[ExI] fun and games

[Tom Nowell]

So, in the next 1.5million years we either need to evacuate the solar system or have systems to deflect every rogue comet coming our way.

Compared to the 10^14 lives that fail to get a chance to exist for every second we delay our expansion throughout the universe this is a modest imperative for us to get a move on (yes, I did recently re-read Nick Bostrom's piece "Astronomical waste" - the 10^14 figure is for biological humans, for machine intelligences/uploads the figure is 10^31).

To think - Arthur C Clarke liked to use an image in the 1960s (world population 1 billion) that for every human who had existed, the shadows of 30 hominids stood behind them (estimated number of later hominids who had ever lived according to 1960s archaeology approx 30 billion) - and all that pales into comparison with the vast number who could exist, if only we expanded to other stars.

Tom