[ExI] DNA India: The transhumanity timeline

[Kelly Anderson]

On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 10:02 AM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>wrote:


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

I don't think that it is necessary to think like a human to see where this
will actually likely end up... We can look at any kind of animal, plant or
bacteria and see a pattern that generally emerges. If you take the
population per square unit of area of your choice, and you plot the number
of any given species that lives within that square (or cube), and compare
that number to all the other squares, you're going to get a population
distribution that will be roughly the shape of a high peak followed by a
downward curve. Whether it's Poisson or exponential doesn't really matter
for this discussion. The point is that there are optimal environments for
every type of creature, yet some smaller number of creatures live away from
these population centers.

With humans, we call the densest population centers cities, while less
dense areas are towns, and finally country and wilderness. Very few humans
live in Antarctica, for example. But the same pattern holds if you are
talking about geese or redwood trees or bacteria. No human thinking pattern
required.

I would suggest from this that highly intelligent beings would likely
follow a similar distribution with many living in densely packed areas, but
some choosing to venture out and get a little space between them and the
neighbors. If it is true from bacteria up to humans, why not up further
still?

-Kelly
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