[ExI] Are Dyson swarms a good idea?

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 10:27 AM John Clark via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 10:10 AM BillK via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> *> By the time such a world-scale project could be contemplated and
>> funded, every nation will have miniature stars in fusion reactors producing
>> more energy than they can use.*
>
>
> *I disagree, computational capacity takes energy and I don't think you can
> ever have too much of that. And I do not believe I am the only mind in the
> observable universe that holds that opinion. If intelligent life is common
> then somebody somewhere is going to decide to make a certain machine that
> has a mass of only 10^-12 grams. And it would only take one guy. So why
> don't we see any evidence of that? The answer is obvious. *
>

Answers are only obvious if you limit your imagination.

You are fond of saying we can't predict what will happen to us after the
singularity. Do you not expect that civilizations capable of colonizing the
galaxy would be post-singular? How then are you able to predict the
decisions of such superintelligences?

Could it be that these superintelligences:

   1. Converge on a common agreement of how much to interfere with the rest
   of the galaxy?
   2. Could one or more elder post-singular intelligences already be
   present in every star system and enforce some kind of galactic law?
   3. Could such superintelligences find ways of computing with near zero
   energy loss, or use black holes as heat sinks, or find a loophole for free
   energy, or implement eternal intelligence
   <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson%27s_eternal_intelligence> (another
   less well known idea of Dyson's), or enter black holes, or create new
   universes (as Alan Guth has speculated to be possible via his inflationary
   theory)

Any one of these possibilities undermines the conclusion that if ETI
existed, we would see Dyson swarms everywhere.

Unless you have somehow obtained definite answers to these questions (and
perhaps countless others), and found a way to predict post-singularity
behaviors, I think your conclusion is not so obvious.

Jason



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> On Mon, 26 Jan 2026 at 12:17, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, Jan 25, 2026 at 5:32 PM BillK via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> *> I asked Claude Opus 4,5 - Will all advanced civilizations build a
>>>> Dyson swarm around their star? Claude suggested that this idea could be a
>>>> mistaken projection of 20th-century ideas onto the cosmos.*
>>>
>>>
>>> *I don't find any of Claude's excuses to explain the embarrassing fact
>>> that astronomers have never seen anything like a Dyson sphere to be
>>> persuasive. If intelligent life is common in the observable universe I
>>> simply don't believe that not one of the trillion quadrillion minds in that
>>> universe thought it would be a good idea to make a 10^-12 gram self
>>> duplicating machine that is capable of making a Dyson Sphere, lots of them.
>>> Hell, I am a mind in the observable universe and if I had the ability to
>>> make such a machine I certainly would, and I don't think I'm unique.  *
>>> *<snip>*
>>>
>>
>>> * John K Clark*
>>>
>> -
>>
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