Look Out, It's Coming

 

We Will Meet Our Betters

Avi Loeb in Scientific American: "If the Perseverance rover finds evidence for microbes on Mars, our self-esteem will not be affected since it is obvious that we are more intelligent than they are. But if the rover bumps into the wreckage of a spacecraft far more advanced than we ever produced, our ego will be challenged."

We WILL find evidence of life with science and tech incomprehensibly ahead of where we are now. Maybe not tomorrow, or the next decades, or the next centuries. (Too bad we don't live long enough to catch more of these rare events.) But it is inevitable. They may be so far superior to us they will seem like giant gods.

Hey, Fellas. Look at this little blue one.

Probably a giant metal mind, probabilities be told.

Biological creatures, at least on oxygen planets, are vulnerable to death and decay, even with great technology. Artificial intelligence will inevitably evolve into superintelligence. At that juncture SI will prevail, either with or without the biological intelligences' participation. 

So the evidence we find that there are hotter shots than us will likely be a shake and howdy with a super thing. Might be ten billion years old. We probably are as interesting to it as a new ant bed in the driveway is to a globe trotting myrmecologist.

First Impact on Humankind of Confirmation of Other Intelligent Beings

By

HistoryFet Ludwig Armour

In the year 1564 PA, terraforming teams on the planet to be named Earth VIII found irrefutable evidence of an ancient civilization. Engineers drilling into the crust of the planet made the archeological find of the centuries. The question of “other intelligent beings” was settled, although the millions of years since that civilization's death left too few clues to understand much more than that these creatures had technology. The surviving tech artifacts were incomprehensible, a disturbing challenge to scientific confidence.

The discovery was a profound shock to humanity and the social disruptions took decades to settle down. From the storms of cult formation, the rebirth of militarism and the widespread psychological pandemic labeled Alienfear, it was obvious that humans were not really prepared for First Contact.  [From A Reluctant God by good old me.]

CONCLUSION    From Scientific American and heavyweights like Avi Loeb to Science Fiction like mine and hundreds of others', there is consensus that we will definitely meet godlike entities from super civilizations.  And you know how bullet proof consensuses are these days.

Are you ready?