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Rees's Edge response of 2015 places the rise of machine intelligence in a long-term evolutionary perspective, as a stage after organic intelligence, and suggests that aliens on older worlds have likely already passed beyond the organic stage. Copy claim link
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Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source
Date 2015 · publication Records dated 2015 → Role Articulation Register (kind of text) Nonfiction Scope and limits Rees frames the transition in Darwinian and cosmic time; he does not state a physical law governing it.
The evidence 03 primary source Supports the claim
Organic Intelligence Has No Long-Term Future ↗ Edge (edge.org), response to the 2015 Edge Question "What do you think about machines that think?" · 2015
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Source excerpt “in a long-term evolutionary perspective” Location in source Second paragraph
How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher
Machine-checked · 2026-11-01
Source details and check notes Authors Martin Rees Version Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-31 (SHA-256 26dfac49b3f77165baa935db5c6285aac74a6980e0115285c52c103257cf6f13). Current Edge response page (response-detail/26160) under "2015 : WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MACHINES THAT THINK?". Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-31 Language English (en) Attribution Martin Rees, “Organic Intelligence Has No Long-Term Future”, 2015. Reuse No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution. Check notes Candidate pack passage, machine succession, scale and acceleration (research/heterodox-thought). The quotation (5 words) matched the text retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-31. Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes and Unicode compatibility forms, so the source’s typography can differ. A cross-family machine check (2026-11-01, item 67) re-read the record’s source and agreed with its stance; its corrections were applied at admission. No human editorial review. primary source Supports the claim
Organic Intelligence Has No Long-Term Future ↗ Edge (edge.org), response to the 2015 Edge Question "What do you think about machines that think?" · 2015
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Paraphrase Rees writes that evolution around stars older than the Sun may have started earlier, so that aliens have probably already passed beyond the organic stage.
Location in source Eighth paragraph
How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher
Machine-checked · 2026-11-01
Source details and check notes Authors Martin Rees Version Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-31 (SHA-256 26dfac49b3f77165baa935db5c6285aac74a6980e0115285c52c103257cf6f13). Current Edge response page (response-detail/26160) under "2015 : WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MACHINES THAT THINK?". Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-31 Language English (en) Attribution Martin Rees, “Organic Intelligence Has No Long-Term Future”, 2015. Reuse No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution. Check notes Candidate pack passage, machine succession, scale and acceleration (research/heterodox-thought). The paraphrase is Selekoa’s, written from the text retrieved for the candidate pack; it is not a quotation and was not machine-matched. A cross-family machine check (2026-11-01, item 67) re-read the record’s source and agreed with its stance; its corrections were applied at admission. No human editorial review. primary source Supports the claim
Organic Intelligence Has No Long-Term Future ↗ Edge (edge.org), response to the 2015 Edge Question "What do you think about machines that think?" · 2015
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Cite the original source Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.
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Source excerpt “humans and all they've thought will be just a transient and primitive precursor of the deeper cogitations of a machine-dominated culture extending into the far future, and spreading far beyond our Earth.” Location in source Second paragraph
How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher
Machine-checked · 2026-11-01
Source details and check notes Authors Martin Rees Version Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-31 (SHA-256 26dfac49b3f77165baa935db5c6285aac74a6980e0115285c52c103257cf6f13). Current Edge response page (response-detail/26160) under "2015 : WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MACHINES THAT THINK?". Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-31 Language English (en) Attribution Martin Rees, “Organic Intelligence Has No Long-Term Future”, 2015. Reuse No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution. Check notes Candidate pack passage, machine succession, scale and acceleration (research/heterodox-thought). The quotation (32 words) matched the text retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-31. Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes and Unicode compatibility forms, so the source’s typography can differ. A cross-family machine check (2026-11-01, item 67) re-read the record’s source and agreed with its stance; its corrections were applied at admission. No human editorial review. Status and meaning Editorial status. Machine-checked . Machines found this record and checked it against its sources; no person accepted it individually. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.
Relation. A passage of the document meets the proposition’s criterion. The record documents what the text states, in its register (fiction and satire are labelled); it is not evidence that the proposition is true and implies no influence on or from another text.
Date. Edge files the response under the 2015 Edge Question; no day is given on the page.
Record ID ht-w09-rees-2015-organic-intelligence-no-long-term-future