiation budget of a blazing star has to be transmitted at last by the outermost shell...So the star will look dim. Maybe so dim that even if nine tenths of the cosmos has already been transfromed into M-Brains all you'll easily detect will be the influence of their star's gravity. They will be...DARK MATTER.
Another thing. We point our radio telescopes at outer space and hear nothing but noise. But, as Stephen Witham pointed out, "Any sufficiently advanced communication is indistinguishable from noise". Broderick again: "If, to the naked eye and ear, much of the cosmos seems like sheer random jitter and clang, that might be no more than you'd expect of a high-grade encryption program. |
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Re: Answering Fermi's Paradox
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>I'm surprised no one in this thread has mentioned the prevailing sci-fi theory that explains Fermi's Paradox. It may be that there exists a simple, rational consensus, that developing civilizations should not have any external interference until some pre-defined point in their development is reached.
I have to agree with this, that superintelligent civilizations are practicing a non-intervention policy -- and this is the reason for the Fermi Paradox. But why are they practicing such a policy?
Robert Zubrin nailed it in his breath-taking book: ENTERING SPACE.
The slightest window of time, between gamma bursts or whatever, is a relatively long period of time for a civilization on the verge of Singularity. Thus, any civilization that obtains computerization will have plenty of time to go trans-human and explore even the entire galaxy. Probably MANY have -- and probably the Solar Sys has passed by such civilizations' neighborhoods many times in its journey around the galactic nucleus (some dozen or so times so far). Thus, they are present, but they leave us alone. Why?
Imagine a bio-chemist serendipitously coming across some new strain in his petrie (sp) dish. The last thing the chemist is going to want to do is adulterate the organism (by slurping some ketchup from his Big Mac on it). He's not going to interfere with it in any way that might alter it until after it can be studied or utilized in some way. In terms of human civilization discovered by a superintelligent civilization serendipitously or by design, they are not going to want to adulterate us in any way either. To do so, would be to destroy the only thing we as a human civilization might be able to contribute to a Galactic Club, as Zubrin puts it -- our uniqueness, our unique chemistry. Our "spin" on Life in the Sys.
Thus, as Ray Kurzweil says in his book, AGE OF SPIRITUAL MACHINES, any superintelligent visitors are probably microscopic. This would, not only facilitate their goal of non-interference, but be the most practical way to traverse interstellar, or intergalactic space. Certainly any post-Singularity civilization would have attained nanotechnology, if such is possible, and thus would have remedied any scarcity of material possession. Therefore they would probably be here on a purely intellectual mission. Perhaps a mission to observe our progress, while protecting us from globs of alien ketchup. Perhaps even protecting us from the gamma bursts suggested earlier in this thread, or from dangers we can't even comprehend - yet.
At the point we reach our technological Singularity, if any, we will have "bloomed" as a species. At such point, I bet the entire universe will be perceived with abundant life -- thus Fermi's Paradox will be no more.
James Jaeger
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Re: Answering Fermi's Paradox
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Yes this is true. =)
However I didn't really mean to suggest an equal amount of impact on all the possible components of astronomical observation. Sorry if I gave that impression.
I'll continue my thoughts a bit more for the fun of it. Sorry to clog up this thread but I kind of feel like posting. =/ Anyway there seem many possibilities to consider.
Certainly it would be less likely the farther out into space you look that anything has been artificially changed in a timely manner such that we would be able to see it now. (Unless of course they find some other means of travel.) However following up on the discussion and thoughts on the Gamma ray burst scenario we could be looking at civilizations coming of age 200 million (maybe even near 400 million) years ago, if we are considered average. If indeed they are common then they must be considered equally common in all galaxies I would suggest, until we know otherwise. It would only take an average maybe 100,000 to 200,000 years for one of these civilizations to sweep through its galaxy of origin, and then out into deep space maybe. If any of this is what they do, and they do it at near light speed, all of which I'm not convinced of yet.
Anyway'
If they do act anything the like's of what Thomas has suggestions then regardless of the all the particulars on time frames it would kind of seem to me that we would see a general spherical shell so to speak (not literally) inside of which things, matter (and maybe space and time), are somehow different to observations than outside or beyond that dividing line. We get many of our astronomical theories from observations inside 400 million light years I think. So maybe being in the 'petri dish' we would be getting some false information on the natural universe if this were the case. Information that sways our theories in strange ways.
Of course a slower and/or more mundane use of materials and spread of these societies, something like the manner in which humanity has utilized its surroundings over time up to now, the nearer and less pronounced or smoother and more wide spread the transition zones would be from pure natural to semi artificial and thus the more difficult to pick up on.
I'm not talking about seti signals from space or some such mundane ness. I'm talking about pattern of star formation, brightness of objects with other similar properties, behavior of systems, material composition of areas of space, etc. This would be in consideration of Jupiter brains, Dysen (sp) Spheres, and any other uses of power and materials they may engage in. They could keep us in a petri dish but could they keep hidden from us their activities over the many millions of light years around us in every direction?
Maybe they'd figure we'd remain completely bamboozled by a very subtle shift of space component properties. Maybe they can get their power and materials without affecting space in any noticeable way at all. Maybe they grow into very compact and isolated black hole like mega computational societies and don't venture into deep space at all.
I don't know.
Willie
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Calabi-Yau Space
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>>'Imagine a bio-chemist serendipitously coming across some new strain in his petrie (sp) dish. The last thing the chemist is going to want to do is adulterate the organism''
>So would you be suggesting that as a 'strain' in our 'petri dish' all of our astronomical information and theories including Big Bang, inflation, star formation, material distribution, background radiation etc are tainted by the activities of super intelligence's?
I'm not sure what you mean here. Whose petri dish? Can you please re-phrase this?
>If the actual strain in the petri dish were able to look around, all they would see is artificial, no?
Whose the strain, us?
>If our astronomical observations are tainted, then by how much do you think, and to what effect?
I'm not sure what your questions are or what you're saying but let me offer this. We are not able to look out into the universe very far in "relative present time" -- and by "relative present time" I'm saying the past hundred years or so. So any information out farther than a hundred light years could be virtually anything a superintelligent civilization might "want" us to see -- getting back to the idea that such a civilization would certainly have the ability to create an ancestor simulation, or even alter that which we perceive as the physical universe in real time.
Certainly a superintelligent civilization, desiring us to reach Singularity without anomalies in our observational input, could make it so. For all we know, we're presented with, as might be all budding civilizations, the "standard universe." Keeping it 'standard' (i.e., what we call homogeneous, isotropic, supersymmetrical and gauge symmetrical), is just the kind of condition that a scientist would want in his petri dish if s/he were growing many different cultures I would think. Small deliberate variations in a controlled experiment can lead to great certainty of scientific knowledge. Thus, for instance, perhaps we are THE culture in a superintelligent civilization's perti dish that has THE big moon. Or the we're the culture that has four gas giants instead of two, or none. You start adding all sorts of other variables to the petri dish of human culture, like alien visitations and abductions, etc., and you screw up the experiment - that's one reason I don't believe in UFOs. But then again, maybe these ARE variables in other petri dishes, superintelligent UFOs constantly landing, on a planet out there that has perfectly sunny days, no weather, no moon, no other planets in their solar system.
So this is my reasoning for the Fermi Paradox: superintelligent civilizations ARE there, but, in our case, they're staying out of sight and not messing with the "standard" universe we're growing in. Their goal is to grow a pure and unique carbon-based culture, us, and then breed us with other cultures, possibly. After we reach maturity, our Singularity, then maybe we work WITH them, bringing our unique intelligence to the table on further experiments in this and/or other galaxies (or dimensions). This is what makes sense to me.
>If you answer not much and you also believe those super intelligences have been around for a long while, then something other than as Thomas suggest that singularity's zoom out at near the speed of light to grow their capability by utilizing power and materials must be the case.
Since superstring theory not only predicts, but REQUIRES, 9 spatial dimensions, I'm reasonably sure the speed-of-light limitation is only an appearance (or operative) in the three extended dimensions we happen to be most aware of at this time. When you start to consider the ramifications of (traveling in) Calabi-Yau space, which touches 3-space at every point, the ideas of "motion" and "velocity" may have to be re-examined. Also, when you consider, if the universe (i.e., the 12 subatomic particles and the 4 force particles) really IS comprised of 'nothing' more than Plank-length, 1-dimentional strings 10^-33 centimeters, there may be NO SUCH THING AS CARTISIAN MOTION AT ALL. Just like the molecules in sea water only move in an upward and downward direction (i.e., in one dimension), yet the wave gives the illusion of "moving" in three dimensions on to the shore, such could be the case with what we perceive as 'observable reality" replete with so-called 'motion' -- and probably is.
>Perhaps as another choice the idea that they grow inward in ever-denser computation up to and maybe including black holes may be an answer?
What do you imagine on this?
Perhaps superintelligent civilizations have learned how to function in Calabi-Yau space at Plank energies. Likewise, I would expect that any post-human entities we develop, or develop into, would be quite familiar with such regions, if any, and would have been able to figure out WHY the particular masses and energies we observe are as they are, and how such are effected at the center of black holes. Perhaps the greatest computational opportunities exist at the center of black holes, as this is where mass is at its densest, at least in normal 3-space. And/or such a mass density may very well exist all around us in the other 6 spatial dimensions, thus providing an omni-present computational substrate throughout the 3-space, or space-time, universe. If this is so, maybe superintelligent entities, or a merged superintelligent entity (call it God :), surrounds us without our physical awareness of it. Does this explain the Fermi Paradox any?
James Jaeger
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