[ExI] Are Dyson swarms a good idea?

[Jason Resch]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 9:56 AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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, *
>

That doesn't follow.

Jason


*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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