[extropy-chat] Dark matter and ET

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Fri Jul 15 08:56:52 UTC 2005


On Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 07:20:34AM +0100, BillK wrote:
> 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.

You've got a postbiological ecology. A very large, very diverse population of
beings. A lot of the biomass (by the metric exaton) is not sentient, rather dumb, actually.

Why do you think that biomass won't crunch anything tasty within reach?
Many lightdays if not lightmonths of congealed star drek around.

> > 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

Check your assumptions. Neither is SI a singleton, nor does it require a lot
of resources to send interstellar probes. We could send a relativistic one
with a little work a few years from now, we just wouldn't be able to brake it.

> > 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

How you do you know that?

> extension and birth control early on. (And much else as well, of

Bacteria have birth control now? It doesn't seem to be working very well.

> course, nanotech, AI, species redesign, and so on). Then the
> accountants take over. Unless we can assume magic physics to permit

Strange, I always thought the demons and dragons take over, and eat the
accountants.

> much faster than light travel, then expansion is a waste of resources.

Having children is a waste of resources. Hey, biosphere: stop doing it,
already.

> If you leave the home star you lose far more than you gain. Maybe send

One part of the agar plate is exactly like the other part of the agar plate.
Except better, since unpopulated.

> 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

I have a list of people who are very intent to cut and run as far as 
possible as soon as personal space travel is accessible.

> anybody's guess what a civilization might be doing by then.

I guess I'm not the only one who's seeing a certain irony in that statement.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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