On Wed, 16 Oct 2002 darkvegeta26@aol.com wrote:
> A being without any drives, conscious or subconscious, would just sit in one
> place and do nothing, obviously...
Yes. Perfectly enlightened beings are, mmh, good ettin'.
> > Where is the extreme abundance coming from? The concentration of
> > matterenergy in the spacetime is finite. The kinetic bottleneck of matter
> > conversion vs. pattern replication guarantees you scarcity all the way to
> > the ceiling.
>
> Um, don't understand what you mean here. "Kinetic bottleneck of matter
> conversion vs. pattern replication"? One example of increased abundance is
> the fact that I'm able to buy more computing power for less money than I
> would have had to pay a few years ago. Does that not fall under your
> definition of "abundance"? If not, what does?
It's pretty obvious that this world will be soon run by beings which are
information patterns, operate on time scale about 10^6 faster than
us-current, and can replicate on a seconds to ms scale. This completely
overwhelms the capabilities of production of computronium habitats even in
free space with predispersed matter. As you know, it takes only few days
to take over and remodel Earth surface, and maybe a few weeks to develop
it to a mature state (conservative estimates, not including any completely
unanticipated breakthroughs). Then you run into a speed of conversion
wall, and have to go to space pretty damn quick. I don't have any
realistic estimates how long this solar system is good for, but depending
on tech it might be decades to centuries, bottlenecked by matter
conversion rate all the way. Because of production/rate of volume, and
volume/surface ratio chunks of spacetime are essentially isolated inasmuch
as egress/travel rate/crossection is concerned. It's hard to estimate, but
basically once you go beyond lightsecond to lightminute scale you're only
slowly steaming in your own juice, converting matter to radiation, and
living off the gradient.
> In light of your doomsaying, you should be working harder than anyone
> else to ensure the integrity of the upcoming emergence of
> greater-than-human intelligence, because that's the safest thing to
> do, and you're nervous, right?
I'm not nervous for myself. I don't expect to be eaten in the streets by
airborne nanoware. In case it does happen, inshallah. Unlike some others
here, I'm certainly not young, driven, wealthy or intelligent enough to
make a difference either way. YMMV.
Once I've arrived at these conclusions I've decided to structure my life
in more conventional ways, including a bit of carpe diem, a bit of
long-term planning (moving to a low risk neighbourhood, healthy life
style, planning a meaningful career, a good relationship, and preparing
financially for retirement, which might or might not come).
Received on Thu Oct 17 06:19:45 2002
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