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Mitchell_Porter comments on [Link] A superintelligent solution to the Fermi paradox - Less Wrong
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I like the idea, certainly not as a preferred explanation of the Fermi paradox, but as an addition to the list of explanations. But as gwern points out, getting the "planetarium" to work isn't so easy. Comets and planets ought to feel its mass, in fact comets ought to collide with it on the way out. It has to produce radiation patterned so as to imitate interstellar parallax. And it has to physically emit very high energy particles such as we detect on earth in cosmic rays. It's one form of the hypothesis "there's an invisible wall right there, projecting the appearance of a world beyond." And the main issue facing such a hypothesis is, what about the things that go into or come out of the wall?
It doesn't have to be "perfect". Keep in mind the old joke about the experimental and theoretical physicist:
That's my take as well. Personally, my pet hypothesis is the Thomistic God, but there are three or so solutions that I treat as live. I'm not committed to any of 'em.
One version of the idea, that I do normally favor, is the "cranium hypothesis", which says that my brain is surrounded by a wall and that everything I experience is a sort of reconstruction of what's on the other side of that wall, rather than being the thing itself. But that doesn't explain the Fermi paradox.
But you agree that a significantly bigger wall could explain the Fermi paradox in theory?
Also I figured you might be partial to naive realism. I am, if only because I'd have considered it obviously completely retarded a year ago. IIRC the Thomists have a solution to some problem of intentionality where you directly perceive something's form itself. (Er, it's not a form, what's it called? Weird word, starts with an 'h'.) Seems like it fits well with monadology, but I guess not quantum monadology. ...You know, that monads don't change at all is really quite important. I know you know that, but still, "quantum monadology" is a pretty meh name.
It's certainly a way to have a universe full of dark megastructures efficiently harvesting energy on behalf of ancient superintelligences, coexisting with a planet of yokels who just see a wilderness of stars squandering their radiative output. But I would rate 1. Great Filter 2. the "wilderness" is actually alive and busy but the yokels don't know how to see it that way 3. appearances are even more thoroughly illusory than in the planetarium scenario, all as more likely.
That would make hallucination impossible. I think we have direct awareness of something, but not the outside world. The "something" is either part of us or it's alongside "us" in the brain.
Luckily the point at which we start sending conscious beings out beyond the solar system is by one hypothesis the point at which we reach a technological singularity. How a planetarium would interact with an AI, only God knows. But for things like Voyager, it's of course no problem: the superintelligence eats the Voyager, and in its place sends back the signals the Voyager would have sent back if it hadn't gotten eaten.