We don't know however "It would take so long" is an anthropomorphic assumption of time scale.

hermitcrab 20 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It would take ~5 million years (in the sender's frame of reference) for a probe to make the journey to Andromeda and then send another back with any information. What would the point of that be?

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qingcharles 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Right. We have no idea how another species perceives time. This could be nothing to them.

And even if they do perceive it like us, that hasn't stopped humans from great projects. How many generations did it take to complete Stonehenge or the Great Wall of China? We're still on top of Voyager too after 50 years.

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bryanrasmussen 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

of course by the time we had the ability to do von Neumann Probes our anthropomorphic assumption of time scales may have changed.

How much would human life span need to increase for a von Neumann Probe to seem reasonable. I would think a life span of 600 and you're thinking, sure I won't get to see it through, but my allotted genetic offspring that I am allowed at age 500 if either of my other two have failed might.

	▲	fc417fc802 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If you expect to live past a few hundred years it isn't clear why your lifespan wouldn't be indefinite. The prerequisites for achieving the former appear to be more or less the same as those of the latter.
	▲	rolph 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		requirements change with purpose. a "kilroy was here" sign has different purpose than "eat at joes". is it enough to say "hi, your not alone" ? would we actually want to encourage discourse, or visitation.