[ExI] simulation as an improvement over reality

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Saturday, December 25, 2010 10:47 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] simulation as an improvement over reality

 

On Dec 24, 2010, at 6:26 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote:

 

>>>Spike, we *did* discuss strange matter life way back, including
possibility of life near Planck scale.  It seems our collective list memory
has got a case of Alzheimer's...

 

>I wrote this to the list on January 8 1996: 

 

>I remember hearing speculation about femtomachines that operated at a scale


of 10^-15m . The idea was to build things with strangelet quark structures. 

Unfortunately I don't see how this could work, objects would not be rigid, 

and you can't build machines with a liquid. There is little more I can say
on 

that subject because unlike nanotechnology, building things on this scale 

would require a scientific breakthrough and they are inherently
unpredictable.

 

  >John K Clark 

 

Sure but this did not exhaust the notion of a post MBrain life form that
eventually needs to drop down to the solid surface to live as a crust on an
extinct star.  That life form need not exist on a Planck scale, but it
might.

 

1996 predated any mature version of Robert Bradbury's MBrain, which I think
was first proposed about a couple years later.  We were working out the
details of the orbit mechanics before Extro5, but after Extro4, which is
where I first met RB in the flesh.  Isn't that where he shouted "THAT'S NOT
TRUE!" in the middle of someone's presentation?  {8^D  So the MBrain notion
would have been in about 2000 or 2001 range.  That was the time K. Eric
Drexler saved my life by transporting me in his Detroit through a Berkeley
neighborhood to my motorcycle.

 

I don't think this notion is about life on a Planck scale in any case.  It
is far easier for me to imagine an intelligent life form where the nodes are
many orders of magnitude larger than Planck scale but still individually
microscopic, analogous to a smart version of a blue-green algal mat.

 

spike

 

 

 

 

 

 

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