[Link] TEDx talk of Anders Sandberg on the Fermi “paradox”

[Pablo]

Anders Sandberg, Where are they?, TEDxUHasselt.

On the long term, how much change in the universe can a civilization possibly cause? In this talk, Anders Sandberg brings an enthusiastic introduction to the different scenarios of the Fermi paradox and what they mean for the future of humanity.

[Pablo]

The talk partly overlaps with and reiterates material from Stuart Armstrong’s presentation, Von Neumann probes and Dyson spheres: what exploratory engineering can tell us about the Fermi paradox at the Future of Humanity Institute (highly recommended!).

[FiftyTwo]

Do you know of a text summary of that content?

[Pablo]

I now do, thanks to Google:

The Fermi paradox is the contrast between the high estimate of the likelihood of extraterritorial civilizations, and the lack of visible evidence of them. But what sort of evidence should we expect to see? This is what exploratory engineering can tell us, giving us estimates of what kind of cosmic structures are plausibly constructable by advanced civilizations, and what traces they would leave. Based on our current knowledge, it seems that it would be easy for such a civilization to rapidly occupy vast swathes of the universe in a visible fashion. There are game-theoretic reasons to suppose that they would do so. This leads to a worsening of the Fermi paradox, reducing the likelihood of “advanced but unseen” civilizations, even in other galaxies.

See also the talk slides.