[ExI] Should we still want biological space colonists?

[Jason Resch]

On Sat, Feb 8, 2025 at 10:33 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 8, 2025 at 9:57 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Feb 8, 2025, 9:23 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, Feb 8, 2025 at 7:55 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I agree space habitats make more sense than terraforming. But what
>>>> habitat is better than virtual reality whose only limit is imagination?
>>>>
>>>
>>> One that can't simply be unplugged, deleting everyone within.  Also, one
>>> with any measurable impact on the universe outside the habitat.
>>>
>>
>> These ships can be designed as resiliently as desired.
>>
>
> The attackers in this case have all the time they want, and superior
> resources.  They have all the same tools as the defenders, and greater
> ability to develop more (again: superior resources).
>

If by attackers, you mean the organic humans outside, it's not clear they
have superior resources or time. The number of uploaded minds that could
exist could well exceed the population of earth by a factor of many
thousands. Further, not being limited by the speed of neural impulses,
uploaded minds could experience time thousands of times faster than those
in the physical world. With more minds, more computational resources, and
more time, the advantage could be on the side of the uploaded.

But moreover, what do the uploaded have that those outside can't have for
themselves? Once you can upload your mind, there is no more scarcity. Land,
raw materials, and vast energy supplies are the needs of the organic
humans. The uploaded, by comparison, wouldn't need much of anything, and
further, they can go out into space and leave the organic humans to Earth.


> They especially have the advantage if the defenders abandon all sensing of
> and interaction with the outside environment:
>

True, but that doesn't make much sense to leave yourself vulnerable like
that. And much of defense can be automated (e.g. like the CIWS that
automatically detect and fire upon incoming threats which today's ships
already use).

the defenders' resources can never improve, but the attackers' can.
>

The uploaded have the advantage that they can duplicate themselves (just
build a copy of the ship and send both off in another direction, rinse and
repeat, have another ship replication trigger it upon the loss/destruction
of any other ship). This is an advantage that belongs only to uploaded.


>
>
>> Looked at objectively, it could be a far more reliable system than
>> humanity in its current form, where one nuclear war or one engineered
>> pathogen, can unplug us all.
>>
>
> Self-sustaining biological human colonies outside of Earth can solve that
> problem too, and that is the alternative being compared to here.
>

But what are the advantages? Consider, here are two habitats:

[image: space-habitats.png]
>From the outside, both look identical. Both have the same defensive
capabilities. Both are free to communicate as much or as little with the
outside world as they desire.

The only difference is that the humans in the habitat for uploaded humans
aren't nearly as limited by the physical constraints as the humans in the
organic human habitat are.

The organic humans have all kinds of physical needs for food, radiation
protection, atmosphere, gravity, acceleration limits, energy and heating
requirements, etc. I only see downsides to trying to maintain a form
optimized and evolved for life on the surface of a planet, in a place so
alien and hostile to it. We can maintain our minds, and our consciousness
(which is all that really matters when you think about it) and experience
any environment of our choosing in an uploaded state. Your main concern
seems to be who is going to maintain or protect the ship, but consider, the
ship of the same dimensions, could keep a stock of robotic bodies in a
hangar, (and far more than the organic habitat could maintain living human
bodies), which can go out on spacewalks to make any kind of repair that a
human astronaut could. Given that, do you still see disadvantages to the
habitat holding uploaded minds?


>
>
>> It is true that one could live a blissful eternity in a virtual reality
>>> habitat...and literally nobody else would care.
>>>
>>
>> The people having those experiences care.
>>
>
> I said "nobody else".
>

Do you not care for the lives of people in other parts of the world who you
will never meet or interact with?


>
>
>> You could imagine our solar system as a black box, and from the outside
>> make those same observation: "what does it matter to anyone what goes on
>> inside this black box?"
>>
>
> It can.  Signals escape from the box, so it is not black.  Depending on
> where you place the box's boundaries, machines (the Voyager probes) may
> have already escaped the box.
>

The value of the human race is (in my view) much more than the few things
we've managed to send outside this box.

  And there is the potential for more to escape later - as opposed to the
> virtual paradise, that has permanently shunned the outside world.
>

I don't know why you insist that uploaded minds have to be shut off from
interaction with the outside world. Consider how many people work entirely
from home, all their productive work-related activity is then reduced to
information flows going into and out of their home.

Consider that people in the uploaded state could be participating on e-mail
lists such as this, creating full length production movies which they share
and sell to the outside, make technological breakthroughs, solve vexing
mathematical problems, engineer new machines or drugs. Most of the
productive value of post industrial (information-age) society comes down to
products that are nothing more than information. Raw materials remain a
part of the economy because our organic bodies require so much of them, but
in an uploaded society, those material needs diminish and the economy
becomes one that is entirely of information: experiences, discovery,
learning, etc.



>
>
>> But of course this ignores the value and meaning of the trillions of
>> lives being lived within it.
>>
>
> It does, because the value and meaning to anyone outside it is zero.
>

I would contest this. Do you place no value on life in other galaxies?


>
> I could tell you now of a habitat that you will never interact with,
> wherein trillions of people live.  Will you give any of your material
> resources to support it?  If not, you are ignoring the value and meaning of
> those trillions of lives - just like most people ignore it, because the
> value and meaning is zero.
>

Do you not care about the future of humanity (which fits all of your above
stipulations: i.e., trillions of people who you will never interact with)?


>
>
>> You could run a million, a billion, a trillion instances of blissful
>>> eternities in such a habitat, with not a one communicating outside or
>>> otherwise doing anything of consequence to anyone outside.
>>>
>>
>> Nothing prevents communication between the inside or outside. Nothing
>> limits travel either, as you could jump into a robot body any time. You
>> could upload and watch YouTube videos, join zoom calls and email with
>> people outside. It's really no different than life in any place (be it an
>> apartment, city, country, or planet earth).
>>
>
> The physical universe doesn't run on sped-up virtual time (and most
> proposals for such habitats include speeding up, as they see no reason not
> to).  Anyone outside would seem impossibly slow to anyone inside.  Hop out
> to a robot body, spend enough time to do whatever it is you hopped out to
> do, and by the time you return so much time would have passed that you're
> basically entering a completely new society, having left all you knew and
> loved behind.  Hopefully any loved ones will still be alive, but they will
> likely have substantially grown and changed without you.
>

With advanced mind-uploading technology, nothing would prevent one from
splitting off a personality construct to do a certain task, or interact
with a slower physical-time person, and then later rejoin and reintegrate
those memories with your future self that was running at a faster rate.


>
>
>> Indeed, some versions of the Heaven tale essentially claim that is what
>>> Heaven, with God as the highest level system administrator.  (There are
>>> similar tales of Hell, save for being far less blissful for the average
>>> inhabitant.)  And yet, even for those who fervently believe this is true,
>>> in most cases (with notable exceptions for those unable to keep functioning
>>> well anyway) given the choice of a longer life on Earth or going
>>> immediately to Heaven, they keep choosing the former.  The reason why can
>>> be debated, but most people appear to prefer to continue to affect the
>>> universe they were born into.
>>>
>>
>> The only actions that matter are those that effect conscious experience.
>> If everyone is uploaded, and no one is outside, then no actions taken
>> outside (where there is no consciousness) have any purpose or value.
>>
>
> There will always be some people outside.  You will never convince 100% of
> the people to upload.  Even if you resort to force, those that forcibly
> upload others must themselves be outside to do the task.  When it is done,
> some of them will prefer to remain outside - and if even one manages to
> spawn a substantial number of others, the whole cycle repeats, until
> eventually some get far enough away that they can not practically be hunted
> down.
>

I agree not everyone will upload.  Here is another way to express the point
I was trying to get at: in a universe that has no conscious life, and never
will, nothing that happens there matters to anyone. It is only actions and
events which affect conscious states that matter, or have any moral value,
or any meaningful effect. All this is to say that what happens to people
inside virtual realities matters.


>
>
>> This is what I am envisioning for such a space habitat, not some cube of
>> computronium sitting bare on a desk, whose fate is at the whim and mercy of
>> those generous enough to keep it repaired and supplied with power.
>>
>
> Phrases such as "If everyone is uploaded" suggest that you are in fact
> suggesting some cube of computronium sitting bare - floating in space
> rather than on a desk, perhaps with autonomous self-repair and maintenance
> systems (in particular keeping the power running), but still at the mercy
> of those outside.
>

So long as the uploaded have some means to interact with the outside,
they're not at the mercy of those outside. Again, think of my submarine
example. The ship, and all its capabilities, in effect becomes a kind of
shared body for those inside it.

Jason
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