© 2020 by Joel Marks and a TOTH to Nick Bostrom, David Koepsell, and Harry Mulisch
“Jerry, I know this is a crazy thing to ask, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Are you really and truly ready to die?”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you since Marie died. I haven’t changed my opinion.”
“I completely understand your feelings. I never got over the loss of Lillian. But I’ve managed to find enough interesting and pleasurable stuff to keep my mind occupied in the years since so that I’m content to keep on living … at least until my mind or body gives out to the point that I can’t do that stuff anymore. Is that not true for you too?”
“Yes and no, Bill. I’ve managed to fill up my days, like you. But I think a difference between us is that you still have hope of finding someone else to share your remaining years with. I don’t.”
“That’s interesting. Yes, I do have hope … even though I recognize it as irrational. But I can’t get rid of it. But I would have thought natural selection implanted hope in all of us, as a way to keep us going despite our actually dismal prospects. How can you say you have no hope?”
“I guess I’m just on one of the tails of the Bell Curve of Hope, Bill. I think you’re more into your emotions than I am. I tend to be governed by my rational mind, for better and worse. Your desire for happiness is so strong that you won’t allow mere evidence to get in the way of believing what you want to believe. My mind doesn’t operate that way.”
“Well, I can grant there’s some truth to that, Jerry, but still deny that your assessment of your own prospects is entirely rational. There are lots of lovely ladies out there waiting for your call.”
“I know that. But the loveliest lady in the universe could not replace someone I was with for 50 years, and madly in love with for all 50 of them. And age itself takes its toll: I’m just too old to make all the adjustments I certainly would need to in order to get along with a new person in my life, even if she were the loveliest lady on Earth. No, Bill, I’m ready for death, not a new love. Each day is a burden to me. Every morning when I wake up I curse the dawning awareness that the dream is over.”
“Then … why do you keep going, if I may ask?”
“Inertia, pure and simple. As burdensome as living has become for me, I’m still daunted by an overt act of taking my life. I suppose that is something implanted in us where I am smack dab in the middle of the bell curve. But why are you asking me about all this now? Planning to do me a favor, are you?”
“Ha ha. But, I suppose, you might lugubriously put it that way, then. Yes, I do have a definite reason for asking. I am desperate to tell you something that … well … that could kill you.”
Jerry stared at his friend. This was a remark he could not make heads or tails of. The occasion for this chat was, aptly enough, a cemetery. They were there because a mutual friend had died, and Bill had begun the conversation as the two of them were walking away from the gravesite after the interment.
“It is hard for me to take that remark seriously, Bill … or literally, anyway. I could begin to speculate wildly on the content of what you want to tell me. But I think it would make more sense for you to just come right out and tell me what’s on your mind. In fact you do seem upset about something. I assumed it was Sam’s death. He was a good friend to the two of us and will be missed …yet another reason for me to want to join him. But then, come to think of it, you’d be left all alone, and I suppose I owe it to you to stick around for that reason if no other. Unless you have in mind a joint suicide pact? But come on, seriously, tell me what’s the matter if that will help. Frankly, you have seemed more than mournful … downright agitated.”
“Thanks, Jerry. You will probably think I’m completely nuts after you hear, and maybe I am. Maybe you could convince me I am and then that will be a relief … for me, though, sorry, you would be condemned to continue living.”
Bill spoke half drolly and half gloomily, since he was genuinely concerned about something and yet knew it could only appear ridiculous. On top of that he considered his situation with Jerry to be absurd in its own right, since if the news he had to impart was bad, it would, if he could take Jerry at his word, be good for Jerry.
He proceeded to tell his tale:
“One of the things we enjoyed about Sam was his penchant for raising far-out questions about science and mystery. Well, just a few days ago I got together with him for a little confab in Mikey’s Pub. He was excited with a new idea, so he started to tell me about it as soon as we sat down in our usual corner booth. His topic was the Fermi Paradox. You’ve heard of it?”
“Is that the one about why haven’t we seen any little green men?”
“Right. I had the same simple conception of it, but Sam spelled it out for me in great detail. The physicist Enrico Fermi famously posed the puzzle of there being no evidence whatsoever of other intelligent life in the universe … and this despite the seemingly plausible assumption that intelligent life would be abundant in our galaxy and others, and have had time to reach extraordinary levels of power to enable constructions and alterations and explorations that would be detectable over galactic distances. Yet we see nothing … nothing of the kind.”
“Yes, that’s quite a puzzler, isn’t it.”
“Right. However, it turns out that lots of people have been thinking about this ever since Fermi proposed it. And they’ve come up with no end of hypotheses to explain it. For instance, there could be abundant intelligent life that has reached our own level, but perhaps such life almost inevitably goes extinct before it can evolve further to the point where it would have the technological wherewithal, or the political wisdom, to prevent destruction by cosmic dangers, such as asteroid impacts, superflares, novae, and so on, or by its own hand, like nuclear war or anthropogenic climate change.
“Another possibility is that some intelligent civilizations have survived all those dangers long enough to evolve into superintelligences, but maybe the most natural tendency is for a superintelligence to hide from other superintelligences lest some of those others harbored malign designs, or if they themselves did. Or maybe the most efficient way to sustain a civilization, which would otherwise consume all of its own resources, would be to retreat into virtual existence. Then all it would need is some kind of massive and invulnerable mainframe or server sitting securely underground and generating indefinitely continued intelligent existence for uploaded consciousnesses.
“It’s wild stuff, really, but look how far technology has brought us in just the last hundred years. Imagine if we had millions of years to play with. And, again, there is the Fermi Paradox that needs explaining.”
“Yes, that’s Sam’s imagination, all right. But … what on Earth has you so worried, or put my life in jeopardy if you tell me about it?”
“There is yet another possible explanation of our apparent loneliness in the universe. This was Sam's idea. It’s that we are in a kind of zoo, or in a laboratory, which can only function as intended if the habitat is made to appear natural: the animals in the zoo or the experiment do not know they are in a zoo or in a laboratory. Under such circumstances the verisimilitude of the habitat or the effectiveness of the experiment might be enhanced by eliminating signs of other intelligent life in the pseudo-universe of the habitat or laboratory … and in particular any signs of the zookeepers or experimenters themselves, or even of their very possibility. This would be analogous to observing microscopic particles without allowing the conditions of observation to alter their behavior.”
“Hmm. Yes, I see. So the paradoxical seeming lack of evidence of other intelligent life in the universe could actually be evidence of other intelligent life in the universe.”
“That’s it exactly, Jerry. Very good way of putting it.”
“Clever. But … so …?”
“Sam was very excited about the idea and told me he was going to write it up and publish it in his syndicated column.”
“Did he have time to do that before he died?”
“It was right after he left the pub that night that he tripped on the sidewalk and cracked his head wide open.”
“His column was very popular and was read by many people, including many influential people.”
“Yes. I guess they won’t know about his latest, and now last interesting idea.”
“That’s right, Jerry. The experiment can continue … unless I, or now you, blab about it to anybody else in a similar position to influence the world. And that’s always possible, isn’t it? … so long as you and I are alive?”
Note: This story had a previous incarnation as an essay, "Flipping the Fermi Paradox on its Head."
