[extropy-chat] Re: Fermi Paradox and Simulation Argument

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004, John K Clark responding to my comments wrote:

With respect to exploration/colonization, John said:

> It would probably be the same point that Humans had when they settled the
> Earth.

Not so John.  You have to ask *what* drove the original human diasporas
(out of Africa) and much later migrations of large numbers such as
the colonization of North and South America?

I'll cite 4, lack of food resources, climate changes/hazards,
lack of reproductive resources, curiosity.

One by one:
a) Lack of food resources.  MBrains have 4 choices: (1) Harvest nearby
   brown dwarfs; (2) Harvest gas from molecular clouds; (3) Harvest
   nearby stars; (4) Decrease ones consumption of fuel by slowing down
   computational activity.

   1-3 have problems because you will waste resources in transporting
   the fuel back to your location.  One might think seriously about
   implementing (4) until one naturally migrates close enough to
   sources 1-3 that transportation overhead is minimized.

b) Climate changes/hazards.  MBrains can observe and predict potential
   hazards long enough in advance that they can execute minor changes
   in orbital vectors to avoid such hazards.

c) Lack of reproductive resources.  It is questionable whether MBrains
   would ever want to reproduce because offspring are potentially
   competitors when resources are in short supply in the distant future.
   This gets into Mark Walker's arguments that potentially immortal
   entities may logically agree to non-proliferation of themselves.
   It applies to mega-civilizations that are immortal as well as it
   applies to individuals on current societies.

d) Curiosity.  MBrains can see pretty much anything going on in
   the galaxy or nearby galaxies.  What they cannot see they can
   probably simulate.  I've yet to see a concrete numbers suggesting
   that there is significant marginal benefit to the knowledge base
   of an MBrain by sending out probes to survey distant solar systems.
   Even if there was significant information benefit that doesn't
   mean that colonization is justified.

> Are you certain that every strange citizen in every alien super civilization
> would feel as you do about that? It would just take one, and after all,
> several members from even your own species don't feel as you do about that.

That is one problem that keeps cropping up in this discussion.  People
keep assuming that the concepts of "citizens" or "individuals" remain
as they are now.  I significantly doubt this.  You either remain in
in a current human state (and find oneself eliminated when something
large enough hits the earth or finds oneself homeless when the
MBrain decides to dismantle it) -- or one plugs into the MBrain
or uploads -- in which case the concept of "self" becomes very very
different.  The reason being that within a relatively short period
of time seems feasible for me to make all of my knowledge available
to you and you to make all of your knowledge available to me.
The same is true for anyone else linked into the net.  Its kind
of like hyper-blogging.  There are no more traditional concepts
of "you" and "me".  The entire civilization becomes much more
borg-like.

Sure you can resist this - but we have relatively hard numbers now
for how futile this will be.  Its roughly 10^42 ops vs 10^15 ops
and 10^50 bits vs 10^10 bits.

Pre-singularity entities are bugs.  I suspect there may come a
significant debate about whether XYZBrains simply swat bugs
(be they sentient or not) if they threaten to interfere with
the goals of the XYZBrain.

> Intelligence will need matter and it will need energy, if you wish to
> maximize intelligence you will to engineer the galaxy and then the entire
> universe. This does not appear to have happened which makes me think alien
> super civilizations do not exist.

The key word in this sentence is "appear".  If, as Milan Cirkovic has proposed
the best computational location for MBrains is intergalactic space (which is
good if one believes the dispersal/stealth and hazard avoidance arguments as
well) then there is very little evidence that would argue against the fact
that shortly after attaining XYZBrain status such superintelligences leave
their galaxies.  There may even be some evidence *for* this scenario in
the missing dark matter/dark energy.

Robert