[ExI] Interstellar message decontamination is impossible

[Jeff Davis]

Just a little comment.  When in the sessions of sweet silent thought I
mused over the Von Neumann probe notion, pondering the hows and whys of
such a "colonization" effort,  I envisioned the probe as the tiniest little
beastie. You know, ultra-low mass, speeding along as close to the speed of
light as possible. How then to deal with the deceleration issue?  How to
put the probe, or associated payload down on the stepping-stone planet in
that far away solar system?  How to effect the self-replication essential
to a Von Neumann probe colonization effort?  Well, here we see a limited
class of solution.

In the case of a highly Advanced technological civilization, the Von
Neumann probe merely has to send down the appropriate digital package to
hijack some of the extant resources on the planet below.   As it approaches
such a planet, it evaluates the level of Technology, and prepares the
hijack package. Then a flyby is all it takes.

Then, it's either an assault by grey goo to overcome defenses, or something
more subtle.

In the case of an uninhabited, or pre-industrial planet however, the
deceleration issue remains.

Best, Jeff Davis

          "Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
                                                Ray Charles
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20180303/5e775019/attachment.html>