The skeptical view about Life on Earth

The “skeptical view” would essentially be that humanity (or some descendant of humanity, including a digital one) will never spread throughout the galaxy. There are many reasons it might not:

• Maybe something about space travel – and/or setting up mining robots, solar panels, etc. on other planets – is effectively impossible such that even another 100,000 years of human civilization won’t reach that point.
• Or perhaps for some reason, it will be technologically feasible, but it won’t happen (because nobody wants to do it, because those who don’t want to block those who do, etc.)
• Maybe it’s possible to expand throughout the galaxy, but not possible to maintain a presence on many planets for billions of years, for some reason.
• Maybe humanity is destined to destroy itself before it reaches this stage.
  • But note that if the way we destroy ourselves is via misaligned AI, it would be possible for AI to build its own technology and spread throughout the galaxy, which still seems in line with the spirit of the above sections. In fact, it highlights that how we handle AI this century could have ramifications for many billions of years. So humanity would have to go extinct in some way that leaves no other intelligent life (or intelligent machines) behind.
• Maybe an extraterrestrial species will spread throughout the galaxy before we do (or around the same time).
  • However, note that this doesn’t seem to have happened in ~13.77 billion years so far since the universe began, and according to the above sections, there’s only about 1.5 billion years left for it to happen before we spread throughout the galaxy.
• Maybe some extraterrestrial species already effectively has spread throughout our galaxy, and for some reason we just don’t see them. Maybe they are hiding their presence deliberately, for one reason or another, while being ready to stop us from spreading too far.
  • This would imply that they are choosing not to mine energy from any of the stars we can see, at least not in a way that we could see it. That would, in turn, imply that they’re abstaining from mining a very large amount of energy that they could use to do whatever it is they want to do, including defend themselves against species like ours.
• Maybe this is all a dream. Or a simulation.
• Maybe something else I’m not thinking of.

That’s a fair number of possibilities, though many seem quite “wild” in their own way. Collectively, I’d say they add up to more than 50% probability … but I would feel very weird claiming they’re collectively overwhelmingly likely.

Ultimately, it’s very hard for me to see a case against thinking something like this is at least reasonably likely: “We will eventually create robust, stable settlements throughout our galaxy and beyond.” It seems like saying “no way” to that statement would itself require “wild” confidence in something about the limits of technology, and/or long-run choices people will make, and/or the inevitability of human extinction, and/or something about aliens or simulations.

I imagine this claim will be intuitive to many readers, but not all. Defending it in depth is not on my agenda at the moment, but I’ll rethink that if I get enough demand.

Why all possible views are wild: the Fermi paradox

I’m claiming that it would be “wild” to think we’re basically assured of never spreading throughout the galaxy, but also that it’s “wild” to think that we have a decent chance of spreading throughout the galaxy.

In other words, I’m calling every possible belief on this topic “wild.” That’s because I think we’re in a wild situation.

Here are some alternative situations we could have found ourselves in, that I wouldn’t consider so wild:

• We could live in a mostly-populated galaxy, whether by our species or by a number of extraterrestrial species. We would be some densely populated region of space, surrounded by populated planets. Perhaps we would read up on the history of our civilization. We would know (from history and from a lack of empty stars) that we weren’t unusually early life-forms with unusual opportunities ahead.
• We could live in a world where the kind of technologies I’ve been discussing didn’t seem like they’d ever be possible. We wouldn’t have any hope of doing space travel, or successfully studying our own brains or building our own computers. Perhaps we could somehow detect life on other planets, but if we did, we’d see them having an equal lack of that sort of technology.

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