[ExI] for the fermi paradox fans

[Anders Sandberg]

John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> , 7/6/2014 7:00 PM:
On Fri, Jun 6, 2014 at 7:06 PM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:
 
> I also semi-believe in the Lovecraft Hypothesis (it is at least in my top three). My reason is the thermodynamics of computing: at least error correction requires kTln2 J per bit, which is proportional to temperature. The lowest temperature you can get today without expending energy on cooling is 3 K. Wait long enough and it will be much lower. So if you have X Joule of energy stored as mass, using them now will give you many orders of magnitude less than if you wait a trillion years. Eventually the temperature levels off due to horizon radiation, but that is very far ahead. So my idea is that the Great Old Ones are quietly sleeping until the stars are right (i.e. turned off). 
But absolute zero can never be achieved but only approached asymptotically, so no matter how cold the universe gets if they wait just a little longer it will get even colder. So why would they ever wake up?  
Horizon radiation. Because of what is essentially Hawking radiation from the cosmological horizon the temperature in current cosmological models never drops beyond 10^-19 K (or something like it, it was a while since I checked [1]). Also, wait long enough and your protons will decay (either through super-symmetry or quantum tunnelling into tiny black holes); there are a few time limits for very long-lasting civilizations based on the long-term instability of matter. Wait long enough and you get randomized.  
[1] Gibbons, Hawking. Cosmological Event Horizons, Thermodynamics, and Particle Creation, Physical Review D, volume 15, 1977, pages 2738–2751.

Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University
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