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BACK TO FERMI PARADOX AND EQUAL START HYPOTHESIS

Sound hypotheses answering the Fermi paradox have to satisfy two major requirements: first, the universe should be teeming with life and intelligence, and second, most of the sentient beings still haven't contacted each other, radio wave leakage hasn't been detected, or other hard evidence proving the existence of alien civilizations.

Such hypothesis should also meet some basic principles:
1. Occam's razor advises us to keep things simple;

2. The Copernican principle is the idea that the location of human in the Universe is not special, and the Earth is typical and common;

3. Darwinism (natural selection, hard competition, and survival of the fittest) is a similar idea applied to biological life forms, and humans are an average space civilization;

4. The principle of uniformity says that it's the same everywhere in the Universe.

The Fermi paradox, the problems with the dangerous self-replicating von Neumann machines and the Popoff machines, and the space germ contamination are closely connected. They are part of a bigger but simple concept?a Universe teeming with fit civilizations. So the equal start of intelligence is a must. The late-emerging space races are doomed.

The creatures in our Universe live in a world of limited resources: oil, nice partners of the opposite sex, good salaries, champion cups, best quality whisky, etc. If the resources we need, or believe we need, are abundant, there would be no competition, hence very slow or almost no evolution of the life forms and the intelligence.

We live in a world guided by models which are stimulating the evolution through competition. Eden is a place of perfect happiness; there is no place for rivalry between two or more persons or groups for an object desired in common, usually resulting in a victor and a loser, often involving the destruction of the latter or the both. The doctrines of paradise, eternal peace and love, of golden ages of the past when people lived in harmony and brotherhood, or of some future golden ages are impossible myths, because in such societies the evolution is too slow or nonexistent. The healthy, eternal (or at least very long-living) members of such a utopian world would enjoy life, fully satisfied in a perfectly safe environment. But there aren't enough stimuli to change anything or themselves?evolution means constant changes.

As a matter of fact, paradise, perfect happiness, infinite life, resurrection from the dead of our beloved ones or famous historical personages, eternal youth, creating a copy of someone who died in an accident, and other similar wonders are perfectly possible. That model of desired world or of a person could be materialized by the vector, and we would live in supreme bliss, forever in Eden. But our world is guided by another model which requires growth, evolution, progress, a huge number of competing individuals and civilizations, countless births and deaths.

The speed of evolution should be defined very well.
If the competition is too hard, the death rate as a result of rivalry (wars, crime, all sorts of accidents, jealousy, and so on) becomes too high and the development eventually slows down - human, industrial, financial, infrastructural, and other losses are turning into stopping factors; people are becoming highly demotivated. This is especially important when intelligent species develop self-destructing technologies like nuclear, chemical, biological, and other weapons of mass destruction; devastation and havoc could be so huge that such civilizations might not recover in a reasonable period of time; they would be assimilated or destroyed by their competitors.

If the level of competition is too low, then the frequency of death within a given population as a consequence of the competition is significantly reduced, and people enjoy a comfortable life, however the rate of development would be insufficient, and such civilizations might not survive rivalry.
The future generations of all space races should invest tremendous efforts and resources to reprogram the vector (just as we are now trying to reengineer DNA) in order to provide a more secure life and comfortable environment. But they (including our descendants) would also be much closer to the death of their local solar systems with their dying suns and to the thermodynamical end of the Universe with its depleting natural resources. In order to leave their star system, and after that the Universe, the future generations would need huge energy, new territories, and many natural resources. The intelligent space races would face two main strategies: a comfortable end to their civilization or a fierce fight in order to survive, abandoning the dying Universe.

The refusal to compete and evolve means certain death to any civilization.

MEGAINTELLIGENCE (M.I.)

Megaintelligence (megacivilizations) is a term describing mature intelligences who manage to abandon their dying home universes. The sentient species inhabiting our Universe, including humans (if they survive), should also leave it?if they want to make it.

The megacivilizations are monitoring, controlling, and guiding to some extent the development of organisms and intelligence in this life cycle of our Universe. It is possible that the Universe (the Earth, too) is visited periodically by some M.I. in order to take all sorts of samples, including specimen of intelligent life forms.

But why don't these almighty creatures show up? Why don't superior intelligences contact us in an open manner or officially? They have their good reasons for that. Hoping for more clarity and a better solution, I consider the Fermi paradox in two aspects:

1. Why don't we have hard evidence for intelligent life inhabiting our Universe?

2. Why don't the megacivilizations outside of our Universe show up? They have the technological means to do that.

Debating the Fermi paradox, only the first aspect of it is usually taken into account?why don't we have solid evidence for intelligent life inhabiting our Universe? The equal start hypothesis is a possible answer.

I often asked myself one simple question: Why are there in the Universe intelligent creatures at such a low level of evolution like humans, considering first, the enormous time since the beginning of the All, not only these humble 13.7 billion years since the origin of our Universe, but the countless time before that; and second, taking into account the incredible vastness of the Being, our Universe is only one of numerous worlds? It seems obvious to us that evolution should produce much higher intelligence during this immense time period.

Humans patently aren't the pinnacle of development of all matter, life, intelligence, or whatever. The anthropic principle is a very self-misleading hypothesis.
Anthropocentric ideas regard humans as a central fact of the Universe and assume that Homo sapiens are the final aim and end of the All. It views and interprets everything in terms of human values and experience.

The simplest form of the anthropic principle claims that God created the Universe for us, humans; however, some religions and lores accept that there are many worlds in the All, inhabited by various creatures; hence, they reject the anthropocentric approach when interpreting universal principles.

The anthropic cosmological principle states that the natural laws, constants, and basic structures of our Universe are not completely arbitrary?instead, they are constrained by requirements that allow the existence of humans. The word anthropic derives from the Greek anthropikós which means human.

Humans are puffed up with imaginary self-importance. Most of the scholars can't give up the term anthropic. Now, there are several anthropic principles: weak anthropic principle, strong anthropic principle, final anthropic principle, individual anthropic principle, participatory anthropic principle, etc. Researchers coined the term "observer," realizing that humans can't be final aim and the end of the Universe; hence, adding the word anthropic to some ultimate universal principle is hugely misleading (actually totally wrong).

The dog barking and running around your backyard is an observer, too. Universe "designed" with the goal of generating and sustaining "dogs"? Personally, I doubt it.
Then the term was changed and the observer became intelligent. The intelligent observer principle (or the sapiens principle) for sure is an incorrect term, too. The ancient shepherds were intelligent observers, they could heal their sheep, knew stories, poems, and myths, had their cosmology, some could read, and so on. But the Universe (that capricious, grand old lady) didn't stop developing when reaching its final goal: generating the intelligent shepherd. Instead, it is galloping further at full speed. Obviously, intelligent observing is not enough. Maybe we should add creation, participation in creation, acquiring new knowledge? Not enough, too. Even now, humans are creating a lot of new things. What about great scientific discoveries? Presently, we are only assimilating the knowledge stored in the vector during previous evolutionary cycles of the Universe. The so-called big scientific discoveries could be actually transmitted from the vector to scientists who are prepared to understand them. At that very moment, billions of scientists in our Universe are discovering the same theories human scholars are finding out on Earth. Billions of Einsteins rediscovered the theory of relativity; actually they got it from the vector. Pretty humiliating idea! One of the many tasks of the vector is to educate us. Now the sentient beings in our Universe (biological or not) are more like (bio)robots which are created, organized, controlled, educated, etc. by the vector. You don't like the idea? I don?t like it either, but I would prefer to accept the truth, instead of some self-misleading puffy belief about the great importance of human and alien creatures consciously exploring Nature to the full extent. I also like the notion that we are intelligent, self-governing, originative, independent, creative, and self-sustaining creatures, but is it true?

Bitter facts are better than self-misleading illusions or doctrines if one is going to explore the world. Comforting lies have nothing to do with research.

We still don't have enough knowledge about the evolution of Matter, Life, and Intelligence to get a clear picture about the future of the Universe and can't draw realistic scientific conclusions about ultimate or final universal principles. We can only speculate.

The most probable answer to the seemingly simple question "Why are there in the Universe intelligent creatures at such a low level of evolution like humans?" could be that Matter, Life, and Intelligence develop in cycles and are arranged in suitable agglomerates. Now we are at the low stages of such a cycle of development in our present agglomerate, the Universe. We can access only our agglomerate. The creatures inhabiting more advanced agglomerates can access the lower ones and are guiding them to some extent.
The development of our Universe is the longest evolutionary cycle we know. According to modern science, it would last up to one hundred billion years. The developing universes might be subjected to an endless series of evolutionary cycles.

What's the point of development in cycles? Why is Mother Nature repeating itself periodically? Can we observe such cycles on Earth?

Cycles are an inevitable part of evolving Matter, Life, and Intelligence. A cycle can last the whole life of a universe, but there are also a great number of shorter cycles: year, day, biological cycles of the human body, etc. Everything (matter or living creatures) is subject to cycles. Humans are also exposed to many individual cycles, but the most important one (from an evolutionary point of view) is: birth, life in competitive environment in order for the specimens to develop as much as possible, transferring the gathered information, the genetic one through the DNA; the acquired practical and scientific knowledge through education - to the next generation, and death. Generations and universes are following the same pattern. Generation after generation humans are becoming more developed and sophisticated. Cycle after cycle the universes are producing more advanced intelligences.

The megacivilizations from previous evolutionary cycles are superbeings in comparison to us, but they still can't change the established global process of creation and evolution. Our Universe is like some kind of gigantic womb reproducing megaintelligences. Maybe in the future there will be other means of reproduction and evolution of intelligent beings, but the main principles will remain the same, at least for a very long time.

But why don't the megacivilizations show up? Because they want to get offspring from our Universe; healthy, intelligent, competitive. The megacivilizations must play their competitive games, too: among them there should also be winners and losers. Leaving their dying universes, the megaintelligences don?t enter some sort of paradise, but another completive world which shows no mercy when it comes to evolution.

World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and many wars back in time stimulated very much the development of science and technologies. There are enough studies on the subject. Believe it or not, like it or not, wars are one of the main motors of evolution and the development of sciences and technologies. They are the highest degree of competition. But we don't like wars, no matter how productive they are. We want to live in peace and in good health as long as possible. If the mighty megacivilizations show up, we would ask them to stop the wars, which would actually reduce the level of competition. But this is against the interests of the megaintelligences, because evolution becomes much slower and the end product of the Universe?actually the offspring any M.I. is waiting for?would develop below expectations.

If the superior megacivilizations show up, we would ask them also to prolong our lives. They have the know-how: humans could live 10,000 years or longer in perfect health?no cancer, no heart attacks?there are thousands of life-threatening diseases. But on the other hand, poor health, numerous illnesses, and short life expectancy are mighty stimuli for humans to develop medicine, science, and technology which in turn accelerate evolution. There are also other similar reasons why the megacivilizations don't openly visit in open manner civilizations like ours.

The megacivilizations are also guiding to some extent the evolution of intelligence in our Universe and in other universes, and they fully agree with what they watch on Earth and on other planets?they see numerous healthy space races developing quickly, exactly as they expect. They should be satisfied because their offspring will be more advanced compared to the newborns from the previous evolutionary cycle of the Universe. Just as we expect the next human generation to be more developed than the previous; we are making our best efforts to ensure that our kids get a better education, are more healthy, and so on, so that they will be better than us in everything.

Maybe the megacivilizations are guided as well, and there might be some sort of multilevel creation and control.
The megaintelligences are not going to save us from the benefits of competition; benefits from their point of view, that are only disasters for us. They do not intend to prolong our lives (we should take care of this) or to solve the poverty problem (another mighty stimulus), to stop the wars and crimes, and so further. The story of the Savior that all are waiting for is just a myth, giving us hope for better days. It is counterproductive, for if it becomes a reality, it would slow down evolution. But the Final Judgment is a reality which humanity will inevitably face. Not all space civilizations will get to go on existing further.
The megacivilizations are furtively guiding us, together with the vector, in a highly clandestine manner, revealing their presence to us through mythology, religions, parapsychological manifestations, etc. Their goal is: numerous intelligent species, developing as fast as possible.
Humans are still alive because they aren't here: the extraterrestrials from our Universe, their robotic probes, and the alien microbes. In order to produce huge numbers of sound space civilizations, the vector keeps them separated by huge cosmic distances. The equal start of advanced sentient life forms in such a great developing Universe gives these species the chance for survival and progress.
When potentially dangerous manned spacecrafts, von Neumann probes, Popoff machines, or alien life forms come into the Solar System, a reliable space defense system would be a matter of life and death.

The lifesaving immune system is a complex network of interacting cells, cell products, and cell-forming tissues protecting the living body from pathogens and other foreign substances. It destroys infected and malignant cells and removes them. There is no other way for the living organism to survive. Seconds after the immune system stops working, the body begins to decompose.

In the near future, humans should begin to build up a reliable space defense system?a complex network of interacting humans, software, and machines, protecting our present habitat, the Solar System, from pathogens, quasi-alive forms, machines, and any alien life forms which could pose a threat to the terrestrial life or would change our environment. There is no other way to survive.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
- Ecclesiastes
circa 350 B.C.

Best Regards and clear skies,
Alexander Popoff
write_alexander@yahoo.com
www.popoff.site.tripod.com

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Copyright © 2006, Alexander Popoff
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