[extropy-chat] Dark matter and ET

[The Avantguardian]

--- Dan Clemmensen <dgc at cox.net> wrote:

> A computing system needs storage, logic, and
> infrastructure. An
> efficient system maximizes some computing metric
> with respect to
> mass.

DNA based wetware does this. It maximizes the metric
of copy number by replication and does so by
assimilating matter/energy from surrounding
space-time.

 
> I'm assuming that an SI is a computing system.

I am assuming all intelligences and subintelligences
are computing systems.
 
> Our solar system's existing intelligent computing
> system is an
> evolved system that does not yet have much ability
> to  direct
> its own further design,

Not yet. But we are closing in on it. The Human Genome
project showed us the blue-prints that will allow us
to reverse-engineer and then modify ourselves in ways
that are truly astounding.

 This is another way of
> saying that
> our singularity has not yet occurred. Our evolved
> system makes
> use of DNA for storage and a protein-based,
> chemistry-driven
> nanotechnology for logic and top-level
> infrastructure. It is an
> amazing achievement given no intelligent design, but
> it is horribly
> inefficient at the system level.

So is MS Windows. Doesn't mean that C++ is a bad
scripting language. Don't get hung up on the
IMPLEMENTATION. The implementation was a faulty result
of arbritrary selection forces. But the fact remains
that the basic computing elements are ideal for
computation. So much so they managed to do it by
accident and quite successfully might add. Show me
another scripting language that writes itself.

 Almost the entire
> available mass of the
> system is concentrated in the sun, and is unused
> except as the
> first stage of a horribly inefficient power source
> for the computing
> elements. 

I am sorry but the sun exists for its own purposes.
That it can be used as a power source at all should be
reason for gratitude. Inefficient? Show me an
artificial solar power device more efficient than
chlorophyll and photosystems I & II. 

Almost all of the power is lost to space.
> Of the trivial
> percentage that reaches Earth, almost all is
> re-radiated to space 
> immediately,
> without effect.

If that is a concern for you, perhaps you would like
planet Venus better. There is no water there so no
annoying reflective clouds or ice-caps. It does a real
good job of keeping the energy it absorbs from the
sun.

 Of the tiny percentage that is
> captured in bio-systems, 
> almost
> all is used to build plants, and only a tiny
> percentage of this biomass will
> ultimately be used to feed humans.

Well a lot of it goes feed livestock which then go on
to feed humans. We could eat a larger percentage of
the biomass but people don't generally find insects
and slime-molds palatable. 

 Of the part used
> to feed humans, almost
> all is used to build and power infrastructure rather
> than to support
> computation.

No, computing is more fundamental than what you call
infrastructure. The infrastructure could not have come
about without computing.

> 
> I think an SI will be able to make a few
> improvements. I think the logical
> extrapolation is to a system that has converted its
> mass into efficient
> computronium.

Hey I am all for building a dyson sphere but I will be
damned if it doesn't run green with wet-life. And DNA
based intelligence, possibly SI.

 My guess is that nanomechanical
> systems will be the
> most efficient.

They already are.



The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't attempted to contact us." 
-Bill Watterson

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