Re: self-extracting zipware AI 'casting

From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Fri Sep 22 2000 - 06:52:43 MDT


We are at the realm of weird science. I seem to remember that this thread was
originally about how author, Rudy Rucker, came up with the concept of
clonning an electromagnetic version of a personality and then sending the
A.I. proggie off onto the cosmos. The book is Saucer Wisdom. My only caveat
was that there was danger from interference by other em sources, also
gravity, also gas clouds. Kids don't try this at home. Neutrino's, because
they penetrate nearly everthing, seem to be a great candidate for such and
endevour. My hope is by the time such interstellar journeys are seriously
considered we will be well into the krasnikov-wormhole era.

In a message dated 9/21/00 10:55:45 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
sentience@pobox.com writes:

<< Okay: Shout REALLY LOUD...
 
 "Most people think Star Trek has solved the problem of faster-than-light
 travel. I am much more fascinated by Star Trek's solution to the
 sound-in-a-vacuum problem."
         --Karen Lingel
 
 On a more serious note, are we really sure that neutrinos can't be used for
 communication? Suppose you had some way to aim the neutrino beam almost
 perfectly, correcting for gravitational influences, so that you can pour a
 beam into a 1mm-diameter cup orbiting another star. Suppose that you also
 fire off a million neutrinos in a perfect two-dimensional grid, each neutrino
 an infinitesimal bit to the side of the previous one, so that at least one
 neutrino in the pattern is guaranteed to hit any atomic nucleus inside the
 pattern's radius. Fire the beam at a crystal where the atomic spacing is
less
 than the pattern diameter, and at least one neutrino is guaranteed to hit.
 The result could be an interstellar radio that shines effortlessly through
any
 amount of dust.
 
 I have no idea whether this makes any sense from a physicist's perspective,
 but my guess is "NO". The basic assumption seems to be that a really
 perfectly aimed neutrino can be deliberately made to be absorbed by an atom,
 and I don't know whether the penetrating quality of neutrinos derives from
the
 improbability of a perfect hit, or the improbability of absorption in any hit
 (glancing or otherwise).
 
 Is a detector made of neutronium more likely to get hit? Could you reverse
 the patterned-neutrino theory and use patterned neutronium to guarantee a
 hit? Or is that just not the way quantum neutridynamics work?
 
 Neutrino-neutronium radio... ought to be a pun here...
 
 This makes a nice little dialogue for a post-Singularity novel:
 
 "You communicate with Andromeda? How?"
     "Oh, we send out a sequence of neutrinos; a neutrino strikes
      a chlorine atom and turns it into argon, that's a 'one'..."
 "But can't a neutrino pass through ten light-years of lead
 without being absorbed?"
     "We aim them really carefully."
 
 -- -- -- -- --
 Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
 Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
>>



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:38:41 MDT