[extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint (was Extinctions)

[Damien Sullivan]

On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 03:44:37AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> think that anyone answered Rafal's question above. What if you can replace
> the entire Antarctic with computronium running 10^33 people per cubic meter?

But you can't.  1e33 people running on human brains would take 2e34
watts, 1e8 times the power output of the Sun.  Improving efficiency by
1e8 would require only the power output of the Sun.

Space is cheap; the constraints are low-entropy energy, and heat
sinks/radiative surfaces.  Of course, this doesn't affect the idea
behind the question, but it does lead to more physically relevant
thought experiments.

> Every single time that you reserve some piece of land so that big creatures
> go around gobbling small creatures, and preserve all the pain and pointless
> stupidity of that, you are in *principle* saying that this is the best way

Everything's pointless, including our own existence.  Unless we give it
a point, and many people give a point to the natural ecosystem -- for
its role in supporting us, for aesthetics, yes, for the fact that it
produced us, for the surprising diversity it might contain or produce in
the future, and for the sake of the autonomy and pleasure felt by the
creatures in it.  Not all life is pain.

> we do not (or ought not) want it to be supporting an Easter dappled
> titmouse at the expense of 10^33 people/m^3---or even at the expense of
> a suburban tract full of people less rich and smart than we are.

But why not replace that tract with copies of richer and smarter people,
or at least prevent them from producing more less-rich less-smart people?

> the causes of frozen wastes, or even of small creatures tearing each other
> to pieces, breeding, living, dying pointlessly by the billions over and
> over and over, always fills me with dismay.

Some people feel that way about most of the human race.

-xx- Damien X-)