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

[Keith Henson]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 5:00 AM,  Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

>> On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 8:13 PM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>> >  The problem is that effectively unlimited
>> > virtual worlds can be constructed and inhabited for a *tiny* fraction
>
> Of course they're limited. Computation isn't free. It takes atoms
> and Joules. Computation substrate is additive. Information patterns
> can be instantiated much faster than the substrate doubled to accomodate
> them, so there's always population pressure. Need for more lebensraum.

Even in the meat world there is a worldwide trend toward ZPG.  Now it
may be that humans will take advantage of technology to replicate much
faster than it was possible to do without such aids (either virtually
or physically).  Robin Hanson thinks this is the way things will go
and postulates (or did) a virtual world of grinding poverty.

Such an outcome might keep a race from having the excess resources to
leave its star system or perhaps even its planet.

But avoiding that outcome, you need to consider star travel in terms
of discount economics.  When you can stretch or shrink the time base,
what do you use as "discount"?  You almost certainly can't profitably
move anything except information between stars.

All this changes radically with "gates" or FTL.

I have been thinking about this for decades and the longer I do, the
less certain I am about how the future will turn out.

However, if the current estimates of the timing of the singularity are
right, most of you reading this will find out.

Keith

> People (though Keith is not people) readily keep underestimating what even
> a modest (2.3% annually) growth means long-term:
> http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
>
> The author takes these numbers to mean that this will never happen.
> We here will interprete these numbers differently.
>
> (Of course, there are relativistic limits to growth (the galaxy
> is 0.1 Mlyr in diameter), so exponentials do run into limitations
> eventually.
>
>> > of the time and energy needed for the hop to another star system.
>
> When you run out of unreal estate, you have to develop some nearby
> plots.
>
>>
>> Perhaps once societies reach the overmind phase, they realize that it is
>> extremely pleasurable to their goals to seek out other intelligent life.
>>  Then they would travel the stars as invisible gods, socializing in the
>> void and betting on which planets would 'make it'. ;)
>
>
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