[extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sun, Jul 02, 2006 at 05:34:11AM -0400, Robert Bradbury wrote:

>      Remember that once we get our own gram of civilization each, our

A gram is not all that much. Even encoded optimally, it's only part
of a seed, not a civilization. Single individuals can easily range 
from cubic um to km^3 and beyond. A km^3 worth of computronium
contains a lot of bits which are uncompressible. But of course
blue whales grow just fine from fertilized ova, too, and redwoods 
from small seeds.

>      motivations and knowledge are likely to greatly change. I doubt that
>      doing a Star Trek, conquer the universe will seem very attractive. If

The motivation of life never changes: spread out. People have no consensus,
and self-replicating postbiology in deep space as native habitat are not 
people as we know them, and many dumb critters in the literal sense. 

>      you want to 'chat' to the other one gram civilizations (AIs) then you

Information and matter streams are not just common code, they're 
individuals. At the boundary there are no neighbours on one
side by definition. Individuals wander off and colonize sterile
patches. There are already a number of people on this list and
elsewhere which would run far and wide, if given the slightest
opportunity. Assuming, you know who these people are, would you
want to keep them here against their will? Would you be able to?
I notice we didn't choose to remain in Africa, as a species.
Population and culture pressure drove Old World colonists
across the Atlantic, and the Pacific.
 
>      certainly won't be dashing off at some fraction of light speed. The

Never understimate the bandwidth and overestimate the latency of a wagonload of tape 
cartridges at 0.98 c. Relativistic pellet streams could easily be an optimal
way to travel and communicate. How many parallel photon beams you
could establish to the neighbour system depends on how collimated they
are, and how large the spread of targets. NASA might want to
get rid of huge antenna apertures by going LoS laser, but if you look 
inwards from Pluto Earth is just a pinprick.

>      loss of the network may well be much more painful than gaining a new
>      solar system to sit your gram in.
> 
> Finally, somebody understands why Matrioshka Brains don't tend to colonize!

All solid state cultures are alike on the really long run.

> The probability that any civilization that could colonize would reach this
> conclusion would tend to argue against the sending of seeds or very very small

'Conclusion' assumes intelligent thought. Postbiology doesn't need to
be intelligent to exist. Phytoplankton never gets bored.

> fractions of the MBrain to develop undeveloped solar systems.  MBrains only
> replicate by fission as bacteria do where the complete set of resources is
> relatively equally divided between the two offspring.  One can only do this

You're postulating stellar-system sized, homogenous individuals. This strikes
me as astronomically unlikely. Again: nonexpansive cultures are not observable.
Probability of all individual of a culture population to be nonexpansive is
arbitrarily close to zero.

> with the information capacity of an MBrain when a developed star system comes
> into extremely close proximity to an undeveloped star system.  The spread rate

Solar systems periphery goes on for lightdays, if not lightmonths.

> for advanced civilizations is not limited by some significant fraction of the
> speed of light or the energy costs that interstellar transport involves but the
> desire to avoid having to give up everything that huge information storage
> capacity and simulation capacity make available to them.  Indeed one could view

I don't understand you. Individuals follow their own motivations. No one
knows nor cares what a particular critter riding an iceblock a couple lightmonths
outwards does.

> the idea of sending a sub-copy to a virginal, but unintelligent (empty) MBrain
> as being a form of cruel and unusal punishment that an ATC would choose to
> prohibit.  As MBrain subsets (AIs, uploads, whatever) are used to time sharing

If 80% of your information ecology by volume is nonsentient and out of
control enforcement is futile. 

> they have very long time horizons and waiting a billion years until the ideal
> opportunity for splitting  comes along isn't a big sacrifice.  One could

Time-sharing doesn't make sense. Co-evolution optimizes for Ops/s,
so if you'll get swapped out to lattice-defect encoded dumb storage
you'll never get swapped in. Particularly, if somebody eats that dumb
block of storage. Such static structures are only useful for
seeds, and even then they need to be reprocessed constantly due
to radiation background shooting holes into your crystal.

> imagine that those strange entitites that want to engange in the development of
> a real infoscape (rather than a virtual one) may simply be put into suspend

If you've fallen into your own navel, and can't get out, then you're
dead to the universe. You will never meet anybody on your own but
expansive culture's pioneers.

Given that we're an evolutionary system, and so far nobody has shown
a plausible mechanism by which we will leave the evolutionary regime
the burden of proof is on the side of those who postulate that a 
culture can become nonexpansive.

> mode until the time comes along to drop off the Mayflower in a passing star
> system deemed unsuitable for 'normal' system replication activities.

Atoms are atoms everywhere. Either food or fuel, or both.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
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