Infinite universe: Thought that this was pretty settled science? Or at least that it's much bigger than hubble limit? Why must entire lightcone leading to Solar System have only one intelligence? Are you assuming that all intelligences will singularity faster than geological time, and then intrusively colonize space at speed of light, thus preventing future intelligences from rising? What about intelligences that are really, really far away? I think you are making really unjustifyable assumptions. I think this kind of anthropic stuff is... risky.
Would we be able to see a bronze-age civilization 500 ly away? Possible that such things could be more stable than ours? And a bronze age civilization is pretty different from nothing, more like ours than nothing.
Infinite universe: Thought that this was pretty settled science? Or at least that it's much bigger than hubble limit?
Big, yes. Infinite? No. And even the biggest finite universe is infinitely smaller than an infinite one, of course.
Thought experiment:
Through whatever accident of history underlies these philosophical dilemmas, you are faced with a choice between two, and only two, mutually exclusive options:
* Choose A, and all life and sapience in the solar system (and presumably the universe), save for a sapient paperclipping AI, dies.
* Choose B, and all life and sapience in the solar system, including the paperclipping AI, dies.
Phrased another way: does the existence of any intelligence at all, even a paperclipper, have even the smallest amount of utility above no intelligence at all?
If anyone responds positively, subsequent questions would be which would be preferred, a paperclipper or a single bacteria; a paperclipper or a self-sustaining population of trilobites and their supporting ecology; a paperclipper or a self-sustaining population of australopithecines; and so forth, until the equivalent value is determined.