It just doesn't seem all that hard to build EricDrexler-style assemblers. The most optimistic nanotechnologists are talking about real working assemblers in thirty years. It seems like every intelligent civilization should upload itself into nanite form within just a few millennia of inventing the wheel.

So if this is true then the universe should be full of either Godlike intelligences or swarming Saberhagen-style berserkers. Since we're here to observe that the latter don't exist, the former must. Why don't they contact us?

Well, perhaps we're just too dull. To GodGoo, we're about as slow and simple as lichen.

Or perhaps GodGoo observes some kind of PrimeDirective. But it's not warp drives that get you into the GodGoo federation, it's working assemblers.

Or perhaps GodGoo does contact us regularly. Heaven knows we have enough records of miracles, angels, and generally spooky phenomena. Is the simplest explanation that these are all the inventions of human gullibility and connivance, or that they're the answer to the FermiParadox: just GodGoo giving us a helpful little nudge from time to time. Is GodGoo like the CosmicTwoByFour in 2001?

Perhaps this whole SETI thing is ass-backwards. Rather than looking for intelligent life through telescopes, we should be looking for it through microscopes. SearchForIntraTerrestrialIntelligence, anyone? --PeterMerel

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GodGoo is not supernatural, divine or godly. It does not and can never break the laws of physics. In particular, a SolidStateCivilization can't expand faster than the speed of light. And all that means is that it hasn't arrived on our doorstep yet. The universe is a freaking big place after all.

''Um, not for GodGoo it ain't. There are several schemes on the speculative physics books for warp drives - if they're possible then GodGoo figured 'em out and implemented 'em long ago.''

''But even if WarpDrive isn't possible, GodGoo gets around at relativistic speed without trouble. How? Well, GodGoo is tiny, so it has a vast surface-area to mass ratio. It just dives at a star, waits till it gets nice and close, then opens a solar sail. A trip to the star next door takes just minutes by its frame of reference. Indeed, thinking about this scenario is what led Drexler to dream up nanotech in the first place.''

''Now the universe is big, all right, but if a bunch of slightly-improved chimps can figure out how to make assemblers in just a couple of millennia (post-diluvium), any reasonably intelligent species will do it in a trice. The universe's size is commensurate with its age, so GodGoo whipping around at relativistic speeds ought to be here, and everywhere, by now.''

It doesn't matter if the speeds it's traveling at are relativistic or not. From an external frame of reference, it'd still be going less than the speed of light; the perceived travel time for the goo itself has no effect on how long it actually takes to get here.

''Assume intelligent life is extremely rare and GodGoo occurs only once every, say, 100 million years in our little galaxy of 100 billion stars. Our galaxy is supposed to be about 14 billion years old -  GodGoo would have evolved 140 times by now. Even if it only did it once, at relativistic speeds it wouldn't take more than 200,000 years for it to infect every star in our 100,000 light-year across galaxy. In a larger galaxy - some are over 100 times the size of ours - it would occur more frequently and therefore sooner. So it's everywhere by now.''

And, what if it IS everywhere by now because we are GodGoo? for example what if DNA is GodGoo ? Or what if life in Earth is an experiment run by GodGoo... (could that be the an argument for IntelligentDesign ?)

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Maybe the laws of physics are from GodGoo. We think of the laws of physics as the "root" of things because we cannot see the underlying guts.
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See also LifeOnOtherPlanets, AnthropicPrinciple
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CategoryNanotechnology, CategoryFuture