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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 19/10/2025 23:43, BillK wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:mailman.0.1760913833.23155.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap=""><pre wrap=""
class="moz-quote-pre">On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 at 20:18, Keith Henson via extropy-chat
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org"
moz-do-not-send="true"><extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org></a> wrote:
</pre><blockquote type="cite" style="color: #007cff;"><pre wrap=""
class="moz-quote-pre">Regardless, thinking about what we see gives us a strong hint of where
humans are headed. I expect we will eventually build data centers in
space to accommodate trillions of uploaded humans. I suspect they
will be in the relatively cold "computational zone" where the lower
temperature reduces errors.
Keith
_______________________________________________
</pre></blockquote><pre wrap="" class="moz-quote-pre">
I also think this is a likely future but.......
Unfortunately, it contradicts the idea of zipping around the galaxy,
colonizing other worlds. Once uploaded minds are processing millions
of times faster than humans, the universe becomes frozen by time
dilation. Travel in space takes a subjective eternity. Exploring
millions of virtual worlds in computronium will be preferable.
Advanced aliens will go quiet and stay local.</pre></pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
I'm not so sure.<br>
<br>
Travelling physically will always take a subjective eternity,
whether you're an upload or not. Unless you're not conscious.
Travelling as information encoded onto some suitable photons will
take no time at all, subjectively. Setting things up so that this is
possible will take a few million years, as the hardware will need to
be built, presumably by Von Neumann probes of some type, scattered
throughout the galaxy and programmed to build the required receiving
stations and processing substrates. Once that is done, people can
zip around the galaxy at the speed of light. Providing they are
willing to sacrifice a few thousand objective years while their
peers back home are fitting billions of years of experience into the
same time.<br>
<br>
(This could already be the case, for alien civilisations, and we'd
be none the wiser. The galaxy would still look the same to us, for
having a few million data centres scattered about. At least for a
while. If they served as seeds for new local expansion, that could
be a different matter, but if they stayed small, we would never
notice them)<br>
<br>
I wouldn't be surprised if there are at least some brave and
adventurous individuals willing to do this, but it would almost
definitely cause huge rifts, mentally and technologically, between
the stay-at-homes, who will have almost endless spans of time to
develop, and the adventurers, who will be frozen at their previous
level until they reach their destination. It would be a one-way
trip, psychologically.<br>
<br>
If things like picotechnology are possible, maybe the originating
civilisations would effectively disappear, becoming too small for
any detection method. The whole universe could be soaked in advanced
civilisations, and still look exactly the same.<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Ben</pre>
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