we could be the oldest civilization in the Galaxy

On 1/25/07, William wrote:
(...)
> 1. They are not interested in us: planetary and stellar-system sized
> minds.

That goes into the post-Singularity scenario that I mentioned in
another message.

(...)
> Such an entity would have no more interest in talking to us than we
> would in "talking" to an amoeba. It could run simulations of us and/or
> observe us from afar with solar-system sized telescopes, to know
> everything about us it would need to know.

That's not true - there are physical limitations on what can be
learned from scopes. If such an entity was interested in really
learning everything about us, it would have to send probes here.

However, given strong nanotech, we wouldn't even notice that we are
being watched by an alien probe. The "probe" would hit earth like a
meteor and "infect" the planet with a network of nanomachines. Those
would gather information (probably even from the inner workings of our
minds) and in time they would regroup, form another probe and send it
back to the mother entity.

> Interstellar expansion for these entities is not very profitable,
> because the huge distances between stellar systems makes data
> transmission very slow.

On the other hand those entities would be eternal and completely
inhuman, and so issues of slowness would hardly have any meaning for
them. Besides, interstellar communication just has huge latency times,
but you can get vast bandwidths using data transportation probes.

> 2. They don't expand into the galaxy, because they won't need to:
> expansion into "inner space" (cyberspace).
(...)

The vastness of those cyberspaces would however be ultimately limited
by the amount of available hardware, and at some point even converting
the entire "cold" matter of a solar system in computronium may not be
enough. At that point those creatures/minds/uploads/whatever would
think that perhaps expanding to somewhere else is a good idea.

> 3. They don't expand into the galaxy, because there are more
> interesting places to go: other universes.
>
> According to certain theories in physics, there are other universes.
> Using wormholes a sufficiently advanced technology could tunnel into
> these, or even create them with properties more sanguine for life
> than this one.

That's an interesting alternative, though highly speculative at this point.

BTW, it is interesting to note that a Universe that only allows
creation of wormholes going to other space-time continuums is also a
Universe that guarantees chronology protection.

> 4. They don't expand into the galaxy, because they have evolved value
> systems beyond ours that are non-expansive.
(...)

Well, as many posts have already hinted here, that seems highly
unlikely, given that Darwinian competition eventually always breaks up
conservationist civilizations/species/whatever.