[ExI] Von Neumann Probes

[Keith Henson]

On Sat, Jan 24, 2026 at 7:15 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jan 24, 2026 at 8:56 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> > More computation doesn't require more energy, this is a common misconception. But more computational speed does require more density. And higher computational speed effectively seals you off from the rest of the universe. If you run your minds a million times faster, the speed of light becomes a million times slower from your perspective (about the speed of an airplane).
> >
> > To email or text someone, or to download a web page from the other side of the planet takes hours.
>
> Actually it's even worse.  Downloading a small Web page from the far
> side of the planet currently takes about a second (optimally: light
> can circle the Earth about 7.5 times per second).  One million seconds
> is 277.777... hours, which is a bit over 11.5 days.
>
> > If a civilization wants to explore, their best bet is to make a copy of their entire civilization and send a copy outward in a miniaturized single ship
>
> Exploration by entire civilizations, or any group larger than an
> individual (or a collective small enough that they would all go
> explore together), generally involves a small number of scouts going
> forth and reporting back.  That ship can't just "go explore"; it needs
> a way to send data back in reasonable time, or the civilization
> wouldn't build and send that ship in the first place.

Years ago, I outlined an SF story about a time when a small number of
humans left the solar system to explore the galaxy in Von Neumann
mode, sending data back via launching lasers.  Eventually, Earth quits
responding, so the explorers send a ship back to see what is wrong.
They find a cremated world.  Looking into their copy of the
transmission code, they discover an error where, instead of relaying
the data through the previous nodes, all data is sent directly to
Earth.

It was a clear case of burnout from information overload.

Keith



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