[ExI] ETs/Aliens

[Ben Zaiboc]

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
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