[extropy-chat] Intelligent Design -- take *this*...

Joseph Bloch transhumanist at goldenfuture.net
Wed Dec 21 04:00:00 UTC 2005


Of course. It's just that it only takes a miniscule percentage of 
available computing power to do so, when you're a Jupiter-brain.

So, today, there are a hundred politics messages to every one 
stellar-engineering message. When we have virtually unlimited computing 
power, we'll still only need a hundred messages about politics to come 
to the same non-conclusions, but will be able to squeeze in a few 
gazillion messages about stellar engineering in and around them. :-)

Joseph

Mike Hayes wrote:

> Do intelligent entities still argue incessantly about politics when 
> they are dismantling and reassembling planets?
>
> On 12/20/05, *Robert Bradbury* < robert.bradbury at gmail.com 
> <mailto:robert.bradbury at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>     On 12/20/05, *Hughes, James J.* <james.hughes at trincoll.edu
>     <mailto:james.hughes at trincoll.edu>> wrote:
>
>
>         (1) ID could be by "natural" causation, i.e. superintelligence
>         (2) ID does not require irreducible complexity, only statistically
>         unlikely complexity
>         (3) A successful defense does not necessarily determine the
>         strength of
>         competing hypotheses
>         (4) Indeed, proving the central proposition of statistically
>         unlikely
>         complexity in the peer-reviewed arena is what is important
>
>
>     Actually, the "statistically unlikely" argument is open to
>     significant debate.
>
>     The evolution of stars produces a *lot* of carbon which seems to
>     be a good substrate for structures required for life.  Supernovas
>     and other astrophysical processes seem to produce a lost of
>     "organic" base materials (I'm sure Amara could provide a long list
>     of organic molecules found in both life processes and interstellar
>     dust.)  This is in part the entire area of exploration of the
>     field of astrobiology (which has a large and growing "scientific"
>     community).  Lineweaver's arguments point out that a significant
>     majority of the Earth's in existing galaxies are much older than
>     ours.  "Probability One" points out there are likely to be a *lot*
>     of them.  Minsky pointed out to Dyson 40+ years ago that the most
>     advanced civilizations will radiate heat near the cosmic microwave
>     background temperature (where it is very difficult for us to "see"
>     them).  The experimental evidence for "missing mass" in the
>     universe is significant and the theoretical physicists are having
>     to bend over backwards to try an explain it.
>
>     There is a significant case to be made, if you understand biology
>     and astrophysics sufficiently, that there may be a *lot* of
>     superintelligences in the universe and *we* may currently be the
>     "statistically unlikely" state in the evolution of complexity. 
>     "Life" may have a relatively hard time getting from ground zero to
>     our level of complexity -- but once the singularity kicks in it
>     goes rapidly from our state to the limits that physics will
>     allow.  Humans (be they creationists or scientists) seem not to
>     have fully grasped that yet.
>
>     Indeed, the complexity of evolutionary processes may make it
>     impossible to "compute" the likelyhood or unlikelyhood of various
>     paths of development.  To get the statistics for #4 (above) may in
>     fact *require* that one run large numbers of actual experiments
>     such as our solar system to get the hard data.
>
>     People unfortunately have a difficult time making the leap from
>     where we are now to the stage where planetary dismantlement (and
>     reassembly) is simply one of the things intelligent entities can
>     do (in spite of the fact that we have been doing just that (to a
>     limited extent) since 1959 [e.g. Lunas 1,2 & 3 and Pioneer 4].
>
>     Robert
>
>
>
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