[ExI] Fermi question, was is a FTL drive a dream . . .

[Mike Dougherty]

On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 7:20 PM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 9:05 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote:
>> can be handled by building a lot of probes. The current name for the project
>> at FHI is "Spamming the universe".
>
> And we are supposed to believe that a civ with million times speedup
> super-intelligent AIs will decide that this is reasonable behaviour?
> Turn the whole universe into their version of Miami beachfront?
>
> I'll have to redefine what 'super-intelligent' means.

I propose some part of that definition should involve efficiency.
Something such that getting maximum utility from minimal expenditure
of energy.  If utility in gradeschool was literally an "A" grade then
the most intelligent in the class were able to achieve that score
without the hours of homework/studying that the perhaps less
inherently intelligent (but more motivated to achieve that grade) were
spending.  I find the distillation of diverse fields of knowledge into
cross-domain principles much easier to remember and therefore consider
understanding generally applicable principles to be more intelligent
than learning overlapping (or conflicting) rules in each domain.

In the case of super-intelligent universe-spamming seeds, the
cost/benefit to produce many inexpensive seeds as protection against
high failure rate AND prospecting for resources in the vastness of
unknown space might make the spamming scenario an intelligent choice
after all.