[ExI] DNA India: The transhumanity timeline

[Keith Henson]

On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 5:00 AM,  Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 09:03:43AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote:
>
>> The idea actually came from Perry Metzger, I found the original
>> postings on Extropy, and my contribution was to throw cold water on
>> the idea from the problems with speed of light delays and the brain
>> cooking in it's own waste heat.  From the speed of light, the thinking
>> rate of a Jupiter brain would be ~50 times slower than a human brain.
>
> Diameter of Jupiter is 0.46 lightseconds, spike time to
> cross the brain is 1.6 ms -- 270x, if my math is right

I was basing it on an estimation of the human "equivalent cycle" of
200 Hz.  But a factor of 5 at this level of discussion is essentially
the same.

> All assuming that you're looking at a top level coherent
> process, which is a red herring.

If you are trying to talk to a Jupiter brain, the top level coherent
process is what you would be talking to.  At least I think that's the
case.

>> If you want to do a lot of thinking, small dimensions, lots of power
>> and plenty of cold water are needed.
>>
>> http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/04/12/transhumanism-and-the-human-expansion-into-space-a-conflict-with-physics/
>
> Too many assumptions there. "Twenty million subjective years to get an answer back is just ridiculous." --
> you're thinking like a human here.

I agree with you.  Unfortunately I don't know how to think other than
like a human.  Any advice?

> "Due to this line of thinking, I no longer think it?s practical to surround a star with computronium." --
> why, obviously Amerigo Vespucci and Cristobal Colon never set sail, so the colonization never happened,
> so Keith Henson never happened. Since you're obviously there, there seems to be a problem with your
> line of reasoning. It obviously has to do with the need to communicate with everyone else within
> a given minimal time, which is a bogus requirement. Back then, the opposite site of the Earth
> was as remote as the next star in terms of communication latency. Yet it still got settled.

By the time of Magellan, it only took 3 years sail around the Earth.
Point accepted that the Earth got settled, or rather conquered since
the entire planet had been settled long before Europeans started
exploring.  But that's not the point.  Is the best substrate for
thinking beings a fog of computronium around a star?  I don't think so
for engineering reasons of waste heat and latency.  It's a question
akin to where people live today, i.e., a desert supports only a small
fraction of those in lush surroundings.  For the uploaded who want to
think fast, plenty of power, lots of cold water and a compact
community are what you need.  By comparison, a disbursed cloud of
computronium would be like a bleak desert.

> ?Just to give you a sense of what microseconds are, it takes you 500,000 microseconds just to click a
> mouse. But if you?re a Wall Street algorithm and you?re fivemicroseconds behind, you?re a loser.? --
> the problem with HFT is not that is fast (it is), but that it's systematically fraudulent.

No argument there.  Have you noted that HF trading is way down?  Seems
the competition took the profit out of it and now there is hardly
enough to pay the electric bills.

Keith