[ExI] for the fermi paradox fans

[BillK]

On Sat, Jun 7, 2014 at 1:01 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote:
<snip>
> So long-discount civilizations (like ones that want to maximize the total
> amount of thinking across history) would jump to the cold era.
> Individualistic fast civilizations will not jump, but will presumably burn
> out ("Oh, my star's mass energy is running out... but it would take
> *minutes* to get more matter. C'est la vie..."). Collectivistic
> short-discount civilizations will jump a bit into the future so they can
> burn mass-energy at an intermediate rate.
>
> Note that this means that long-discount civilizations have a reason to limit
> the impact of short-discount civilizations, especially the collectivist
> ones. Either stop them outright, convince them to jump to the far era
> (short-term civs are indifferent to this, if they trust the long-term ones),
> or make them burn out fast without doing damage. Maybe this is
> Nyarlathotep's job...
>

That's another killer point for this possibility. If your intelligence
plans to sleep for billions of years, you had better make sure that
you are protected from interference. It would also be a very good idea
to set watchmen to keep an eye out for other civs and what they might
be getting up to.

I don't see that it is necessarily an either / or situation. One
entity could go to sleep while another carried on playing and made
sure that a suitable environment remained for the Sleepers.

Get ready for the big party when The Sleepers Awake!

BillK