[ExI] The Great Silence again

[Kelly Anderson]

On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 6:41 AM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 1:23 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote:
>>
>> Why would it be stasis?  Admitedly, a lot of people would have to do it
>> together if they wanted company, or the same technique as above would be
>> used, with a split and rejoining later.

I postulate that the longer the split, the more difficult the
rejoining will be. I can see splitting for a day, or a few weeks, but
after years, the divergence would be so large that it would seem very
tricky to reintegrate the networks (assuming they work like the
brain).

> Subjective stasis.  The outside world is frozen because of the high
> speed posthuman life-forms.
> If they launched a rocket, the civ would watch it for a million years
> (subjective) as it appeared to slowly crawl away from earth orbit. If
> you were on that rocket you would miss out on millions of years of
> Matrix life.

What about the matrix on the rocket?

> Heh!  :)  People today start to have a nervous breakdown if they lose
> the web connection for a day.

Sure, and it will get worse. I had a day mostly without Internet, it
was slightly uncomfortable. But if you're going out into space with a
group, wouldn't you have a net, just a smaller one?

> Consider a posthuman civ where they live in the Matrix. You'd die if
> you lost connection.

If you lost connection to half of the matrix, you would not die. If
you lost connection to 90% of the matrix, you would not die, but it
might get inconvenient. If you lost connection to the entire matrix,
then you would probably die.

-Kelly