[ExI] for the fermi paradox fans

[Robin D Hanson]

On Jun 10, 2014, at 5:04 AM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se<mailto:anders at aleph.se>> wrote:
 So there is less obviously a reason to wait to spend entropy. The max entropy usually comes via huge black holes, and those can take time to construct and then to milk. That seems to me to place the strongest limits on when we expect negentropy to get spent.

I don't think time is the resource that is most costly if you try to maximize the overall future computations of your lightcone. Capturing dark matter with black holes seems wortwhile, but I wonder about the thermodynamic cost of doing it.

There is another reason to go slow: In reversible computers, as in other reversible systems, the entropy cost is proportional to the rate. That is, the entropy cost per gate operation is inverse in the time that operation takes. In the limit of going very slowly, the entropy cost per operation approaches zero.

Robin Hanson  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Res. Assoc., Future of Humanity Inst., Oxford Univ.
Assoc. Professor, George Mason University
Chief Scientist, Consensus Point
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323



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