Hans.Moravec@ROVER.RI.CMU.EDU (08/30/88)
commenting on > Date: 17 Aug 88 23:53:42 GMT > From: vsi1!unisv!vanpelt@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mike Van Pelt) > Subject: Re: SETI: Why don't we hear anything? The bug in the Berserker hypothesis for the interstellar silence, in which roving interstellar machines stamp out any budding technological civilizations, is that the Berserkers themselves will the be a technological civilization inhabiting the galaxy, and their actions should be visible in the sky. Now maybe the Berserkers were originally programmed to be very quiet between executions, and carefully designed to prevent mutations in their goals. But they would be present in such large numbers across the galaxy that sooner or later a near fatal run-in with a comet, or radiation from a stellar flare would modify the program in one in such a way as to remove its inhibitions against change. That event would seed a Darwinian evolution of self-reproducing Berserker-derived machines that would acquire the survival-oriented goals of normal life. You can't fool Mother Nature forever. -- Hans Moravec