[ExI] ETs/Aliens
Ben Zaiboc
ben at zaiboc.net
Sat Sep 21 09:02:46 UTC 2024
On 17/09/2024, Mike Dougherty wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 17, 2024, 1:59 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
__
While The Clinic Seed deals with the impact of uploading itself on
human society, what I had in mind was afterwards (in a setting where
the initial effects of uploading are over and it's a common or even
universal thing), a more focused exploration of the societal
implications of the ability of uploads to change how quickly time
flows for them. Implications for both the uploaded and the
un-uploaded (assuming there are any). How this ability might affect
interpersonal relationships, people's psychology and how it could
change the way society functions. How it may be, for some, not just
an ability but a necessity, for various reasons (like sustaining a
multi-tiered system with different units running at different
clock-speeds, as per my previous post).
> Have you read Greg Egan's "Permutation City"?
> Many ideas of uploaded 'being' are handled matter-of-factly in the
course of the larger story.
> "Diaspora" goes even farther with a protagonist creation from
semi-randomness, then escaping the confines of the successively weirder
universes while discovering the rules of a metaverse
Yes, I have. And Diaspora, and just about all of his stuff, I think.
He's one of my favourite authors.
I particularly liked the idea of people beaming themselves around the
galaxy to different locations, sometimes a data-centre, remaining an
upload, sometimes being instantiated into a physical body. And the fact
that he doesn't try to get around the speed of light. So someone might
take a few thousand objective years (and no time at all, subjectively)
to go to their destination, leaving behind their friends and family, who
they might not see again for hundreds of thousands of years, or even
never (or might-as-well-be-never, given that people would be certain to
change over that timespan, and might be unrecognisable even if you did
meet them again). Just that would require a certain degree of
psychological rewiring from how we are now. People living at different
speeds would be - well, I'm not sure I can wrap my head around it, and I
reckon I'm pretty imaginative.
That's why I'd like to see someone tackle it in a story. Or a whole
bunch of stories.
(Just to complicate things more, what about people splitting off copies
of themselves, that then run at different speeds! - Actually, Sean
Williams touches on this, in his 'Astropolis' stories (of which I've
only read the first book. A bit tricky to get hold of the rest)).
Hm, I wonder if the Tabbians (If you can call them that (if they exist))
are beaming themselves around between those 24 or so stars (or probably
more by now)?.
And I wonder if any gamma-ray spillover might come our way, and be
detectable? And one day, perhaps even decodable?
It would be funny if we learned how to encode minds into a form they can
be transmitted, by studying alien transmissions! (more SF material
there, perhaps :D )
I'd suggest keeping a good long-term record of any gamma-ray (or x-ray,
or whatever) emissions from that direction. Just in case.
Ben
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20240921/3cc169a6/attachment.htm>
More information about the extropy-chat
mailing list