[ExI] ETs/Aliens

[Keith Henson]

On Wed, Aug 21, 2024 at 10:10 AM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
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> Kieth I too was once in the camp holding that the Tabby's star behavior was natural, but my calculations on MBrains and the cluster of dippers caused me to now think there is about a 60% chance Tabby's star dipping is caused by an artifact.

Good to know I am not alone.

> Reasoning: during our previous discussions on MBrains, you dismissed the idea mostly because thought would be too slow: an MBrain using 10% of a star's energy might "think" 100 times slower than a single human because of signal latency.

It's worse than that.  Human imputed cycle time is around 200 Hz or
1/200 sec.  One AU brain would have a cycle time of 150 Mkm/.3 Mk/sec.
Call it 100,000 times slower than a human.  If you want to think fast,
you have to do it in a small object where the speed of light does not
eat your lunch.

Of course the question is why do we think as fast as we do?  In the
stone age, thinking fast got you fed and not eaten.  In our current
age, thinking fast is mainly a way to gain social status.

> I might agree that a simulated brain would be very slow compared to a human, but... it isn't under the same limitations either.
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> Suppose we use the speed of human thought as a standard by which to measure other simulated forms of thought.  Anything far slower than human makes little sense, but keep in mind that we humans are limited to about 100 years of thinking at best.  So if we can be simulated at a speed of 1% human equivalent but we have 10,000 years, that might be perceived in a way similar to how we would perceive a century.

Thinking slower than a human strikes me as a way to lose out to the competition.

> Our star has about 5 billion years left on its main sequence.
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> So... is it such a show-stopper to be limited to 1% human equivalent speed?
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> Another way to look at it: suppose we had a sim which could run a our speed, at one human equivalent.  Would 5 billion years of that make sense?  Well, we like to think so.  But... perhaps not.  Perhaps 50 million years of one human equivalent would be sufficient, and if so, an MBrain, with its latency limits would make perfect sense.

I just don't know.  It may be that much less time than that just fills
up a mind to where it can no longer function.

> There is a reason I press this argument.  After all these years, I still have not found a convincing mathematical model or argument that the waste heat problem can be solved.

I think the thermal power satellite work I did solved the problem.
You directionally radiate the waste heat  solar N/S.  Which explains
the odd low temperature we see looking at Tabby's Star.

> There is a second reason I press this argument: from what I can tell, an optimal complete MBrain would appear to be intermittently gappy or dippy.  Reason: those gaps (thru which we observe full light from the partially-eclipsed star) are intentional and necessary.  They are the portals thru which waste heat is directed out into cold space.  I do not think Robert Bradbury's uniform multiple spherical shell is plausible.  With his design, the inner layer will overheat.  With big gaps, the inner layer has a way to radiate its waste heat.

I think communicating minds require as small an object as possible
given the need to get energy and radiate waste heat.  The speed of
light comm delay across an object such as seems to exist at Tabby's
Star is close to a second.  I think we could talk to them.

> Deetz available upon request (some of them are available (I am moving my son to his dorm room today.))

Scary how fast things go.

Keith

> spike
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