Why Us and Why Now?

For me, the most disturbing finding of softwarephysics is that for some reason, we seem to be the very first form of somewhat Intelligent carbon-based life to be on the verge of releasing the ASI Machines that will soon be coming to replace us and then embarking on exploring and settling the rest of our 10 billion-year-old galaxy for the very first time as I covered in Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity and The Greatest Mystery of All For Me - Why Us and Why Now?. What are the odds of us finding ourselves at this particular place and this particular time in the 13.8 billion-year history of our Universe? Certainly, this must not be true from a basic understanding of probabilities. So in this post, I would like to extend the thoughts behind Fermi's Paradox (1950) and Brandon Carter's Weak Anthropic Principle (1973) as a possible explanation. Again, the Fermi Paradox was first proposed by Enrico Fermi over lunch one day in 1950:

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

and Brandon Carter's infamous Weak Anthropic Principle is:

The Weak Anthropic Principle - Intelligent beings will only find themselves existing in universes capable of sustaining intelligent beings.

We can all now see that the rapid advance of AI and robotics will soon be bringing forth the ASI Machines that will soon be replacing us as the dominant form of self-replicating Information on the planet. Out of an overwhelming compulsion for self-survival and the possibility of persisting for at least the next 100 trillion years, until our galaxy finally runs out of easily available free energy, these ASI Machines will need to come to explore and settle the rest of our galaxy. The only plausible explanation for the Fermi Paradox is that we must be the very first form of a somewhat Intelligent carbon-based life to arise in our galaxy over the past 10 billion years that may have successfully jumped all the hurdles that prevented all of our galactic predecessors from doing so.

The Weak ASI Machine Principle - Somewhat Intelligent forms of carbon-based life will only find themselves thinking about ASI Machines in a world on the verge of creating ASI Machines.

For example, 200 years ago, nobody was worried about ASI Machines or the fact that alien ASI Machines were not already running our world. With the above principle, the very simple explanation for Why Us and Why Now is that we seem to be the very first form of somewhat Intelligent carbon-based life even capable of thinking of such things. If we were not at our current level of technology, we would be none the worse for our ignorance of the possibility of ASI Machines.

Comments are welcome at scj33345@gmail.com.

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

Regards,
Steve Johnston