Your argument we could be the first intelligent species
in our past light-cone is quite weak because of the extreme extension. You are putting your own argument aside by saying:
We might still run into aliens later …
A time frame for our discussion is covering maybe dozens of millenia, but not millions of years.
Milky way diameter is about 100,000 lightyears. Milky way and its satellite and dwarf galaxies around
have a radius of about 900,000 lightyears (300kpc). Our
next neighbor galaxy Andromeda is about 2.5 million light years away.
If we run into aliens this encounter will be within our own galaxy. If there is no intelligent life
within Milky Way we have to wait for more than 2 million years to receive a visitor from Andromeda.
This weeks publication of a first
image of planetary genesis by ALMA radio telescope
makes it likely that nearly every star in our galaxy has a set of planets. If every third star has a planet in
the habitable zone we will have in the order of 100 billion planets in our galaxy where life could evolve. The
probability to run into aliens in our galaxy is therefore not neglectable and I appreciate that you discuss the
implications of alien encounters.
If we together with our AGIs decide against CE with von Neumann probes for the next ten to hundred millenia this does not exclude that we prepare our infrastructure for CE. We should not “leaving the resources around”. If von Neumann probes were found too early by an alien civilization they
could start a war against us with far superior technology. Sending out von Neumann probes should be postponed until
our AGIs are absolutely sure that they can defend our solar system. If we have transformed our asteroid belt into
fusion powered spaceships we could think about CE, but not earlier. Expansion into other star systems is a political
decision and not a solution to a differential equation as Bostrum puts it.
Your argument we could be the first intelligent species in our past light-cone is quite weak because of the extreme extension. You are putting your own argument aside by saying:
A time frame for our discussion is covering maybe dozens of millenia, but not millions of years. Milky way diameter is about 100,000 lightyears. Milky way and its satellite and dwarf galaxies around have a radius of about 900,000 lightyears (300kpc). Our next neighbor galaxy Andromeda is about 2.5 million light years away.
If we run into aliens this encounter will be within our own galaxy. If there is no intelligent life within Milky Way we have to wait for more than 2 million years to receive a visitor from Andromeda. This weeks publication of a first image of planetary genesis by ALMA radio telescope makes it likely that nearly every star in our galaxy has a set of planets. If every third star has a planet in the habitable zone we will have in the order of 100 billion planets in our galaxy where life could evolve. The probability to run into aliens in our galaxy is therefore not neglectable and I appreciate that you discuss the implications of alien encounters.
If we together with our AGIs decide against CE with von Neumann probes for the next ten to hundred millenia this does not exclude that we prepare our infrastructure for CE. We should not “leaving the resources around”. If von Neumann probes were found too early by an alien civilization they could start a war against us with far superior technology. Sending out von Neumann probes should be postponed until our AGIs are absolutely sure that they can defend our solar system. If we have transformed our asteroid belt into fusion powered spaceships we could think about CE, but not earlier. Expansion into other star systems is a political decision and not a solution to a differential equation as Bostrum puts it.