The proof relies on one weak, nearly tautological principle rooted in the definition of progress:
What actually is this universally accepted “definition of progress”? Is there evidence that even all humans do or ever will accept it, let alone all aliens?
For that matter, what’s a “civilization”?
This dynamic leads to gravitational collapse into a black hole if engineered
I’m not sure that any number of bits of information smeared over the surface of a black hole can meet any reasonable definition of civilization, or is anything that anybody would engineer for. Maybe you can get some kind of computation out of the process, and maybe you can’t. Maybe the people doing the engineering would be satisfied with that kind of computation as a “civilization”, and maybe they wouldn’t.
or to stagnation if not (both outcomes are externally silent).
You could become “stagnant” at the size of a galaxy, and only reach that stage after many distinctively noisy radiation-emitting events.
Sharding or interstellar spread remains theoretically possible, yet the energy overhead of synchronising distant shards (Fig. 3) makes expansion uneconomical,
The assumption that they should all have to be synchronized is unjustified and counterintuitive. You may say that it’s not a “civilization” if it can’t keep itself synchronized to some particular degree, but the response to that is that “civilization” by that particular definition isn’t necessarily a goal.
Humans already have explicitly stated desires to shed tons of never-to-be-synchronized shards in the form of von Neumann probes or whatever… even if there’s also a collapsing core. There are a whole bunch of people on this very Web site who want to populate the entire downstream light cone. That implies that the outer reaches will, by design, never, ever communicate back to the point of origin, and will never receive anything from the point of origin after their departure. So we have an existence proof for people who don’t care about synchronization and want to do very observable things.
The interesting formulation of the Fermi paradox isn’t about why you don’t communicate with whole civilizations, necessarily. It’s about why you never see any signs of anybody at all.
Thanks for the detailed feedback. It helps clarify things.
On progress and civ defs. Progress here means net info growth with r greater than 1. Civ means any entropy reducing info system or negentropic node. It is pure thermo and physical not cultural. Reject it and the paradox is trivial. No growth means no visibility.
BH as civ or engineered. Fair. Smearing bits on horizon does not sound like a livable setup and computation seems dubious. But the model does not need it. Theorem forces external silence via density. Compact dark states whether engineered or not.
Galaxy stagnation with noisy buildup. Possible but thermo makes it impossible to reach that scale. Spreading costs explode before full system takeover. Noisy phase is short decades or centuries then quiet. If stagnant big it is r=1 no ongoing emissions just frozen silence.
Sync assumption. Not mandatory. Unsynchronized shards or probes each r greater than 1 hit own bounds turn silent minis. No light cone fill physics blocks early.
Human desires for probes. Cool but energy math says no post 2075 barrier hits too soon.
Resolves no signs at all. Growth self silences finite or no growth invisible. Article updated on unsynced thanks to input like yours.
What actually is this universally accepted “definition of progress”? Is there evidence that even all humans do or ever will accept it, let alone all aliens?
For that matter, what’s a “civilization”?
I’m not sure that any number of bits of information smeared over the surface of a black hole can meet any reasonable definition of civilization, or is anything that anybody would engineer for. Maybe you can get some kind of computation out of the process, and maybe you can’t. Maybe the people doing the engineering would be satisfied with that kind of computation as a “civilization”, and maybe they wouldn’t.
You could become “stagnant” at the size of a galaxy, and only reach that stage after many distinctively noisy radiation-emitting events.
The assumption that they should all have to be synchronized is unjustified and counterintuitive. You may say that it’s not a “civilization” if it can’t keep itself synchronized to some particular degree, but the response to that is that “civilization” by that particular definition isn’t necessarily a goal.
Humans already have explicitly stated desires to shed tons of never-to-be-synchronized shards in the form of von Neumann probes or whatever… even if there’s also a collapsing core. There are a whole bunch of people on this very Web site who want to populate the entire downstream light cone. That implies that the outer reaches will, by design, never, ever communicate back to the point of origin, and will never receive anything from the point of origin after their departure. So we have an existence proof for people who don’t care about synchronization and want to do very observable things.
The interesting formulation of the Fermi paradox isn’t about why you don’t communicate with whole civilizations, necessarily. It’s about why you never see any signs of anybody at all.
Thanks for the detailed feedback. It helps clarify things.
On progress and civ defs. Progress here means net info growth with r greater than 1. Civ means any entropy reducing info system or negentropic node. It is pure thermo and physical not cultural. Reject it and the paradox is trivial. No growth means no visibility.
BH as civ or engineered. Fair. Smearing bits on horizon does not sound like a livable setup and computation seems dubious. But the model does not need it. Theorem forces external silence via density. Compact dark states whether engineered or not.
Galaxy stagnation with noisy buildup. Possible but thermo makes it impossible to reach that scale. Spreading costs explode before full system takeover. Noisy phase is short decades or centuries then quiet. If stagnant big it is r=1 no ongoing emissions just frozen silence.
Sync assumption. Not mandatory. Unsynchronized shards or probes each r greater than 1 hit own bounds turn silent minis. No light cone fill physics blocks early.
Human desires for probes. Cool but energy math says no post 2075 barrier hits too soon.
Resolves no signs at all. Growth self silences finite or no growth invisible. Article updated on unsynced thanks to input like yours.