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

[John K Clark]

"Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury at aeiveos.com>

>one plugs into the MBrain or uploads -- in which case the concept of "self"
>becomes very verydifferent.  The reason being that within a relatively
>short periodof 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.

It's true that as communication continues to improve there will come a point
where it no longer makes sense to talk about separate minds, however this
process can not continue indefinably. The speed of light in not infinite and
that insures there will be many minds in the universe not just one.

>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.

You don't bring the fuel to you, rather you go to the fuel. And I'm
surprised to hear you talk about wasting resources with all those huge stars
in our present non engineered universe radiating vast amounts of delicious
juicy energy to empty space for no purpose.

> One might think seriously about  implementing (4)

That's equivalent to saying some super brains will decide to become more
stupid; well some may, but ever single one of them?

> It is questionable whether MBrains  would ever want to reproduce
> because offspring are potentially competitors

Maybe, and maybe when even super brains can't find a objective logical
reason why life is better than death they decide to kill themselves. Maybe,
but I doubt it.

> Curiosity.  MBrains can see pretty much anything going on in
> the galaxy or nearby galaxies.  What they cannot see they can
> probably simulate.

I once heard a detractor of string theory say it was philosophy not science
because to prove or disprove it you'd need a particle accelerator the size
of the galaxy. Well OK, let's build it.

> The key word in this sentence is "appear".

And the universe could not appear less engineered, certainly one hell of a
lot of energy is wasted and is not used to power brains.

>Milan Cirkovic has proposed the best computational location for
>MBrains is intergalactic space

I can't imagine a worse place to build super brains than intergalactic
space, there is about one hydrogen atom per cubic yard and energy
is equally dilute.

John K Clark     jonkc at att.net