[ExI] Are Dyson swarms a good idea?

[John Clark]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2026 at 12:41 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> If they run reversible computers (which is optimally efficient) then we
> wouldn't see anything.


*If ET uses reversible computers then, although they could never reach
zero, they could use an arbitrarily small amount of energy to perform a
calculation. However the less energy they use the slower they would think.
If they use so little energy that we wouldn't be able to detect it then it
would take centuries for them to figure out that 2+2 is equal to 4, and few
would call such a thing superintelligent, or even just intelligent. So if
ET exist he's as dumb as a bag of rocks.  *


*John K Clark*


\



>>>> *> Do you agree Landauer's limit depends on the temperature of the
>>>>> heatsink?*
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *Certainly, but when your heat sink gets colder and colder eventually
>>>> you reach a point of diminishing returns, and at 2.7° kelvin that point has
>>>> been reached because the difference between **0.99353% efficiency and **0.9999999999983% efficiency
>>>> is too trivial to worry about. It's certainly not worth the trouble of
>>>> compressing Jupiter into a 20 foot wide Black Hole which, correct me if I'm
>>>> wrong, I believe would be rather troublesome to do. *
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> *> this is just grasping at straws to defend Dyson swarms in the face
>>>>> of better methods having already been demonstrated.*
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *If there are better ways of producing amounts of power that are
>>>> LITERALLY  astronomical and keep doing so for billions of years than Dyson
>>>> spheres I have not heard of them,*
>>>>
>>> * but I do know one thing, even if they exist they would still have to
>>>> obey the Second Law Of Thermodynamics, and that means we should be able to
>>>> observe them. But we have seen nothing.   *
>>>>
>>>
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