[ExI] Carbides (Was: hacked email)

[Anders Sandberg]

spike <spike66 at att.net> , 1/12/2014 4:36 PM:


Who woulda thunk.  We have this periodic table with over a 100 elements on it.  Most of them are really boring.  We have five of them will not react at all, and really most of the rest will do some things but one element, just one very special element does so many things and does them so well.  It forms super hard materials, combined with iron it makes steel, it gets together in ways that trap energy, moves around, swapping in and out other elements.  In a most wonderful manner, it becomes self-aware: my carbon knows about itself.
Beautifully put.
Yes, carbon is awesome. You might need some traces of the other elements and a bit of hydrogen or fluorine to cap off surfaces, but I suspect much of an advanced civilization could just be built out of carbon (except for the unimportant bulk filler, which would be composed of less useful stuff like iron and gold). 



Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University
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