[extropy-chat] Diaspora was Bluff and the Darwin award

[Keith Henson]

At 01:28 AM 5/16/2006 -0700, Samantha wrote:
 >On May 15, 2006, at 6:15 PM, Russell Wallace wrote:

> > Nor do we have an infinitely long window of opportunity; the
> > conditions that support free inquiry and rapid technological
> > progress are, on the scale of history, a rare and short-lived
> > aberration. There is a threshold we need to reach; it is not the
> > badly-named "Singularity", but Diaspora - the technology to live
> > sustainably off Earth.
>
>I very much disagree.   It would take very serious tech including
>nanotechnology to get a substantial amount of humanity far enough off
>planet to provide much safety of the kind you seem to be advocating.

Samantha is (in my opinion) right.  If you know my background, I am 
probably as qualified as any to have an opinion about this.  It is also a 
view I don't like, I was forced into it by physical reality (and Freeman 
Dyson).

For what are basically economic reasons it will take nanotech level 
technology to get us into space.  I don't see any way to avoid strong AI.

If wishes were light sails and laser cannon, I would be many light years 
from the solar system.

Keith Henson