[ExI] Von Neumann Probes

[Stuart LaForge]

On 2026-01-24 09:04, Jason Resch via extropy-chat wrote:
e.
> 
> There are other reasons they might branch out aside from the goal of
> bringing back information (redundancy, protecting other planets,
> preventing self-replicators from taking over, etc.).
> 
> But once you get to the point of running minds on artificial
> substrates at greatly accelerated speeds, anything approaching
> interstellar distances is for all practical purposes, isolated and cut
> off (for seeming millions or billions of years or longer). Once the
> civilization ships separate, they effectively become different
> civilizations (think how much human civilization changed and evolved
> in just a few thousand years).
> 

But that is how diversification and speciation happens in natural 
evolution. The divergence of separated civilizations would be a feature 
and not a bug. It would enable the evolution of distinct ecozones and 
perhaps trade when advancing technologies allowed civilizations to 
"rediscover" one another.

Stuart LaForge