The point is, well before folks who could feel "boredom" passed by us, their self-replicating probes would have landed here, many thousand, million or billion years prior. And they would have harassed our planet to depletion, since they are dumb and drone-like. Even if a meteor somehow extinguished them, by then they would have launched themselves into all of the solar system, and by chance would land here again. Given time and randomness, these probes are like radio waves; they get everywhere once set in motion. Thus we can assume they were never set in motion.
When I'm visiting Japan I don't have to "probe" them. It es enough to take some pictures and leave. Like Star Trek, maybe they had some guidelines on their journey to us that stopped them from interfering with the history of our planet. And maybe they didn't even need our resources or "probe" the entire universe in the first place, because they invented a new way to create materials directly out of matter and anti-matter, without the hassle of mining the universe. The 'self-replicating probe' factor is just a theory by a human scientist from earth. Just because evolution may happen someplace else, that doesn't have to imply that all intelligent life ticks and reasons ultimately the same. Everything is just a big 'if this than that' logic, where every part of the theory can be trashed. Until now the human race can only reason with our own brain. More advanced life forms could reason with endlessly intelligent A.I. and could come to completely different conclusions. For example if it is a good strategy to visit or be detected by primitive animal life forms like us. Maybe they want just obverse us, like Bostrom mentioned.
> When I'm visiting Japan I don't have to "probe" them. It es enough to take some pictures and leave.
Using a transport infrastructure whose effects can be seen across the galaxy.
A theory of advanced races who have different sensibilities misses the point. What matters are the ones that have a growth and expansion sensibility. The first one of them to arise will conquer the galaxy.
The problem with the original argument (if I read it correctly) is that Bostrom assumes that the "growth and expansion sensibility" is a near certainty and that lack of evidence of this type of civilization, and the fact that we exist (as compared to having previously been 'harvested'), means that life does not exist elsewhere.
However, what everyone else in this thread has been saying, is that his conclusion (that no life exists elsewhere) is wrong because there are number of other possible explanations as to why we don't see evidence of this civilization. A quick summary of some of those arguments:
1. The expansion that Bostrom assumes is inevitable is actually physically impossible at the scale he describes.
2. It is possible that we are actually a by product of that expansion (DNA being the 'self-replicating' robot).
3. The expansion is happening, but hasn't reached us yet.
4. No other civilization has reached such an advanced stage yet (it is entirely possible that our 4.5 billion years was an extremely and uniquely fast time for evolution to intelligent life)
5. Super-intelligent civilizations come to conclusions that expansion is not a productive or useful undertaking.
While it is possible that life doesn't exist elsewhere (or at least intelligent life), it is by no means the natural conclusion to Bostrom's hypothesis.
6. The expansion is complete, and they are conservationists with an eye for subtlety.
I favor this possibility. Fledgling expansionists cannot know if they are wards of conservationists who have spent the past billion years developing spying technology and culling weapons. On a game theoretic basis, every sensible fledgling expanionist, even the first one in the universe, should reasonably act as if a living god is judging them.
