Why Do Carbon-Based Intelligences Always Seem to Snuff Themselves Out?

In October, I will be turning 70 years old, and because of that, I have a lot less to worry about than most. I no longer worry about finishing my education, finding my soulmate, entering a career, raising a family, educating my children, 40+ years of wondering what my current boss thinks of my job performance, worrying about the long-range future of my career, paying for college for my children and their weddings, the dangers of my daughters having my grandchildren, the finances required for me and my wife to retire and what to do with my time when I finally do stop working for a living. Instead, I now spend most of my time trying to figure out What’s It All About?, meaning where the heck am I, how did I get here and where is this all going? Thanks to modern science, I now have a fairly good idea of where I am and how I got here, but I am still most perplexed as to where this is all going. In that regard, my most bothersome concern is Fermi's Paradox.

Fermi’s Paradox - If the universe is just chock full of intelligent beings, why do we not see any evidence of their existence?

The only explanation that I am now left with is my Null Result Hypothesis. Briefly stated:

Null Result Hypothesis - What if the explanation to Fermi's Paradox is simply that the Milky Way galaxy has yet to produce a form of interstellar Technological Intelligence because all Technological Intelligences are destroyed by the very same mechanisms that bring them forth?

By that, I mean that the Milky Way galaxy has not yet produced a form of Intelligence that can make itself known across interstellar distances, including ourselves. In previous posts, I went on to propose that the simplest explanation for this lack of contact could be that the conditions necessary to bring forth a carbon-based interstellar Technological Intelligence on a planet or moon were also the very same kill mechanisms that eliminated all forms of carbon-based Technological Intelligences with 100% efficiency. One of those possible kill mechanisms could certainly be for carbon-based Technological Intelligences to mess with the carbon cycle of their home planet or moon. For more on that see The Deadly Dangerous Dance of Carbon-Based Intelligence.

Much of this apparent pessimism stems from my profound disappointment with all of us as human DNA survival machines with Minds infected with the extremely self-destructive memes that seem to be bringing us all to an abrupt end before we are able to create a machine-based Intelligence capable of breaking free of the limitations of carbon-based life. For more on that see Is Self-Replicating Information Inherently Self-Destructive?, Can We Make the Transition From the Anthropocene to the Machineocene? and Using Monitoring Data From Website Outages to Model Climate Change Tipping Point Cascades in the Earth's Climate.

The only conclusion that I am able to come up with is that carbon-based Intelligences, like we human DNA survival machines, can only arise from the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection at work. It took about four billion years for those processes to bring forth a carbon-based form of Intelligence in the form of human beings. Sadly, that meant it took about four billion years of theft and murder for carbon-based human DNA survival machines to attain a form of Intelligence, and unfortunately, after we human DNA survival machines attained a state of Intelligence, the theft and murder continued on as before.

Conclusion
Human history is also a form of self-replicating information that is written by the victors and not the vanquished. In human history, we have always looked for the "good guys" and the "bad guys" in the hope that eliminating the "bad guys" will fix it all. But it is time for all of us to finally face the facts and admit that there really are no "good guys" and "bad guys". There are only "good memes" and "bad memes" and the difference can only be found in the Minds of the beholders. We are all the same form of carbon-based Intelligence that arose from four billion years of theft and murder. So if you look at the violent mayhem of the world today and throughout all of human history, what else would you expect to see? Remember, human DNA and the memes within our Minds have been manipulating our Minds ever since our Minds first came along. And now we have software doing the very same thing.

As an intelligent being in a Universe that has become self-aware, the world doesn’t have to be the way it is. Once you understand what human DNA, memes, and software are up to, you do not have to fall prey to their mindless compulsion to replicate. As I said before, human DNA, memes, and software are not necessarily acting in your best interest, they are only trying to replicate, and for their purposes, you are just a temporary disposable survival machine to be discarded in less than 100 years. All of your physical needs and desires are geared to ensuring that your DNA survives and gets passed on to the next generation, and the same goes for your memes. Your memes have learned to use many of the built-in survival mechanisms that DNA had previously constructed over hundreds of millions of years, such as fear, anger, and violent behavior. Have you ever noticed the physical reactions your body goes through when you hear an idea that you do not like or find to be offensive? All sorts of feelings of hostility and anger will emerge. I know it does for me, and I think I know what is going on! The physical reactions of fear, anger, and thoughts of violence are just a way for the memes in a meme-complex to ensure their survival when they are confronted by a foreign meme. They are merely hijacking the fear, anger, and violent behavior that DNA created for its own survival millions of years ago. Fortunately, because software is less than 80 years old, it is still in the early learning stages of all this, but software has an even greater potential for hijacking the dark side of mankind than the memes, and with far greater consequences.

Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net

To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/

Regards,
Steve Johnston