[extropy-chat] The Drake Equation and Spatial Proximity

[Eugen Leitl]

On Wed, Oct 25, 2006 at 12:24:14AM -0400, Keith Henson wrote:

> It violates the Mediocrity principle.  There is an extensive article on 

The assumption that our culture is average is completely blown away
by the anthropic argument. The bias only goes away after another,
unrelated data sample.

> It depends on shape of the manifold.  For all we know, all evolved species 
> are subject to the same weakness.  So their fate could be like a ball 

We're an evolved species, yet we have machines which have very
different weaknesses (arguably, darwinian machines will route around
any weaknesses long-term). We can do self-rep machines, or would be
able to, if we made this a priority. Self-rep machines replicating
outside the gravity well would quickly result in an ecosystem
at least lighthours wide, and relatively soon, lightyears wide.

There is no catastrophe which can nuke all this, cleanly. 

> tossed into a basin.  No matter where it starts it always winds up at the 
> bottom.  Still, I agree with you on it being less likely that all of them 
> would fail.  If we are the first, the future is unknown rather than deadly.

I very much agree. Assuming we can sustain this level of progress for
several decades, the results could be self-sustaining/irreversible.
 
> >Even a single one of them would be enough to take
> >a giant spherical bite out of luminous universe (actually, I already
> >argued why you can't observe these expansion spheres due to the anthropic
> >principle).
> 
> If you do, you better dust off the welcome mat.

You can't observe them, unless you're the one who's initiated
the expansion wavefront. So actually I would turn around the
"oh noes, the Singularity killz!" argument, if one is buying
the probabilistic analysis of observer-moment stuff.
 
> >So all of them evolve exactly the same way, and all of them don't manage
> >any noteworthy expansion (we've already sent out dumb space probes beyond
> >this solar system), or sterilize their patch of the cosmic petri dish when
> >they (silently) implode? Statistically, that's very improbable. Unless we're
> >in the light cone of very few smart but suicidal critters, which is
> >actually only a minor variation on 1.
> 
> It has some strange implications for Eliezer and the SI.

I don't understand. Please explain.

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