alt Hacker NewsHas someone answered why a civilization would send "von Neumann probes" or similar into space? It would take so long for any answers from those probes to arrive that there really doesn't seem much value in them.
Replies
If we're talking about civilizations that have access to energy that's on the order of many stars, the civilization itself can be considered a meta-organism that spans many millennia. Launching probes that take hundreds or thousands of years to report back becomes a small fraction of overall lifespan.
To build more computronium than you can in your own system, assuming the demand for that will always rise.
Well, if you personally were building von Neumann machines do any purpose in the solar system, would YOU be interested in sending some to neighboring systems knowing that you could conceivably get a response in your lifetime.
Would you be at all interested in expanding that project to outlast you?
And even if you personally wouldn’t be so inclined, surely you know or have met people who might?
Once you have the self replication, expanding scope may just be additional code…
Some will do it, some won’t. The ones that do will be overrepresented in the universe.
There are no answers expected. This is a colonization wave.
You can ask same question about any decision that outlasts you. E.g. why write a will for your children?
We don't know however "It would take so long" is an anthropomorphic assumption of time scale.