<html><head></head><body><div><span data-mailaddress="pharos@gmail.com" data-contactname="BillK" class="clickable"><span title="pharos@gmail.com">BillK</span><span class="detail"> <pharos@gmail.com></span></span> , 16/1/2015 12:41 PM:</div><blockquote class="mori" style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; border-left-width: 2px; border-left-color: blue; border-left-style: solid; padding-left: 1ex;">On 15 January 2015 at 23:43, Flexman, Connor wrote: <br>> A big strike against the strong version of that hypothesis is that we can <br>> map out DM in galaxies and see that it's relatively uniformly distributed <br>> throughout each galaxy and out to > 4 times the luminal galaxy radius. <br><snip> <br><br>Don't you just hate it when somebody makes sensible comments to spoil <br>a neat thought? :) </blockquote><div><br></div><div><br></div>That happened to Robert Bradbury's original idea of dark matter being M-brains too. When he proposed it on this list back in the 90s we still did not know if DM was lumpy MACHOs or WIMPs, and it seemed just barely possible that it could all be quiet supercivilizations. Then we found out that it was both smooth and way heavier than previously expected, and the halo of Elder Civilizations evaporated :-)<div><br></div><div>In my aestivation hypothesis, elder civilizations may indeed be around in some quiet, safe form waiting until the universe cools enough to enable truly powerful computations. I don't require them to be DM, although that might be a neat hiding place. They are just a microscopic fraction of the caretaker systems they have left in place, themselves just a microscopic fraction of the total matter. </div><div><br></div><div><br>Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University</div></body></html>