All Possible Views About Humanity’s Future Are Wild

Summary:

• In a series of posts starting with this one, I’m going to argue that the 21st century could see our civilization develop technologies allowing rapid expansion throughout our currently-empty galaxy. And thus, that this century could determine the entire future of the galaxy for tens of billions of years, or more.
• This view seems “wild”: we should be doing a double take at any view that we live in such a special time. I illustrate this with a timeline of the galaxy. (On a personal level, this “wildness” is probably the single biggest reason I was skeptical for many years of the arguments presented in this series. Such claims about the significance of the times we live in seem “wild” enough to be suspicious.)
• But I don’t think it’s really possible to hold a non-“wild” view on this topic. I discuss alternatives to my view: a “conservative” view that thinks the technologies I’m describing are possible, but will take much longer than I think, and a “skeptical” view that thinks galaxy-scale expansion will never happen. Each of these views seems “wild” in its own way.
• Ultimately, as hinted at by the Fermi paradox, it seems that our species is simply in a wild situation.

Before I continue, I should say that I don’t think humanity (or some digital descendant of humanity) expanding throughout the galaxy would necessarily be a good thing – especially if this prevents other life forms from ever emerging. I think it’s quite hard to have a confident view on whether this would be good or bad. I’d like to keep the focus on the idea that our situation is “wild.” I am not advocating excitement or glee at the prospect of expanding throughout the galaxy. I am advocating seriousness about the enormous potential stakes.

My view

This is the first in a series of pieces about the hypothesis that we live in the most important century for humanity.

In this series, I’m going to argue that there’s a good chance of a productivity explosion by 2100, which could quickly lead to what one might call a “technologically mature” civilization. That would mean that:

• We’d be able to start sending spacecraft throughout the galaxy and beyond.
• These spacecraft could mine materials, build robots and computers, and construct very robust, long-lasting settlements on other planets, harnessing solar power from stars and supporting huge numbers of people (and/or our “digital descendants“).
  • See Eternity in Six Hours for a fascinating and short, though technical, discussion of what this might require.
  • I’ll also argue in a future piece that there is a chance of “value lock-in” here: whoever is running the process of space expansion might be able to determine what sorts of people are in charge of the settlements and what sorts of societal values they have, in a way that is stable for many billions of years. If that ends up happening, you might think of the story of our galaxy like this. I’ve marked major milestones along the way from “no life” to “intelligent life that builds its own computers and travels through space.”

Thanks to Ludwig Schubert for the visualization. Many dates are highly approximate and/or judgment-prone and/or just pulled from Wikipedia, but plausible changes wouldn’t change the big picture. The ~1.4 billion years to complete space expansion is based on the distance to the outer edge of the Milky Way, divided by the speed of a fast existing human-made spaceship (details in spreadsheet just linked); IMO this is likely to be a massive overestimate of how long it takes to expand throughout the whole galaxy. See footnote for why I didn’t use a logarithmic axis.

??? That’s crazy! According to me, there’s a decent chance that we live at the very beginning of the tiny sliver of time during which the galaxy goes from nearly lifeless to largely populated. That out of a staggering number of persons who will ever exist, we’re among the first. And that out of hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, ours will produce the beings that fill it.

I know what you’re thinking: “The odds that we could live in such a significant time seem infinitesimal; the odds that Holden is having delusions of grandeur (on behalf of all of Earth, but still) seem far higher.”

But:

The “conservative” view

Let’s say you agree with me about where humanity could eventually be headed – that we will eventually have the technology to create robust, stable settlements throughout our galaxy and beyond. But you think it will take far longer than I’m saying.

A key part of my view (which I’ll write about more later) is that within this century, we could develop advanced enough AI to start a productivity explosion. Say you don’t believe that.

• You think I’m underrating the fundamental limits of AI systems to date.
• You think we will need an enormous number of new scientific breakthroughs to build AIs that truly reason as effectively as humans.
• And even once we do, expanding throughout the galaxy will be a longer road still.

You don’t think any of this is happening this century – you think, instead, that it will take something like 500 years. That’s 5-10x the time that has passed since we started building computers. It’s more time than has passed since Isaac Newton made the first credible attempt at laws of physics. It’s about as much time has passed since the very start of the Scientific Revolution.

Actually, no, let’s go even more conservative. You think our economic and scientific progress will stagnate. Today’s civilizations will crumble, and many more civilizations will fall and rise. Sure, we’ll eventually get the ability to expand throughout the galaxy. But it will take 100,000 years. That’s 10x the amount of time that has passed since human civilization began in the Levant.

Here’s your version of the timeline:

The difference between your timeline and mine isn’t even a pixel, so it doesn’t show up on the chart. In the scheme of things, this “conservative” view and my view are the same.

It’s true that the “conservative” view doesn’t have the same urgency for our generation in particular. But it still places us among a tiny proportion of people in an incredibly significant time period. And it still raises questions of whether the things we do to make the world better – even if they only have a tiny flow-through to the world 100,000 years from now – could be amplified to a galactic-historical-outlier degree.

Like Our Story ? Donate to Support Us, Click Here

You want to share a story with us? Do you want to advertise with us? Do you need publicity/live coverage for product, service, or event? Contact us on WhatsApp +16477721660 or email Adebaconnector@gmail.com