Predicting what technology might be like in a century or even thousands of years from
now is an exercise in informed guesses.
For example, someone during the US civil war could not have predicted that a century later
the atom would be harnessed and nuclear weapons would exist that hold the potential of ending
civilization.
They simply had no basis from which to predict that.
But on the other hand, the idea that one could travel to the moon was on the table, especially
with the work of Jules Verne who wrote From the Earth to the Moon in 1865.
He expected someday people would travel to the moon, but he couldn’t have predicted
that it would happen just over a hundred years later.
Because we have advanced so much in so little of a period of time, it can be imagined that
we may have a very long way to go as far as technological development goes, both with
things we can foresee, such as Dyson swarms, and things we cannot foresee.
The latter is the spooky part of technology.
Entire speculative technologies remain largely unexplored by us, such as the full implications
of nanotechnology.
We have begun the journey, but we don't know what the destination will be.
And then there are completely unknown future technologies that we don’t even know the
science for yet.
Remember, huge gaps exist in our understanding of the cosmos, and the fact that general relativity
and quantum mechanics do not line up, yet both predict correctly, tells us that there’s
missing physics there.
We have pieces of a puzzle, but we don’t know how many others are missing.
This may mean that there are very, very dangerous technologies that await us in our future that
we have not envisioned yet.
Remember, while going to the moon was foretold in the 1860’s, the nuclear weapon was not.
For that, you have to fast forward to 1914 and H.G. Wells’ novel the world set free.
So humanity’s greatest technological existential threat, the idea of nuclear war, basically
developed out of nowhere and very rapidly.
This could happen again.
But so far, we’ve only done things that affect this planet.
Is it possible that there are technologies out there so dangerous that they could affect
entire galaxies, or even the universe?
The answer is, could be.
There are a number of ideas that have been advanced regarding galaxy threatening machines.
Most famously is the paper clip maker, where someone builds a machine with a specific purpose,
to make paperclips, and it somehow escapes and starts turning the entire galaxy into
paperclips.
Another would be self-replicating probes with no governor on their reproduction that literally
eat the galaxy making it into copies of themselves.
Another class of galactic threats would be generalized highly advanced artificial intelligence
that might choose to eradicate all biology, or subjugate it, or alter it wherever it finds
it.
And then there are the unknowns of the universe itself.
As I mentioned in a recent video, the universe may not exist at its lowest possible energy
state and if it ever dropped in energy state, it would send out a shockwave at the speed
of light that would destroy all matter in the universe in the form we know it.
Is it possible with a complete enough picture of physics, for someone to do the wrong experiment
and set that off?
The answer is probably not, but it’s in such an unclear area of physics that it can’t
yet be ruled out.
And that presents a dilemma.
If a civilization can pose a galactic threat, then how do you prevent it from happening?
And that leads us to what I call the Alien Police Action Scenario.
This is somewhat of a variant of the zoo hypothesis, but is more specific in that once you know
such far ranging threats are possible, then it makes sense to police the galaxy and anyone
getting close to these technologies must either be alerted not to do it, or be outright forcibly
stopped.
Think of it like this.
You’re sitting on your porch watching the world go by.
You’ll see police cars regularly that are generally patrolling, but unless you’re
obviously breaking the law they pay no particular attention to you.
They just pass by going about their patrol.
But if you were stealing your neighbor’s barbeque and dragging it back to your property
as your neighbor yells for the police, then the police will stop and you will cease stealing
it.
This may be how the galaxy works.
There are police probes sitting in inhabited star systems that monitor the technological
progress of developing civilizations.
They remain hidden, much like a traffic patrol policeman might, until they see you doing
something or reaching a level of technology that requires their intervention for the safety
of the entire galaxy.
Your own safety on the other hand, may be of little interest.
If you want to do something that causes your own extinction, then that’s not the galaxy’s
problem and you are left alone to do as you will.
Go beyond that, and you get stopped.
What this monitoring and intervention situation might look like is an interesting area of
speculation.
To invoke good cop bad cop, it could be a mix where police probes from multiple civilizations
are present, some forgiving, some not, and it merely depends on who gets to you first.
Or, if the first probe that makes contact peacefully and gives a cease and desist is
ignored, then the second probe is more forceful.
If you still don’t stop, you meet your extinction at the hands of an aggressive alien civilization
police probe.
Or it could be a singular all powerful probe sent by all civilizations in cooperation to
enforce the galactic safety laws.
It could simply outright eradicate or downshift any threatening civilization.
Or if the offending technological development is a product of conflict on a planet, the
probe may act as a mediator in the dispute to avoid the development altogether and then
adapt a trust but verify stance with the civilization knowing that at all times there is a death
probe sitting in their star system.
Another scenario here takes it from a different perspective.
There may be a further function of a police probe above technological monitoring.
It could also be providing protection.
If such a probe were found to be armed to the teeth far beyond anything needed to destroy
or reset your civilization, then why?
It can stop you from developing weaponry to equal it very early on, so there would need
to be another reason.
You would then have to ask, is that weaponry present for your own protection?
Then you have to ask just what is it protecting you from.
These are always the spookiest Fermi Paradox scenarios because it implies the existence
of something out there that is malevolent, and you need to be protected from it.
The probe becomes a sentinel waiting for something from the blackness of space to attack, and
it would then come alive to defend you.
Perhaps in the time that the probe has been present, which could be millions of years,
that threat may have been defeated by the galaxy.
Or vice versa, and the armed probe’s creators are long gone, and the probe is no match for
this enemy.
Or the probe may be more than a match for the enemy.
Imagine the first civilization to ever arise in the galaxy going through mistakes and learning
the pitfalls and benefits of millions of years of technological development.
Imagine that they’ve seen it all, fought other civilizations in technology development
wars, and ultimately made themselves the police of the galaxy.
Maybe this happens in all galaxies with intelligent life, where one overlord civilization develops
and manages the rest, not in their own internal affairs, but in interstellar affairs.
Perhaps all diplomacy between worlds is mediated by this safety police to eliminate the possibility
of warfare.
But the really spooky part of this scenario is that we may be in this situation without
even knowing it.
It’s highly unlikely, but not zero.
I’ve speculated on this channel before about von Neumann, Benford and Bracewell probes.
Any of those ideas can be applied here for a police probe.
Basically a probe could do two things to monitor us.
It could do it passively, say from somewhere inside the solar system, or perhaps ideally
disguised on the surface of the moon.
If it was sufficiently camouflaged and presented only instrumentation for monitoring smaller
than the best resolution of our cameras, then it could remain hidden indefinitely just waiting
for us to break the galactic law.
The other is that it could be actively monitoring us much closer and we’ve at large dropped
the ball and missed it.
Such a probe could produce atmospheric probes to dip into the atmosphere and take a closer
look at our activities, or indeed do comprehensive scientific studies of all earth life.
People have often made the point that we would be like ants to an alien civilization and
they wouldn’t care about us.
But the reality is that we’re interested in ants in two ways.
First there are scientists here on earth that specialize in ants, and we’ve cataloged
a huge amount of information about them.
Ants are interesting, to the point that we use ant farms as educational tools and for
fun.
But we also intervene when we find ants where they are not welcome, such as the kitchen.
If the ants go too far, knowingly or not, the ants must go.
Therefore even if we aren’t at the technological level an alien civilization is at, they may
still be keenly interested in us.
And this is where the UAP phenomenon may come into play.
The idea of a probe sitting in the solar system studying us and manufacturing smaller atmospheric
probes is the most plausible path to an alien explanation for the UAP phenomenon.
Now I must note here, that I suspect that this is a matter of phenomena, plural, and
there will be multiple explanations as to their origin and I am skeptical that it will
involve alien life.
And some may remain forever unexplained, but at least now there are efforts such as the
Galileo Project to try to unravel the causes.
But there is a plausible way for there to be an alien presence here.
Whether there actually is one is an entirely different matter.
But if so, what if their reason for being here is a police action.
Are we being watched?
Thanks for listening!
I am futurist and science fiction author John Michael Godier currently answering the question
of why I’ve been releasing so much content lately.
Behold, the new Event Horizon and JMG channel studio.
It has increased efficiency greatly because it’s nowhere near my playstation 4, and
also happy halloween and I’m currently eyeing my pumpkin suspiciously.
ANNA carved it and it’s just a bunch of ones and zeroes cut into a pumpkin.
I suspect it means some new machiavellian diet is coming and be sure to check out my
books at your favorite online book retailer and subscribe to my channels for regular,
in-depth explorations into the interesting, weird and unknown aspects of this amazing
universe in which we live.