How does the Holocaust open up our future thinking?

What is the deep connection between the Holocaust and dreaming, and why should Fermi's paradox keep us awake at night

Non-realism: Thinking the Possible  (Source)

We have become accustomed to seeing the speed of light as a limitation on spacecraft and the spread of culture in the galaxy, that is, to think of it as a limitation on movement. But what if the main significance of the speed of light is actually a limitation on computation speed, causing advanced civilizations to converge into the microscopic space - in an effect opposite to expansion in the galaxy? And what do we really know about the power and possibilities of algorithms in the sub-biological and sub-chemical realm, and about the possibilities of organization (and self-organization!) in the vast tiny space (in terms of orders of magnitude) between strings and quanta? Could this be the solution to Fermi's paradox? Honey, the aliens have shrunk.

Is it possible that the universe is teeming with life in dimensions much smaller than the sub-atomic ones? From the moment life emerged from chemical building blocks, the direction for greater development was growth. Therefore, we are used to seeing complexity as size, and therefore a future advanced culture appears to us as an enlargement of ourselves, with stars replacing cities and spaceships replacing cars. In contrast, sub-atomic development was completely blocked to life and evolution until the technological era, which for the first time allowed crossing this threshold. But to the same extent, it is possible that from much smaller building blocks (strings? branes? etc.) life can also form spontaneously under certain circumstances, and develop at much higher speeds (after all, everything happens faster there). Is it possible to build intelligent machines from strings, for example, or are these worlds teeming with self-replicating machines? In short, is mini-evolution possible, or some other learning process there, which presumably, due to the speed greater by orders of magnitude, has long since surpassed us in terms of intelligence? And perhaps because of the uncertainty principle, there is actually a constant chance for such development, even without special conditions, if we imagine that such a machine can repair and maintain and replicate itself, and therefore even if the chance is slim, once in the visible universe is enough? After all, the number of particles and combinations in the microscopic space is many orders of magnitude greater than the number of stars and possibilities in the visible universe. And is it possible that our life, in the super-atomic space, is not accessible to them, just as life in other universes is not accessible to us?

And even if such spontaneous development is not possible, can't an advanced technological culture cross the threshold to the sub-atomic level and settle there? We might tend to think that then they won't spread throughout the universe, because they are so small, and to build spaceships you need to be big, but the opposite is true - to accelerate such tiny amounts of matter towards the speed of light requires much less energy, and this is just another decisive advantage for the microscopic realm (in fact, we observationally know unidentified tiny objects with mass moving astonishingly close to the speed of light - Oh-My-God particles, which constitute an important physical enigma whose significance is not properly appreciated - but not such large objects). Therefore, while we imagine "encountering spaceships", it is possible that perhaps it is precisely tiny computers or robots moving almost at the speed of light and replicating themselves that flood the universe on microscopic scales. After all, we believe that quantum computing is possible, and perhaps string and brane computing is also possible, and who knows what other possibilities exist at smaller scales. We always try to explain physics through simple and basic particles, out of our habit of seeing complexity in size, but perhaps complexity is prevalent at these levels? It is enough that one of the processes in the microscopic world has a tiny chance of creating a learning and development system, to expect the creation of spontaneous order there and even life, as we are familiar with the phenomenon of spontaneous order appearing in countless physical systems across countless orders of magnitude. Who said life must be chemical?

We should consider the possibility that we will discover aliens or foreign intelligence precisely when we descend to the lowest levels of matter, and this does not mean we will be "stronger" than them, because there is a huge (and biological) confusion here between strength and size. In fact, even today, nanometric combat systems could penetrate any defense and cause enormous damage (for example: a virus). The only reason viruses don't defeat us is that they are not as intelligent and complex as we are, but if they were - we wouldn't stand a chance against them. This may be the next generation of warfare means, which will be among the first things built in the nanometric field, and which could destroy all life on Earth even by accident. We will not be able to cope with a machine that replicates itself and disassembles us from within, because our immune system does not know how to deal with non-biological threats.

But why should we sink into these speculations at all? What does this kind of thinking give us, which is deeply rooted in dealing with the possible, instead of the existing? Fermi's paradox, as an open and threatening problem, hovering above us like the doomsday weapon of philosophy, forces us to think about extraordinary threats. This paradox is deeply embedded in a type of thinking that deals with the possible, not the existing. And therefore it is also related to the form of thinking that deals with the future, namely with possibilities, and therefore many are unable to engage in it, because it has too many degrees of freedom, and too little ground. Human narrative thinking loves closed and tight narratives, and sees aesthetics in them (its peak: tragedy), and finds it difficult to deal with the future precisely because it is a dream, meaning it is a narrative structure of the possible, not of the existing (that's why literature is usually written in past tense, not future tense). The future branches out in possibilities like a tree, and is not a strong plot line like the childish readers of the novel love, who ask for a bedtime story. But after sleep, deep learning processes occur in the brain, and therefore the brain creates countless possibilities in them, and examines situations, and moves to a creative spiritual world orders of magnitude beyond the waking world. And people are not interested in dreams - they even forget their own dreams, and they are also not interested in the future, and will prefer any stupid political discussion over spiritual speculation.

In fact, the ancient connection between dream and future stems not because of magical or primitive thinking, but because of a deep connection between them: both deal with thinking of the possible. In this thinking, success is not proof or establishment, that is, a strong and necessary line leading from the past (as those settled in their minds love), but rather finding a new direction, breaking into a new type of possibility that has not been checked before in the search tree, that is, creative innovation. The human brain, which is forced to live in present and past thinking in order to survive, that is, in realistic thinking, has a built-in bias against the future, because throughout almost all of evolution only genes and mutations dealt with the future, with the possible, with opening possibilities, while organisms dealt with gathering possibilities, with preservation, with the organic continuation of the line. Future thinking was limited to relatively short-term possibilities, and therefore man always prefers the near future over the distant future, and shies away from distant, speculative possibilities. But when development accelerates, the average person is left without a relevant form of thinking for the world, because the central variable becomes the future, and the central unknown becomes the possible. What is possible at all?

Therefore, for example, man is not capable of thinking even fifty years ahead (climate), let alone five hundred. And therefore people (including "serious" people) are almost not afraid of Fermi's paradox, because after all, it's just an intellectual exercise, right? (No, it's the most worrying argument for a global human holocaust). Who is really worried or thinking about it seriously? Perhaps only the top thousandth of future thinkers are seriously interested in the most serious threat one can think of - because it is presented as a possibility (which may have a probability of 99.99%... according to the paradox). The top hundredth of future thinkers are seriously worried about artificial intelligence, and the top tenth are seriously worried about climate, while the reasonable person is seriously worried about Bibi [Translator's note: Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Prime Minister]. When climate people try to convince the reasonable person they will never talk about possibility, because there are many possibilities after all, but will try to fake certainty in the threat (because man is not capable of narrative thinking of the possible, only of the necessary, and preferably predetermined fate - as in tragedy, or in the story of fated love: these illogical stories are in his eyes the most convincing stories, and therefore he also loves the story of divine choice, and will never love possible - and branching - religious thinking).

In the development of artificial intelligence, as before the Holocaust of the Jews, wolf warnings are given again and again, and no one is able to believe that it will really happen, because it exceeds all precedent, and therefore exceeds the ability to think (which is thinking of necessity, the past, or at best thinking of the existing, the present, and not thinking of the possible, the future). Did Hitler need a developed imagination to implement the Holocaust? Was the Holocaust a creative invention? It is precisely the Jews who can understand that the great wolf threat, about which many warnings are given, can also materialize. Hence the importance of the Holocaust as opening up our consciousness of the possible, in contrast to historical consciousness and precedent thinking, which for some reason are considered more appropriate for thinking people ("intellectuals"). These people will always prefer an argument from the 19th century (Marxism yes or no) over an argument from the 21st century, and this is because their ancient model is the scholars, people of the past, and not the prophets, people of possible thinking. The Holocaust is important because it opens up thinking outside of history for us. Dream thinking.