[extropy-chat] fermi's paradox: m/d approach

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Saturday, January 03, 2004 11:26 AM Dennis May wrote:

> A civilization worth uncountable trillions of dollars but
> the cost of an interstellar cell-phone is too much?

Yep.  The present value of using the resources locally is
likely to significantly exceed the communications value
of sending energy/mass (i.e. electromagnetic waves or
probes) across interstellar distances.

The cost of sending a bit across interstellar distances
is relatively cheap.  The cost of sending any quantity
of information worth something across interstellar
distances is quite expensive.  The solar systems
of advanced civilizations can probably contain >2^50
bits and one doesn't transmit a useful fraction of
that across interstellar distances cheaply.

> Gray goo has to obey the same thermodynamic and
> chemical laws as living creatures.  Some of the capabilities
> ascribed to gray goo have ignored these laws.

Not any serious proposals by people who know what they
are talking about (Drexler, Freitas, etc.)

> In any case gray goo has to compete for resources and avoid
> predators/parasites just like anyone else.

Gray goo based on nanotech easily trumps any preexisting life
forms based on biotech.  This is due to the fact that it is
stronger, more energy efficient, travels faster, faster to evolve, etc.

Which is not to say that gray goo cannot be trumped.  It
is trumped by the same things that trump green (bio) goo.
Radiation, heat, perhaps cold, perhaps strong acids or
bases, "drugs" or "shields" that interfere with their
collection of materials or energy, etc.  The defenses
have to be significantly heftier than existing defenses
against green goo however.

> Can gray-goo exist with even smaller parasites eating off of it?

It would be extremely difficult for existing smaller parasites
(nanobacteria [if such exist which is significantly open to question]
or viruses to evolve fast enough to interfere with rapidly
replicating and self-evolving nanorobots.  The only hope
would be the creation of nanoparasites and in this situation
the cure might be worse than the disease.

> Not a very smart brain if it wants to put all its resources
> into one place - ready to be destroyed by WoMD.

MBrains are the size of solar systems and have the power of
stars at their disposal.  The only things that could
potentially destroy them are most likely to be very clever
viruses (that presumably have to get through multiple levels
of firewalls, isolated defense systems, etc.) or black holes
hurled across interstellar space.  I'm doubtful that either
of those options is really workable.  As has been discussed
on the ExI list -- one has to make sure that one totally
eliminates every last component of an MBrain or risk a
berserker response (i.e. intelligence not interested in
self-evolution but the destruction of whom or whatever
threw the first punch).

> What is to be gained by having a massive brain?
> Is anything of survival value added beyond a certain size?

The point is that there are limits imposed by the laws
of physics on intelligence and survival.  What is to be
gained is to understand whether these are hard limits or
whether by clever engineering and creative exploitation
of the laws one can figure out ways around the limits
(e.g. lengthening the lifetime of stars, the creation of
alternate universes and tunneling into them, preventing
all of the protons from decaying, etc.)

> If you believe in a model of thermodynamics including the
> "Big Bang Theory".  I do not.

It would seem that it is the best we can do thus far (thus
pointing out how a massive brain might be useful for coming
up with better theories...).  But I'd like to see an
explanation as to what you would replace the BBT with.

> I support the WoMD cause of the Fermi Paradox.  Stealth,
> mobility, and dispersion are the secrets to survival with space
> WoMD.  Advertise your presence and expose yourself to WoMD.

The conclusions of myself, Milan Cirkovic and a number of
others is that the limits of known physics and computational
architectures drives civilizations to produce MBrains or
other similar architectures that migrate outside galaxies
where they can radiate heat at close to the CMB temperature
(~4 deg K).  Thus they are very difficult to detect and
very difficult to target with WoMD (incoming black holes
are relatively easy to detect due to gravitational disruptions,
microlensing, X-ray radiation, etc.)

(Side Note: Dennis -- these topics have been discussed for ~5 years
on the ExI list and there are multiple academic papers that have
been written on the topic as well as hundreds of email postings
so Daniel is putting you at a slight disadvantage by introducing
the conversation to the Atlantis list without informing you
with respect to some of the background materials.)

Robert Bradbury