[extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do

[Russell Wallace]

On 7/2/06, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
>
> How can you tell wanted from unwanted mutations, a priori?


If you wanted it then it's wanted, otherwise it isn't :)

Do you realize that the mutation rate is a yet another fitness
> component in the evolutionary optimization process? Static
> critters are doomed, soon. Preemptively: I don't think Lamarck
> can trump Darwin. At best they'd coexist.


Empirically, Lamarck has made quite nice use of Darwin over historical
timescales - yes, memetic evolution is still differential survival of
replicators, but the dynamics look quite different from those typical of
biological evolution.

What is your diagnostics to tell the parasites from symbionts?


I'll design diagnostics when I've systems to design them for (unless, as is
likely, someone else has already done the job for me).

What
> if by getting rid of the parasites you'll be outperformed by those
> who didn't?


What if you won't?

My conjecture is that absolute fitness factors have a ceiling, which
> will be reached relatively soon by a solid-state culture.


And my conjecture is that there is no absolute fitness, it remains relative
to what everyone else is doing (as has always been the case in genetic and
memetic evolution on Earth), so there is no ceiling to reach.

> 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.
>
> You're describing the successor waves. The pioneers which came before you
> have moved on already.


No, I'm describing a smart probe arriving a few hours after a dumb probe.
The dumb probe hasn't done much of anything at that stage.

> Max feasible probe velocity is 0.2c, speed of Nicoll-Dyson laser fire is
> c.
>
> Where did you pull that number from?


Extensive discussions on places like rec.arts.sf.science based on analysis
of the performance characteristics of every means of transport that anyone
has come up with.

The only bottleneck I see is limit to
> rebuild rate under high interstellar hydrogen luminosity, which is really
> close to c.


What you're describing is the equivalent of using machine gun bullets as
food while in the process of being shot with them, and hoping you can heal
as fast as you get shot. This strikes me as highly implausible even for full
nanotech.

Leaving that aside, what means of propulsion are you proposing to use?
(Remember you also have to decelerate at the far end.)

I don't see how this physics would work out. From my current data you can
> push a small probe at about 3 g for many months


How?

and then it's effectively
> out of reach.


No matter how fast the probe goes, a laser beam is faster.

> between power blocs.
>
> Do you see that already the first step from earth surface to solar
> system periphery is the first selection step?


Yes. Do you see that the only entities to have even sent unmanned probes
anywhere near the solar system periphery are the governments of superpowers?


Um, there's plenty of aggression in an ecosystem. There is no earth to
> scorch.
> Real estate (resources) change hands with the death of the individual.


You're getting confused between the ecosystems you're using for historical
analogies and the sf scenarios we're discussing. That resources forcibly
change hands today doesn't prove they will always do so; foxes convert
rabbits into foxflesh, but rabbits don't have guns and bombs.

I could actually run a number of simulations to prove my point, but
> unfortunately this is about at the bottom of the priority pile for me
> right now.


Me too, but it doesn't matter: what you get out of simulations depends on
the assumptions you put into them, and my point is that your assumptions are
arbitrary (not to mention heavily biased by the sort of things us techies
want to believe - I speak from experience, I used to envision the same
scenarios you do until I realized they contained information only about my
psychology, not about the actual future).

The destruction thing was figurative. Don't get hung up on this. The point
> is that the Amish won't build a circumstellar structure, and if they tried
> by building it they'd cease to be Amish. They'd become a Power themselves.


The literal Amish won't get out there in the first place without ceasing to
be Amish (at least not under their own power), but biological H. sapiens is
no stranger to building big guns.
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