We live on a planet with unbelievable biodiversity.
There are insects with six legs, polar bears, sharks, opossums and eagles.
Evolution on this world has taken so many different bioforms that we don’t even know
about all of them yet, and indeed new species are found in the fossil record at breakneck
speed with some years showing tens of discoveries of new extinct macrofauna species.
But what created this biodiversity was evolution, and essentially natural trial and error.
But we also know that species tend to be adapted for their environmental conditions, and while
earth provides many different environments, it’s also easy to envision environments
that could exist on life hosting exoplanets very different from earth.
A good example here would be life on a planet orbiting a red dwarf.
If such a planet hosted photosynthesizing life, it would very likely be a different
color than our predominantly green foliage.
In fact, black foliage might be more common in the universe than green if plant analogues
are a common feature of life in the universe in general.
On the other hand, one can also envision a planet that took a very different path, and
cannot produce anything like a land plant.
The reason for this is that on earth to pave the way so to speak for plant life, some scientists
think that a preceding age of giant towering funguses were needed to break down the rocky
surface of earth and begin to create soil.
Given that there is such a huge palette from which nature has to create different species
and bioforms, then future technology mimicking nature may be able to do far more.
This means custom creating new species tailored not so much for their environment as happens
in nature, but for a task.
Most notable here would be altered humans, genetically adapted to better live in space
habitats or on the surface of Mars.
This is a kind of artificial evolution, and it’s basically already begun.
Being the lords of evolution through our technology allows us to do some things that don’t really
happen in nature.
One of these would be deextinction, we now are entering a phase where we can bring back
past animals that met extinction, most famously in the various plans to try to bring back
the mammoth.
This can only go so far however, you need fresh DNA samples, so only recently extinct
species are on the table for this technique.
You can bring back a mammoth, maybe, but you can’t bring back a dinosaur.
Any genetic information you might glean has long fallen apart, and most of it is simply
eradicated and replaced with stone fossils.
But not all, there have been reports of dinosaur soft tissue, basically bits of collagen, left
in some particularly well preserved fossils.
But this is a rare phenomenon at best, and will not yield the quality of tissue needed
for de-extinction.
But there is another way, and that is building a genome from the ground up.
This is beyond our capabilities currently, but there should be no reason that we couldn’t
recreate the genome of a dinosaur with a complete enough understanding of genetics, how to alter
genetics, and how to determine what genes perform what function and what the outcome
is.
And we need to have a solidly complete picture of what that dinosaur’s physiology was like.
We’re a long way from that, but it is in principle possible in the far future.
And this has some very spooky effects.
In science fiction, we often think in terms of soft science fiction as a sort of fantasy
like Star Wars where one has to suspend their disbelief to enjoy the story.
On the other side of things is hard science fiction, based on solid scientific principles
with less liberties taken for artistic license.
A good example here are most of the books by Arthur C. Clarke.
Or if you will, it’s the difference between this would be fun if it could happen, versus
this is fun because this actually could happen, which is my own playground as a writer.
But in the field of genetic manipulation, you get into territory where that line gets
blurred.
In addition to reconstructing a dinosaur or an extinct species, you could create things
that never existed at all.
This includes mythical and fictional artificial species.
You could create such things as unicorns, werewolves, doppelgangers, vampires and just
about anything you can imagine.
So long as it's biologically possible and viable, and can be sustained with whatever
environment it’s designed for, it can in principle be done.
Custom genetic ground up design could make some aspects of fantasy come alive.
But there’s also the question of ethics and the fact that we really don’t need functioning
immortal vampires running around.
Here we get into a Frankenstein-like world of abominations being 3d printed, essentially
as cultural living toys to make fantasy come alive.
This very likely won’t happen, I don’t think you could get anywhere close to it without
massive amounts of funding for a scheme that’s ultimately both improbable to work right,
dangerous and very likely ultimately unprofitable.
But there is one area where this sort of thing might be done in the far future.
This also represents an excellent way to explore the universe.
It doesn’t make much practical sense to jump in a spaceship, spend 80 years on it
traveling to the nearest star system, and then step off as an elderly person.
The vastness of the universe poses a huge challenge to humans that live only a finite
amount of time.
This becomes less of a problem with life extension technologies, but there may be hard brick
walls in that and there may be an upper limit on how long a human can live no matter the
life extension techniques employed.
This is a particular problem with human lungs, but I’ll save that for a future video.
So space is vast, and it may be that only machines or very long lived aliens ever try
to cross it.
But a 3d printer can, and given the raw materials, a ridiculously advanced von Neumann 3d printer
could populate the galaxy and print out living examples of the aliens that sent them out.
This could be done to colonize exoplanets for example, or for interstellar diplomacy.
You print out a diplomat complete with the memories of the original back home, perhaps
even tailored to the new environment it is to function in, and you can basically populate
the galaxy with your representatives without ever having to leave the comfort of home.
But you could also create spies.
Aliens that are in every way identical to the species they are interacting with.
Hypothetically speaking, if this were to happen here, you would end up with aliens that look
identical to humans, in every way except what’s in their minds.
In this scenario, one species creates doppelgangers of another in order to either spy on them,
or subvert them.
Once you knew that something was wrong, that aliens were present in your star system, you
could never rule this out.
This would lead to a strange scenario where you know there is alien technology in your
star system, a 3d printer, but even if it appeared to be doing nothing and not interacting
with you, you could never tell if it wasn’t infiltrating your world with doppelgangers
indistinguishable from members of your own species.
We do this to a certain extent on earth, where we create decoys for hunting to trick animals.
Or to drive them off, there have been studies to determine if things like scarecrows and
owl decoys actually do scare small animals and keep them away from gardens and agricultural
fields, and it turns out that they do work, at least until the animals figure out the
ruse.
And, that could happen to us.
Envision a scenario where an alien civilization simply wants to keep us off its turf, and
creates technosignatures that make them seem unbelievably scary and something we don’t
want to go near, when in fact the reality is that the aliens are unarmed.
Or they could use custom created living scarecrows to announce their presence to an exoplanet
and then manipulate the species native to it.
But there is another way to accomplish the interaction with aliens, or for that matter
vampires that does not require a 3d printer, rather the advancement of currently existing
technology.
It’s virtual reality, and while it’s not totally seamless in its current form, you
still know that there’s a world out there and the trick of virtual reality still falls
apart when you remember it’s not real, it’s also possible that this technology can become
so all encompassing, likely through direct brain to computer interfaces, which are being
developed, that you simply can’t tell the difference between what’s real, and what
isn’t.
Our brains already do this in the form of dreaming and hallucinations.
This is spooky, because if it proves possible to interface the brain with technology, it
may also be possible to make use of the brain’s ability to suspend disbelief as it sometimes
does during dreaming.
Absurd dreams can seem very real until you wake up, the brain already has this ability,
opening the way potentially for dream manipulation or even implanting.
Think in the future, you might be able to rent virtual dreams as one might rent a movie
on a streaming service.
Or even rent a nightmare if you’re so inclined.
As a result, in a virtual world, anything becomes possible, the laws of physics and
living in reality no longer matter and anything becomes possible, but with your sense of disbelief
completely suspended.
At this point dreams become indistinguishable from reality so long as you’re in them,
and not awake.
If this can actually be done, which is very much uncertain it may be impractical or impossible,
it paints a picture of a human future where we simply don’t leave the planet because
everything we could possibly want to explore can be done in virtual reality.
But with this comes the brain in a vat scenario.
This goes back originally to Rene Descartes, but in its modern form posits that you could
have a brain in a jar, on life support, being fed sensory information to create a virtual
reality absolutely indistinguishable from an actual reality.
You could then never say that you actually live in a real world, because the line between
real and fake isn’t distinguishable, especially if your brain has been in that vat from the
moment you first became conscious.
And this can be flipped around, if unicorns can be created in virtual reality, our video
games currently sort of perform that function, and there comes a point where you can’t
distinguish between reality and virtual, then how do you know what the purpose of existence
is.
Could you be someone else’s, perhaps an alien’s, virtual reality unicorn?
You can’t ever know.
Thanks for listening!
I am futurist and science fiction author John Michael Godier currently avoiding virtual
reality.
I spun this scenario for some halloween season fun, but I actually doubt that the universe
is full of aliens, and eventually humans living in virtual reality 24/7.
I would not, I’d eye the whole thing suspiciously and really, who wants a unicorn chasing them
around.
Not me 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.