I always like to daydream about the various solutions to the Fermi Paradox.

If we're not early, if life isn't rare, and there are intelligent species [1], what might most of it look like?

I don't think most of them would match the techno signatures we're familiar with. Factories, gas emissions, etc. are an industrial age thing.

What if they're really smart? What does that look like? What kind of signals might we detect? What kinds of energy might they be harnessing?

Are there any good reads or papers that posit these things?

[1] I also imagine they've found a way to escape the limitations of intelligence and death, perhaps by becoming computers of some kind.

"I also imagine they've found a way to escape the limitations of intelligence and death, perhaps by becoming computers of some kind."

I am 100% convinced that this is in our future, not even very far out. Why put up with our flawed bodies if we don't have to? First we will probably replace parts of the body with something better until eventually the whole body has been replaced.

I think it's most likely we won't get "upgraded", but rather cloned into computers. I think the essence of ourselves, the original, will stay within the vessel of our body - and doomed to the flaws therein. But, our personalities will be able to be carefully cloned (likely using a ton of questions fed to AI, or otherwise) in essentially infinite AND limitless computers.

It's a scary thought, to be sure. That, no matter how close a computerized copy of me is to me; I'm still stuck in this body, in this own brain, and its inevitabilities.

I wonder if any sentient being would really want to live forever. What would there be to look forward to as the galaxies recede out past the cosmic horizon and all the stars shutdown? What would be the point? Just wait around in the dark until the heat death gets you? I sometimes suspect that simple nihilism is the answer to the Fermi Paradox.

With all the compute and energy available at that stage, perhaps there are more possibilities than we can currently see or imagine?

I sometimes like to think that we ourselves are actually the memories of a distant descendant. Maybe it reversed the light cone and was able to replay everything with exacting precision. Maybe it's studying and musing over its humble beginnings. (It might get a laugh that we're communicating this to one another.)

I used to be a bit perturbed by the thought of living in an ancestor simulation, but then I figured if that's my reality, then I suppose it is what it is.

It seems like a long time since there have been any really game-changing breakthroughs in theoretical physics. I'd be a fool to say that that means that there aren't any more to be had, but it does seem more like we're just sort of fiddling around with a few refinements and there might not be anything huge left. As you say, maybe a greater intelligence than what we've got can figure it out, but that does go back to Fermi - if they could do amazing things like enclose a star or travel interstellar distances, then why haven't we seen them?

What if it's all just protons, neutrons, and electrons (and some other less important particles presumably) plus a bunch of energy out there? Would a super-intelligence really be interested in seeing more of them?

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