[ExI] Fermi Paradox and Transcension

[Keith Henson]

On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 5:00 AM,   "spike" <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

(Keith)

>> I have never seen a satisfactory explanation for how MBrains get around
>> speed of light and heat sinking issues.
>
> It doesn't get around those issues, it works with them.  We see everything
> through the eyes of beasts which live only a century or less, so we have a
> hard time contemplating what it would be like if we existed as a virtual
> colony among billions of bits of computronium.  These would take millions of
> years to go from one star to the next.

I can't see being spread through a fog of computronium as being
desirable.  I can't see running even slower than human speeds to be
desirable either, and (due to the speed of light) that's the
consequence of having the physical level of your mental processes
spread out.

> The heat sinking issue is solved by directing the momentum of the star's
> light all in one direction.  About a year ago, I was fooling with these
> equations and was startled to realize that waste heat is proportional to the
> collective momentum of the photons coming off the star.  Not only can an
> MBrain direct the momentum in one direction, it must, otherwise it will
> overheat.  If it is absorbing a significant portion of the energy of the
> star, it is either jet off somewhere or cook.

That I really don't understand.  If you were to enclose the sun in a
one AU Dyson shell, the equilibrium temperature on the outside would
be around 127 deg C.

> I don't know of an online explanation of that concept.  I might need to
> write one.

I would like to see that.

If you are trying to think fast, your physical layer needs to be as
small as you can get it.  Fast thinking is more important than than
just keeping up with soap operas.  I.e., the quick and the dead.  The
waste heat from fast thinking has to be dissipated from a small
volume/surface.  Earth's deep oceans seem to be the ideal environment
for a fast thinking civilization.

I don't much like this conclusion.  If you know a better approach, I
would like to hear about it.

Keith