<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">On Mon, Oct 20, 2025 at 5:06 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:</span></div></div><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
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<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>Travelling physically will always take a subjective eternity,
whether you're an upload or not. Unless you're not conscious.
</i></font></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b>And unless you're only traveling a finite distance.<span class="gmail_default" style=""> </span></b></font></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i> <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>Travelling as information encoded onto some suitable photons will
take no time at all,<span class="gmail_default" style=""> </span>subjectively.</i></font></div></blockquote><div><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i> </i></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font size="4" style="" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b style="">Yes.</b></font></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div><i><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>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></font></i></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font size="4" style="" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b style="">Yes.</b></font></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>This could already be the case, for alien civilisations, and we'd
be none the wiser.<span class="gmail_default" style=""> </span>The galaxy would still look the same to us, for having a few million data centres scattered about.</i></font></div></blockquote><div> </div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"></font><font size="4" style="" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b style="">No. If "they" are numerous and very smart then it would take a lot of energy to run all those conscious intelligent agents and allow them to live in a virtual world that they found interesting, and that would be possible if you had a Von Neumann probe near every star in the galaxy. But then it would be very obvious to us that the galaxy had been engineered, but we've never seen even a hint of that in this galaxy or in any other. </b></font></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
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<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>I wouldn't be surprised if there are at least some brave and
adventurous individuals willing to do this,</i></font></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b>Once Drexler style <span class="gmail_default" style="">N</span>anotechnology is developed<span class="gmail_default" style=""> if just one individual figured it would be fun to make a von Neumann probe and send it to another star then the galaxy would never look the same again. But there is no sign that has ever happened, that's why I think we are alone; after all the observable universe is finite, so somebody has to be first. </span></b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b><span class="gmail_default" style=""><br></span></b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b><span class="gmail_default" style="">John K Clark</span></b></font></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><br>
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