I think of convergent evolution as the observation that two sufficiently flexible adaptive systems, when exposed to the same problems, will find similar solutions.
Can you give examples of what you have in mind? Because an obvious counterexample is evolution itself. It has produced an enormous variety of different things. There are instances of convergent evolution: “crab” and “tree” are strategies, not monophyletic taxa. But crabs are not similar to trees in any useful sense. If they are solutions to the same problem, they have in common only that they are solutions to the same problem. This does not make them similar solutions.
One might ask whether evolution is or is not a case of “flexible adaptive systems … exposed to the same problems”, but that would just be a debate over definitions, and you already spoke of “our descendants … competing in the same environment”. That sounds like evolution.
I think I agree with everything you wrote. Yes I’d expect there to be multiple niches available in the future, but I’d expect our descendants to ultimately fill all of them, creating an ecosystem of intelligent life. There is a lot of time available for our descendants to diversify, so it’d be surprising if they didn’t.
How much that diversification process resembles Darwinian evolution, I don’t know. Natural selection still applies, since it’s fundamentally the fact that the life we observe today disproportionately descends from past life that was effective at self-reproduction, and that’s essentially tautological. But Darwinian evolution is undirected, whereas our descendants can intelligently direct their own evolution, and that could conceivably matter. I don’t see why it would prevent diversification, though.
Edit:
Here are some thoughts in reply to your request for examples. Though it’s impossible to know what the niches of the long-term future will be, one idea is that there could be an analogue to “plant” and “animal”. A plant-type civilization would occupy a single stellar system, obtaining resources from it via Dyson sphere, mining, etc. An animal-type civilization could move from star to star, taking resources from the locals (which could be unpleasant for the locals, but not necessarily, as with bees pollinating flowers).
I’d expect both those civilizations to descend from ours, much like how crabs and trees both descend from LUCA.
Can you give examples of what you have in mind? Because an obvious counterexample is evolution itself. It has produced an enormous variety of different things. There are instances of convergent evolution: “crab” and “tree” are strategies, not monophyletic taxa. But crabs are not similar to trees in any useful sense. If they are solutions to the same problem, they have in common only that they are solutions to the same problem. This does not make them similar solutions.
One might ask whether evolution is or is not a case of “flexible adaptive systems … exposed to the same problems”, but that would just be a debate over definitions, and you already spoke of “our descendants … competing in the same environment”. That sounds like evolution.
I think I agree with everything you wrote. Yes I’d expect there to be multiple niches available in the future, but I’d expect our descendants to ultimately fill all of them, creating an ecosystem of intelligent life. There is a lot of time available for our descendants to diversify, so it’d be surprising if they didn’t.
How much that diversification process resembles Darwinian evolution, I don’t know. Natural selection still applies, since it’s fundamentally the fact that the life we observe today disproportionately descends from past life that was effective at self-reproduction, and that’s essentially tautological. But Darwinian evolution is undirected, whereas our descendants can intelligently direct their own evolution, and that could conceivably matter. I don’t see why it would prevent diversification, though.
Edit:
Here are some thoughts in reply to your request for examples. Though it’s impossible to know what the niches of the long-term future will be, one idea is that there could be an analogue to “plant” and “animal”. A plant-type civilization would occupy a single stellar system, obtaining resources from it via Dyson sphere, mining, etc. An animal-type civilization could move from star to star, taking resources from the locals (which could be unpleasant for the locals, but not necessarily, as with bees pollinating flowers).
I’d expect both those civilizations to descend from ours, much like how crabs and trees both descend from LUCA.