[Server-sky] Where Are They? Economic answer to the Fermi Paradox

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 02:40:18PM -0700, Keith Lofstrom wrote:

> Talking with aliens?  If Ward and Brownlee are right, they are far

Dropping by in person is as expensive as talking.

> away.  Given the speed of light and the discount rate, we probably
> will never make the sustained effort.  Sigh.

Economy is a special case of ecology. Ecology doesn't care
about ROI, but about escaping population pressure into new
niches. Any technological civilization will create an expanding
wave of pioneers which select for expansiveness across
even moderate (few insterstellar hops) distances.
The successor organism waves transform stellar systems
into ~AU FIR emitters, which are very visible on sufficient
scale.
 
> http://server-sky.com/WhereAreThey
> 
> This isn't directly server sky related, except in the sense that
> server sky Dyson Shell Edition will be a tradeoff between 
> economic efficiency and the time discount rate.  We will someday
> exploit nearby stars for supplemental computation power, but we
> are unlikely to exploit distant stars.  The results will be too
> long in arriving.  Which is a bummer, but it may explain the
> Fermi paradox.