Well, if time is somehow "leaky", if the barrier between future and present is not absolutely, 100% impenetrable, then it's quite a distinct possibility that a future superintelligence would meddle into the affairs of its own past, perhaps with the goal of enabling its own existence.<p>Both general relativity and quantum mechanics seem to suggest that time is not perfectly linear (GR) and not perfectly crisp or perfectly clearly delineated (QM). Of course, there is a long way from these suggestions to time travel - but the thing is, you don't need time travel in the pop-sci sense. All you need is a "leak" of some interactions, however tenuous, from the distant future into the present. You only need to manipulate the states of a tiny number of particles in the brains and/or chromosomes of various creatures, affecting the wave functions of a few atoms and then allowing the effects to play out from there.<p>To be sure, this is very highly speculative, and I'm not suggesting this is what is actually happening. I'm just saying - if this, then that. Or, to put it in clearer terms, the conditions are:<p>1. Time is ever so slightly "leaky".<p>2. A vast, extraordinarily powerful superintelligence will emerge in the future, or humanity will in effect be that for all practical purposes.<p>It would be essentially the equivalent of God leaving biologic evolution and human progress mostly to their own devices, but once in a while putting his thumb on those respective scales. In this scenario, evolution would be a bipolar process: powered by the usual push of genetics, natural selection, etc at the bottom, but also informed by the pull of a future ideal at the top.<p>Going much further, kickstarting life, or even triggering the beginning of this Universe could also be targets of interest for manipulation.