Considerations similar to Kenzi’s have led me to think that if we want to beat potential filters, we should be accelerating work on autonomous self-replicating space-based robotics. Once we do that, we will have beaten the Fermi odds. I’m not saying that it’s all smooth sailing from there, but it does guarantee that something from our civilization will survive in a potentially “showy” way, so that our civilization will not be a “great silence” victim.
The argument is as follows: Any near-future great filter for humankind is probably self-produced, from some development path we can call QEP (quiet extinction path). Let’s call the path to self-replicating autonomous robots FRP (Fermi robot path). Since the success of this path would not produce a great filter, QEP =/= FRP. FRP is an independent path parallel to QEP. In effect the two development paths are in a race. We can’t implement a policy of slowing QEP down, because we are unable to uniquely identify QEP. But since we know that QEP =/= FRP, and that in completing FRP we beat Fermi’s silence, our best strategy is to accelerate FRP and invest substantial resources into robotics that will ultimately produce Fermi probes. Alacrity is necessary because FRP must complete before QEP takes its course, and we have very bad information about QEP’s timelines and nature.
Considerations similar to Kenzi’s have led me to think that if we want to beat potential filters, we should be accelerating work on autonomous self-replicating space-based robotics. Once we do that, we will have beaten the Fermi odds. I’m not saying that it’s all smooth sailing from there, but it does guarantee that something from our civilization will survive in a potentially “showy” way, so that our civilization will not be a “great silence” victim.
The argument is as follows: Any near-future great filter for humankind is probably self-produced, from some development path we can call QEP (quiet extinction path). Let’s call the path to self-replicating autonomous robots FRP (Fermi robot path). Since the success of this path would not produce a great filter, QEP =/= FRP. FRP is an independent path parallel to QEP. In effect the two development paths are in a race. We can’t implement a policy of slowing QEP down, because we are unable to uniquely identify QEP. But since we know that QEP =/= FRP, and that in completing FRP we beat Fermi’s silence, our best strategy is to accelerate FRP and invest substantial resources into robotics that will ultimately produce Fermi probes. Alacrity is necessary because FRP must complete before QEP takes its course, and we have very bad information about QEP’s timelines and nature.