It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself This is the argument that technological civilizations may usually or invariably destroy themselves before or shortly after developing radio or space flight technology. Possible means of annihilation include nuclear It is Excerpt From Fermi-Paradox en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself This is the argument that technological civilizations may usually or invariably destroy themselves before or shortly after developing radio or space flight technology. Possible means of annihilation include nuclear war, biological warfare or accidental contamination, climate change, nano-technological catastrophe, ill-advised physics experiments,[Note 4] a badly programmed super-intelligence, or a Malthusian catastrophe after the deterioration of a planets ecosphere. This general theme is explored both in fiction and in mainstream scientific theorizing.[53] Indeed, there are probabilistic arguments which suggest that human extinction may occur sooner rather than later. In 1966 Sagan and Shklovskii speculated that technological civilizations will either tend to destroy themselves within a century of developing interstellar communicative capability or master their self-destructive tendencies and survive for billion-year timescales.[54] Self-annihilation may also be viewed in terms of thermodynamics: insofar as life is an ordered system that can sustain itself against the tendency to disorder, the external transmission or interstellar communicative phase may be the point at which the system becomes unstable and self-destructs.[55] From a Darwinian perspective, self-destruction would be an ironic outcome of evolutionary success. The evolutionary psychology that developed during the competition for scarce resources over the course of human evolution has left the species subject to aggressive, instinctual drives. These compel humanity to consume resources, extend longevity, and to reproduce—in part, the very motives that led to the development of technological society. It seems likely that intelligent extraterrestrial life would evolve in a similar fashion and thus face the same possibility of self-destruction. And yet, to provide a good answer to Fermis Question, self-destruction by technological species (or any sociological explanation) would have to be a near universal occurrence. Otherwise, the few civilizations to which it does not apply would colonize the galaxy. This argument does not require the civilization to entirely self-destruct, only to become once again non-technological. In other ways it could persist and even thrive according to evolutionary standards, which postulate producing offspring as the sole goal of life—not progress, be it in terms of technology or even intelligence.[56] It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy others See also: technological singularity and Von Neumann probe Another possibility is that an intelligent species beyond a certain point of technological capability will destroy other intelligence as it appears, as is exemplified by the theorized extermination of Neanderthals by early humans. The idea that something, or someone, is destroying intelligent life in the universe has been well explored in science fiction[Note 5] and scientific literature.[7] A species might undertake such extermination out of expansionist motives, paranoia, or simple aggression. In 1981, cosmologist Edward Harrison argued that such behavior would be an act of prudence: an intelligent species that has overcome its own self-destructive tendencies might view any other species bent on galactic expansion as a kind of virus.[57] It has also been suggested that a successful alien species would be a super-predator, as is Homo sapiens.[58] This hypothesis requires at least one civilization to have arisen in the past, and the first civilization would not have faced this problem.[59] However, it could still be that Earth is alone now. Like exploration, the extermination of other civilizations might be carried out with self-replicating spacecraft. Under such a scenario,[Note 5] even if a civilization that created such machines were to disappear, the probes could outlive their creators, destroying civilizations far into the future. If true, this argument reduces the number of visible civilizations in two ways—by destroying some civilizations, and forcing others to remain quiet, under fear of discovery (see They choose not to interact with us) so we would see no signs of them. This may also make it impossible for life to evolve in regions of the universe close to a developed civilization, assuring that any new civilizations will start off far away from preexisting ones.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 20:55:37 +0000
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