[extropy-chat] In the Long Run, How Much Does Intelligence Dominate Space?

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, Jul 10, 2006 at 12:48:38AM -0700, J. Andrew Rogers wrote:

> More generally, "individuals" are fictions that we arbitrarily  
> delineate at communication bottlenecks (both latency *and*  

Self-organization has discrete steps in hierarchies. Cell organelles
(anything with a membrane), cells, cortex modules, organs, multicellular 
organisms, social organisms (mostly insects, but also mole-rats) and large-scale
superpersonal organisation levels (corporations, countries, etc).
Aggregation is conservative, though it does modify individual units
towards increased specialization.

Anything with discrete units of selection is very unlikely
to degenerate into a homogenous soup. We might very well form a
borganism at some point, but the individual people units will
be still recognizable as discrete units.

> bandwidth).  As the communication topology changes with time, so will  
> the effective definition of "individual", whether it is immediately  
> recognized or not.
> 
> If inter-brain communication was within an order of magnitude of the  
> technical specs of intra-brain communication, I doubt human organisms  

But in this universe things which are closer together can talk
to each other with a higher bit rate. There's no way how a 10^10 switch
assembly with ~THz native switching rate can convey its entire state
to a similiar system even 10 cm away. Higher codes can transport
a lot of information with a small bit rate. 

> would have much of a concept of "individual" in the same sense that  
> we do today.

I think we'll see superpersons grow smarter and stronger, but
this isn't the end of us.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 191 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20060710/158ce36a/attachment.bin>