[ExI] The Great Silence again

[Richard Loosemore]

BillK wrote:
> Michael Anissimov at Accelerating Future has just posted a comment
> that appeals to me.
> 
> <http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2011/04/elon-musk-ill-put-a-man-on-mars-in-10-years/>
> 
> Quote:
> Another point I’ve made in the past is that as everyone becomes
> uploads and accelerates their thinking speeds, space will begin to
> seem very far away. Right now, Luna is 3-4 days away. To beings whose
> brains are made up of molecular computers with 100 GHz switching
> speeds, Luna is about 3,000,000,000 days away. That’s about eight
> million years. An eight million year trip to go to an empty wasteland
> without any art, culture, or much Kolmogorov complexity to speak of
> beyond geological and mineral patterns?
> 
> The near-term future of humanity is to convert the Earth into a
> “computronium globe” with a web of trillions of simulated worlds
> within it. In several subjective millennia, we may consume the Moon,
> but it will be subjective millions of years beyond that until we
> colonize Mars. In many billions of years, we may be fortunate enough
> to consume the Sun.
> ---------------------------------
> 
> 
> I think I've mentioned in the past that The Fermi problem is probably
> because advanced civs don't go out into space.
> For many possible reasons, including those mentioned by Michael above.
> 
> Sometimes called the retreat into virtual worlds of computronium.

I hear the argument, but I don't feel compelled to buy it.

For this (main) reason.  If we had the power to speed up our 
consciousness to such an extent that one day RealTime became a million 
days VirtualTime, we would run the risk of becoming bored if we simply 
spent all that VT as a continuous consciousness.  Much more likely, we 
would choose to establish a system of periodic rebirths, involving the 
archival storage of the current set of life experiences and the 
beginning of a new life in which we could experience everything as if 
for the first time.

In that case, the million days VT would probably consist of several 
lifetimes.

Moreover, people would not necessarily want to experience all of their 
lifetimes at VT speed, but would sometimes want to come back down to 
normal speed.  And in fact, the lifetimes could, of course, be 
interleaved, so that several lives were being experienced at once, all 
at different speeds, but in packets.

And (finally) one aspect of this would be the possibility to set up 
interstellar trips in which the consciousness was suspended for the 
duration.  Or, where many different lives were led during the trip, but 
all within computronium VWorlds.  That way, a community could go to the 
stars, arrive there with the subjective experience of having only just 
left, and then explore the remote worlds before going on to the next star.

Some of us, I have got to say, would *still* be interested in what 
Nature, by herself, decided to do at all of those other star systems, 
and would not want to simply sit at home pretending to live in imagined 
worlds!

Conclusion:  I don't see any *necessary* force to to the argument that 
this is an explanation for the Fermi Paradox.


Richard Loosemore