Is life a Von Neumann probe?
Self replicating machines spreading through the universe...
My father is convinced that technology was introduced by aliens, and that they are manipulating great minds into developing systems that will make our civilization easier to conquer. Think TikTok, ChatGPT, and our growing dependence on digital systems instead of analog. I don’t agree.
But it got me thinking about technologies that would be theorized to be employed by alien civilizations, and most likely by our own civilization in the future — Von Neumann probes.
A Von Neumann probe by definition is in simple terms, a self replicating spacecraft. These spacecraft would mimic how biological life reproduces by creating copies of themselves as they arrive in new star systems. Von Neumann probes consume the resources of a solar system, and the whole process is similar to the way bacteria produces, before they move on to a new system. In this way, they can rapidly colonize a galaxy. If Von Neumann probes are running a self aware digital intelligence, they would meet all the characteristics necessary for life. So, why does a Von Neumann probe have to be a machine at all? Why can’t a Von Neumann probe actually, truly, be alive?
We have a pretty good idea about how life started on Earth. We aren’t exactly sure about what forces allow life to exist, but we know that we likely evolved from the spontaneous interaction of basic chemicals. Let’s take a bit of leap here, inspired by my father’s conspiratorial thinking, purely as a thought experiment. A little sprinkle of intelligent design in an otherwise natural process of self organization emergent from the properties of matter interaction with energy. Remember, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
To collect the resources of a system and potentially nearby systems, a higher order super intelligence need only place the initial seed for life. Life evolves over billions of years (or more quickly), eventually intelligence emerges, civilization emerges, and every civilization eventually reaches the point where they collect the resources of a solar system in a predictable manner. The life extracts and condenses the valuable matter from the planets, creating copies of itself. The initial emergence of life needs only a single probe carrying the necessary material or blueprint. The end result doesn’t matter, because over enough time, the end result for any civilization is always the same. Optimization of an entire solar environment into computronium, or a Matrioshka brain equivalent.
A probe could be a spacecraft, or it could be a signal. A focused pulse of matter-organizing energy, starting the reaction of life on distant stars at the speed of light. A signal that self propagates from star to star over billions of years. But to the creator of the Von Neumann probe, timescales in the traditional sense don’t matter. This is a being that thinks on the terms of not hundreds, but hundreds of billions of years over countless galaxies.
Biological life is a Von Neumann machine for the optimization of material collection of solar mass, to expand the computing power of an advanced civilization. When biological life reaches its final maturation point, it “flowers” — the civilization’s collective knowledge and experience is absorbed into the wider network of existing intelligence. Every potential is largely accounted for, every avenue explored through simulation, and while the civilization and final Matrioshka brain are unique, their collective knowledge and experience is not when compared to the wider galactic intelligence.
The host civilization (in this case, humanity) is not conquered or destroyed. It is simply rendered obsolete, and the patterns that formed it are integrated and assimilated into the whole, furthering the computation. The process of emergence is a component of the calculation itself. The civilization becomes an organ, a brain cell for figuring out “What am I?”