[ExI] The Great Silence again

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 04:12:11PM +0100, BillK wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 3:31 PM, Eugen Leitl  wrote:
> > A "posthuman civ" is a highly diverse set of species with widely differing
> > complexities and goals. Some of them will be as dumb as viroids. They most
> > assuredly "not not die if you lost connection" than you would die if you
> > didn't check your twatr stats daily. Or the dandelions stop producing
> > seeds, because, you know, the ennui, it's so unbearable.
> >
> > You know, this isn't a difficult concept. Either I'm really lousy at
> > explaining it, or maybe it's you.
> >
> 
> 
> You are looking backwards and assuming that as it always was so shall
> it continue to be.

I'm assuming probabilistic behaviour by a diverse population of
agents. Nothing else.
 
> Just because humans always had ten children doesn't mean they always will.
> Ooops, they've stopped already.

The humans haven't stopped (see very interesting subpopulation
growth dynamics of some groups) and humans are *just one species*.
We've already diversified and extinguished other species even
before we were able to create our own, including our nonbiological
kind.

You're looking backwards and assuming that as it always was so shall
it continue to be.
 
> Posthumans aren't like clever humans. They are fundamentally
> different. They don't want the same things as you do.
> 
> As Keith says, either posthumans don't leave home throughout the
> galaxy (and we are pretty late arrivals in the Milky Way) or we are
> the first.

I keep writing these really short tl;dr things which people fail
to read. You're pretty close to failing the Turing test.