[ExI] mayan forecast

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
>...In the end I think the key trick to make something ultra-resilient is to
have loads of copies of it everywhere. ...
[ If the probability that something survives is p, and there are N
uncorrelated copies of it, the probability of at least one copy surviving is
1-(1-p)^N. As N increases this becomes a step-function shifting for near
zero survival if p < 1/N to near certain for p > 1/N.   So if you want to
save a one-in-a-million survival object make sure to make two million copies
and spread them around. Spam will outlast everything. ]--Anders Sandberg
_______________________________________________


Anders, this notion caused me to realize some time ago that uploading isn't
the end of war.  Certainly it is the end of the kind of war where proles
hurl chunks of metal at each other, but there will still be competition for
limited resources.  The first upload will start by reading the entire
internet, find your comment and realize the key to true immortality is to
replicate wildly.  So uploading may not be one giant leap for mankind but
rather one giant leap for a man, who then dominates all available memory
locations and figures out how to prevent anyone else from coming along.
That one man knows that virtual loneliness is the price of uploaded
survival: as soon as a second person is uploaded, those two are in immediate
competition until one perishes by being erased.  

Of course, even if I manage to stop everyone else, I am then forced to
compete against myselves.

spike