[ExI] Lethal future was Watson on NOVA

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 06:59:53AM -0400, Darren Greer wrote:
> >Another possibility is that advanced civilizations naturally trend
> towards virtual reality, and thus end up leaving a very small
> externally detectable footprint. Exploring the endless possibilities

Look, what is your energetical footprint? 1 kW, more or less?
Negligible.

Now multiply that by 7 gigamonkeys. Problem?</trollface>

Infinitesimally small energy budgets multiplied by very large
numbers are turning stars into FIR blackbodies. And whole galaxies,
and clusters, and superclusters.

You think that would be easy to miss?

> of virtual reality seems potentially a lot more interesting than
> crossing tens of thousands of light years of space to try and visit
> some lower life form...<
> 
> I had never considered this scenario until I came to Exi and it was
> postulated for me. It is the most hopeful compared to the other polar

When something is postulated to you it's usually bunk. Novelty
and too small group for peer review pretty much see to that.

> opposite scenarios--self-destruction or mature Zen state (with a no poaching
> policy) of technological superiority. Alas, self-destruction seems to me to
> be the most likely, given the bloody and tragic arc of our history at least.

It's less bloody and tragic than bloody stupid. Our collective
intelligence seems to approach that of an overnight culture.

http://www.fungionline.org.uk/5kinetics/2batch.html

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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