[extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do

[Russell Wallace]

On 7/1/06, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
>
> Notice that none of it is about smarts. If this
> spacetime doesn't allow you to punch traversible
> portals intelligence is just baggage on the long
> run. Just like in chromatography, the initial wavefront
> has zero diversity. It's pure solvent, all the cargo
> is trailing behind. The more complex, the slower.
> There are successor waves trailing the pioneer wavefront.
> Eventually, after many waves passing, you've got steady state.
> Except, it's roiling, at a very high level of fitness. There
> you've got viruses, and mice, and men, and deities. Maximum
> diversity. Not pioneers. Pioneers are specialists, and only
> exist in wavefronts across pristine acres of congealed
> star drek. If both such waves collide pioneers get
> wiped out, because their niche is gone. There's much
> less determinism in the following waves, and the omega
> state does not conserve the information about the origin,
> so it's degenerate. Regardless of the point of the
> origin the omega state behind the trailing waves
> looks all the same.


Unless:

Digital error checking extends the mean time between unwanted mutations to
longer than the lifespan of the universe.

Digital substrate maintenance (nanotechnology) and scanning (smart antivirus
programs) eliminate local parasites.

The observed tendency for cooperation on larger scales to beat disorganized
swarms (cells to multicellular bodies to tribes to nations to multinational
alliances) continues; oligopolies don't sample much of the search space, and
are subject to very different dynamics than the biological ones you're
drawing on. The end state retains a strong dependency on the origin state.

A gram of smarts (enough for an entire upload civilization) in a hundred ton
probe (you need the mass anyway for shielding and braking) is negligible
baggage and more than pays for itself in ability to outthink and outfight a
dumb probe that got there slightly before you did.

The exponent in the rocket equation (and similar terms in non-rocket means
of transport) means ultra high speed probes take a lot of resources to
launch. Long-range colonization is done by big power blocs, not
lichen-equivalents.

Max feasible probe velocity is 0.2c, speed of Nicoll-Dyson laser fire is c.
Probes that try to colonize without permission are vapor before they can
finish braking. All colonization is done by negotiated partitioning of
available space between power blocs.

Ultimate-technology warfare is scorched-earth, defender's resources are
consumed/destroyed (returned to the interstellar medium) along with some of
the attacker's, so evolution selects against the tendency to start fights
and real estate once secured doesn't change hands.

I don't claim to know that any or all of the above _will_ be the case, only
that it's at least as plausible a scenario as the one you outline.

I am God, destroyer of stellar systems. Once you've seen 10^5
> human primates, you've seen 'em all. Altruism is only relevant
> if you rub shoulders with other powers.


Or if the 10^15 human primates in the stellar system you were about to
destroy have built themselves a Nicoll-Dyson laser, and so have their allies
in a hundred nearby star systems. Now it might still be perfectly safe to
_think_ unaltruistic thoughts, but if you're not looking for a Darwin award
you'd better _act_ like a nice well-behaved member of the pantheon.

If you can prove me
> wrong, I'll open a case of champagne, and get wasted in
> celebrating.


Only way to prove the future is wait and see what happens (a universe simple
enough to be analytically predictable would be far too simple to evolve
intelligence) but I think the above adequately demonstrates that there's no
basis for believing your predictions will come true. Make it one bottle of
champagne maybe? :)
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