[extropy-chat] Dark matter and ET

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Fri Jul 15 06:20:34 UTC 2005


On 7/15/05, Dan Clemmensen wrote:
> An SI will expand beyond its natal solar system only if The NPV of the
> knowledge gained by use of the extrasolar computational power exceeds
> the NPV of the computational resources to be invested in the expansion.
> Example: the SI might expend an asteroid's worth of comptutronium to
> colonize a star system 4 light-years away.  Using a speed-of-light
> probe, at best is takes 4 years to initiate the colony, and at best the
> colony starts with a knowledge base that is four years old. The SI will
> not get any new input for at least eight years, and the new input will
> be four years old and will be based on an eight-year-old knowledge base.
> The SI may very well conclude that it will gain more knowledge by
> incorporating the asteroid's worth of compturonium within itself rather
> than launching the probe. If this is generally true, then we would not
> expect to see any expanding spheres. Instead, we will simply see systems
> going dark.
> 

Agreed.

Another reason not to see expanding spheres is that expansion is a
youngsters thing. Any technological civilization will master life
extension and birth control early on. (And much else as well, of
course, nanotech, AI, species redesign, and so on). Then the
accountants take over. Unless we can assume magic physics to permit
much faster than light travel, then expansion is a waste of resources.
If you leave the home star you lose far more than you gain. Maybe send
robot probes to a few of the nearest stars, but that's all. Forced
emigration when the star dies is so far in the future, that it is
anybody's guess what a civilization might be doing by then.

BillK



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