[ExI] Against the Empire

[Jef Allbright]

A worthwhile paper arguing against the widespread assumption of
ongoing evolutionary expansion, in contrast with the more general
imperative of ongoing evolutionary development.

By Milan M. Cirkovic

Abstract:
It is argued that the "generic" evolutionary pathway of advanced
technological civilizations are more likely to be optimization-driven
than expansion-driven, in contrast to the prevailing opinions and
attitudes in both future studies on one side and astrobiology/SETI
studies on the other. Two toy-models of postbiological evolution of
advanced technological civilizations are considered and several
arguments supporting the optimization-driven, spatially compact model
are briefly discussed. In addition, it is pointed out that there is a
subtle contradiction in most of the tech-optimist and transhumanist
accounts of future human/alien civilizations' motivations in its
postbiological stages. This may have important ramifications for both
practical SETI projects and the future (of humanity) studies

<http://xxx.soton.ac.uk/abs/0805.1821>

- Jef