<div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span>This assumes that no advanced species is advanced enough to substantially control its own environment and optimize it for its needs.</span><div>
<div>
</div>
<br><span>
</span></div><div></div><br></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" class="protonmail_signature_block protonmail_signature_block-empty">
<div class="protonmail_signature_block-user protonmail_signature_block-empty">
</div>
<div class="protonmail_signature_block-proton protonmail_signature_block-empty">
</div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div><div class="protonmail_quote">
On Sunday, July 19th, 2026 at 14:24, John Clark via extropy-chat <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="protonmail_quote" type="cite">
<div dir="ltr"><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;background-color:transparent">On Sat, Jul 18, 2026 at 7:42 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <</span><a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;background-color:transparent" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;background-color:transparent">> wrote:</span></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><div><br></div></div></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 class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"><font size="4"><b><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">>> </span>Small <span class="gmail_default">s</span>tar sized black holes decay <span class="gmail_default">sooner</span> th<span class="gmail_default">an supermassive Black Holes that you were talking about. </span></b></font> </font></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>You were talking about proton decay being less than BH evaporation tome.</i></font></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b>A <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">B</span>lack <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">H</span>ole with a mass of our sun would evaporate due to Hawking radiation<span class="gmail_default" style=""> in about 10^67 years, a supermassive black hole might last 10^100 years. </span></b></font><div><br></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 class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>I am saying use smaller holes that will evaporate before protons decay.l so their energy can be used fully.</i></font></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b>Used fully?<span class="gmail_default"> If the black hole is spinning then you could theoretically extract about 29% of that spin energy as useful work, but trying to get work out of </span><span style="background-color:transparent">Hawking radiation<span class="gmail_default"> would be far more difficult and the power levels would be absurdly low. </span></span><span style="background-color:transparent">Hawking radiation</span><span class="gmail_default" style="background-color:transparent"> is composed of photons with extremely long wavelengths and thus are very high entropy. That's because a solar mass Black Hole would be almost at absolute zero, about 10^-8K; you have to wait about 300 billion years before you could even begin to extract useful work from that because that's how long you have to wait before the cosmic microwave background got that cold. And even then the power levels would be ridiculously tiny. The energy in a </span><span style="background-color:transparent"> solar-mass black hole<span class="gmail_default">'s </span>Hawking radiation is<span class="gmail_default"> absurdly</span> small<span class="gmail_default">,</span> <span class="gmail_default"> </span>only about </span><span style="background-color:transparent"><span></span><span aria-hidden="true"><span><span></span><span>1</span><span><span>0<span class="gmail_default">^-</span></span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span>28</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="background-color:transparent"> watts <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">.</span></span></b></font></div><div><span style="background-color:transparent"><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></span></div><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b>That said<span class="gmail_default"> I do admit there is a way you could do a little bit better, and do it right now, although it's not practical. </span><span style="background-color:transparent">The <span class="gmail_default">C</span>osmic <span class="gmail_default">M</span>icrowave <span class="gmail_default">B</span>ackground <span class="gmail_default">R</span>adiation</span><span class="gmail_default" style="background-color:transparent"> is at 2.725K and a Solar mass black hole is at 6.2*10^-8K which is much colder, so you could in theory extract energy not from the Black Hole but from the CMBR and use the much colder Black Hole as a heat sink, and the efficiency would be great. E</span><span class="gmail_default" style="background-color:transparent">fficiency = 1- (</span><span style="background-color:transparent">6.2*10^-8<span class="gmail_default">)/(2/725) = </span></span><span style="background-color:transparent">0.99999998<span class="gmail_default">, and you can't do much better than that! </span></span></b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b><span style="background-color:transparent"><span class="gmail_default"><br></span></span></b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b><span style="background-color:transparent"><span class="gmail_default" style="">The trouble is not efficiency its power levels, </span></span><span style="background-color:transparent">each square meter of your CMBR collector would only produce about 3*10^-6 watts; <span class="gmail_default" style="">so </span>a CMBR collector with the radius of the Earth<span class="gmail_default" style="">'s</span> orbit would produce about 8*10^17 watts, but a Dyson <span class="gmail_default" style="">S</span>phere around the sun would produce 4*10^26 watts, that's <u style="">500 million times</u> more power. </span></b></font></div><span style="background-color:transparent"> </span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i> <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">>>> </span>or perhaps future engineers will develop computers not based on atoms as we know them.</i></font></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">>> </span>So now we've gotten to the point where you need to invoke new physics in order to explain the Fermi <span class="gmail_default">P</span>aradox<span class="gmail_default">!</span></b></font></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>I am not postulating new physics, only new engineering.</i></font></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b><span class="gmail_default" style="">Y</span>ou want to build a Turing <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">M</span>achine<span class="gmail_default" style=""> using only an astronomically diluted soup of nothing but photons, gravitational waves, neutrinos, electrons and anti-electrons. Unlike Drexler style Nanotechnology or </span><span style="background-color:transparent">Dyson sphere<span class="gmail_default" style="">s/swarms; what you were talking about would take more than just improved engineering; like perpetual motion machines or faster than light travel, what you want would require new science. </span></span></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 class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>Also note, it was you who injected the speculative physics here (the assumption that protons are unstable).</i></font></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b>The difference is I did not need to use any speculative physics<span class="gmail_default"> to resolve the Fermi Paradox, but you did. </span>I was just pointing out that we can't know<span class="gmail_default"> even approximately what the universe will look like in 10^100 years because over such a vast amount of time we don't know if Dark Energy is stable and we don't know if protons are stable. And even with new physics I don't think you've resolved it. I STILL don't understand why our descendants in the year 10^100 would be happy that we let low entropy photons from quadrillions of suns radiante uselessly into infinite space, rather than first converting them into high entropy photons and a completed calculation. </span></b></font></div><div><br></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 class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b><span class="gmail_default"> >> </span><span class="gmail_default" style="background-color:transparent">I can explain it with nothing but existing </span><span style="background-color:transparent">Physics</span><span class="gmail_default" style="background-color:transparent">, we are simply the first in the observable universe, and as I keep saying, somebody has to be the first. </span></b></font></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>I am not advocating for any position, I only thought it was worth sharing this new possibility with the list. You seem motivated to disproving it for some reason.</i></font></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4"><b><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"><span class="gmail_default">The r</span>eason is I'm trying to find a way for <span class="gmail_default"></span>what you <span class="gmail_default">are</span> saying<span class="gmail_default"> to make some sort of</span> logical sense<span class="gmail_default">, and so far my efforts have been unsuccessful. </span>I just don't get it.</font><span class="gmail_default"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"></font><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </font></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 class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b><span class="gmail_default" style="background-color:transparent"> >></span><span style="background-color:transparent">even new physics can't provide a reason for not intercepting the energy of the sun <u><span class="gmail_default">right </span>now</u> and using that energy to perform a calculation. </span></b></font></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>If there were a way to stop stars from fusing now,</i></font></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b><span class="gmail_default">Huh? </span>Turning off the universe<span class="gmail_default"> would kill all life in the universe both biological and electronic. </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 class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>that would be preferable to trying to exploit their solar radiation for computations today.</i></font></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b>I don't know how you figure that.<span class="gmail_default"> </span></b></font></div><div> </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 class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>The is a large middle ground covered between 1. doing no computations at all, and 2. building Dyson swarms around every star.</i></font></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b>That's just <span class="gmail_default">it, I don't think there is a middle ground because once Drexler style Nanotechnology is achieved von Neumann probes will be cheap and easy to make, and some alien individual in some alien civilization is going to do so. Or at least they would if there are any alien civilizations. But I don't think there are. </span> </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 class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">>> </span>Wa<span class="gmail_default">steful? </span><span class="gmail_default"></span><span style="background-color:transparent">The low entropy<span class="gmail_default"> </span>energy that is radiating into infinite space right now<span class="gmail_default"> from our sun we are <u>NEVER GOING TO GET BACK NO MATTER WHAT WE DO</u>.</span></span></b></font></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i><span class="gmail_default">> </span>Let me express these numbers in terms that humans are more adept at comparing:</i></font></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color:transparent"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i>1¢ = all energy that will be lost to fusion of stars</i></font></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color:transparent"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i>$2.00 = all energy remaining in the rest mass of matter after the last stars have burned out.</i></font></span></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b>After 100 trillion years w<span class="gmail_default" style="">hen</span> the last <span class="gmail_default" style="">small </span>red dwarf star has burned out,<span class="gmail_default" style=""> how do you propose turning all those cold stellar cadavers into useful work? </span>And if any sort of intelligence exist<span class="gmail_default" style="">s</span> at that time<span class="gmail_default" style="">, why would they be pleased that for the last hundred trillion years we had let all the radiant energy from all the stars in the universe fly uselessly into infinite space and are delighted that we didn't use them to perform a calculation?! </span></b></font></div><div><br></div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="">> </span>You fret a great deal over this lost cent.</i></font></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b>You're the one who believes that every intelligent entity in the observable universe <u>without exception</u> believes that it's very important that we do NOT prevent that cent from getting lost. And I'll be damned if I understand why because Mr. Jupiter Brain is going to value a computation made today more than a hypothetical computation that might be made in 100 trillion years, that's due to the fact that information can produce more information just like money can produce more money. A small amount of new information obtained now might have generated a huge amount of new information after 100 trillion years of thinking about the consequences of it<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></span>. And besides, even Mr. Jupiter Brain can't be absolutely certain what things will be like in 100 trillion years, but He knows what things are like right now. </b></font><div><br></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 class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>But perhaps there are better ways of spending energy resources now than building Dyson swarms. On earth, there is the concept of ERoEI (energy returned on energy invested), so while a wind turbine might return slightly more energy than it cost to build it, of there were a higher ERoEI technology, it would not make sense to invest finite energy resources on wind turbines.</i></font></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b>You're talking about something that will only be relevant for about a decade, maybe two. I'm talking about cosmic time in the feet of the universe.<span class="gmail_default" style=""> </span> </b></font></div><div><br></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 class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b><span style="background-color:transparent"><span class="gmail_default">>> So how is intercepting a low entropy photon <u>before</u> it radiates away, make it power a calculation and turn into a high entropy photon, and only then release it into infinite space, wasteful?! </span></span></b></font></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div></div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"> </blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><i style="background-color:transparent"><font face="georgia, serif" size="4"><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>you dismiss the potential 10^30 X benefit of saving energy for the future.</font></i></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b>I repeat, how is intercepting a low entropy photon before it radiates away, make it power a calculation and turn into a high entropy photon, and only then release it into infinite space, wasteful?! <br></b></font><font face="tahoma, sans-serif" size="4"><b><br></b></font><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">>> </span>Please explain what exactly we are <span class="gmail_default">"</span>saving<span class="gmail_default">" and how our descendants 10^100 years from now will be better off because of our present energy frugality, because I just don't get it. </span> </b></font></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>From our last conversation on this you seemed stuck on in the idea that we can't go above 100% efficiency,</i></font></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b>Well of course you can't get above 100% efficiency!<span class="gmail_default"> Perpetual motion machines don't work. </span> </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 class="gmail_quote"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>and didn't seem to appreciate that progressively colder temperatures enable progressively more computations for the same unit of energy. Do you now agree that there is this multiplicative effect that comes from using colder heat sinks?</i></font></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b>I am not going to answer your questions until you <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">first </span>answer <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">my</span> question<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">.</span> <u>Please explain what exactly we are "saving"</u><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">.</span></b></font></div><div class="gmail_quote"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><b><br></b></font></div><div class="gmail_quote"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><b><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">John K Clark</span><br></b></font><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><br>
</blockquote></div></div>
</div>
</blockquote><br>
</div>