[ExI] Are advanced aliens asleep?

[spike]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf
Of BillK
Sent: Monday, June 05, 2017 10:57 AM
To: Extropy Chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: [ExI] Are advanced aliens asleep?

>...Anders Sandberg (remember him?) :)  


Of course!  I heard from him a couple weeks ago.  He is working some
exciting stuff.


>...and colleagues have a new paper out where they suggest that advanced
alien civilizations could be sleeping (aestivation) until the far future in
order to exploit the low temperature environment for more computation.

>...Anders discusses the paper on his blog here:

http://aleph.se/andart2/space/the-aestivation-hypothesis-popular-outline-and
-faq/

>...BillK

Do you remember Robert Bradbury going on about this topic about ten years
ago?  His spin was different: he was trying to estimate the value of
now-think vs future-think, a kind of inflation/interest model except using
computation as an analog of wealth or currency.  Is a gigacycle now more
valuable than 2 gigacycles to be delivered 2 years from now?

I haven't even read Anders' paper but I fail to find whole concept
compelling.  Now cycles just hafta be more valuable than future ones.  They
would be more abundant in the future, almost surely.  Furthermore... I can
see a lot of bad consequences in waiting to compute something that can be
computed now.

spike