[ExI] for the fermi paradox fans

[John Clark]

On Fri, Jun 6, 2014 at 7:06 PM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> I also semi-believe in the Lovecraft Hypothesis (it is at least in my top
> three). My reason is the thermodynamics of computing: at least error
> correction requires kTln2 J per bit, which is proportional to temperature.
> The lowest temperature you can get today without expending energy on
> cooling is 3 K. Wait long enough and it will be much lower. So if you have
> X Joule of energy stored as mass, using them now will give you many orders
> of magnitude less than if you wait a trillion years. Eventually the
> temperature levels off due to horizon radiation, but that is very far
> ahead. So my idea is that the Great Old Ones are quietly sleeping until the
> stars are right (i.e. turned off).
>

But absolute zero can never be achieved but only approached asymptotically,
so no matter how cold the universe gets if they wait just a little longer
it will get even colder. So why would they ever wake up?  They'd have a
logical reason to just keep hitting the "snooze" button on their alarm
clock forever. I think a better answer to Fermi is that we're the first, or
that once intelligent beings have complete control of their emotional
control panel and positive feedback sets in they will no longer have a
desire to do anything except keep hitting the happy button.

 John K Clark
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20140607/530e7562/attachment.html>