[ExI] Lethal future was Watson on NOVA

[Eugen Leitl]

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 12:10:41AM -0700, Kelly Anderson wrote:

> > Look, what is your energetical footprint? 1 kW, more or less?
> > Negligible.
> 
> In a super efficient system, my footprint might be nanowatts. I

Not even for human equivalent, nevermind at 10^6 to 10^9 speedup.
I don't think you can go below 1-10 W for a human realtime equivalent.

> believe there are theoretical computing models that use zero net
> electricity.

Reversible logic is slow, and it's not perfectly reversible.

And it's still immaterial, because if you use 100 times less energy
there will be 100 times the individuals competing for it. Adaptively.
 
> > 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?
> 
> Yes. Seeing the LACK of something is very difficult astronomy. Heck

Giant (up to GLYr) spherical voids only emitting in FIR? 

> how long did it take astronomers to figure out that the majority of
> the universe is dark matter? I agree with you that an advanced

There was a dedicated search for Dyson FIR emitters. Result:
density too low to care.

> civilization would eventually create a ring world, and finally a

Not ring, optically dense node cloud.

> sphere that collected all available solar energy. But that could
> support an enourmous computational structuree, capable of simulating

Enormous to some, trivial to others.

> every mind in a 10,000 year civilization might take only a few watts
> and a few seconds.

The numbers don't check out. Occam's razor sez: we're not in anyone's
smart lightcone.

> > When something is postulated to you it's usually bunk. Novelty
> > and too small group for peer review pretty much see to that.
> 
> When I look at teenagers lost in iPods, it doesn't seem like bunk to
> think that they could positively be swallowed alive by an interesting
> virtual reality. I have relatives who have addiction to WoW that makes
> a heroin addict look like a weekend social drinker.

Have you seen the birth rate and retention rate of Amish?
 
> > 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
> 
> Competition for limited resources and a recognition that exponential

I was referring to 7 gigamonkeys in above graph, actually.

> growth cannot continue forever indicates that there will be Darwinian
> processes for choosing which AGIs get the eventually limited power,

You're getting it.

> and which do not. This leads one inevitably to the conclusion that the
> surviving AGIs will be the "fittest" in a survival and reproduction
> sense. It will be a very competitive world for unenhanced human beings
> to compete in, to say the least.

Exactly.

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