Re: Upload and space

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
07 Oct 1997 15:25:01 +0200


"Berrie" <staring@worldonline.nl> writes:

> Does an uploaded person keep "fighting" fore more space.
> As in, add-ons of "memory blocks" for your ever expanding mind.
> Or will there be a time, when enough is enough.

This is likely individual; some people and beings may want to
grow forever, others may want to remain at a certain size.

> If not, will we have a War of the uploaded Brains for the
> mater in the universe to convert into memory ?

[One interesting take on this problem is Charles Stross' _Scratch
Monkey_ (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/fiction/monkey/index.html)
where the Superbrights (>H AI) compete with the Ultrabrights (>>H AI)
for resources and most importantly, information input. I disagree
with his model, but it is an interesting (and somewhat bloody)
story about the relation between humans, transhumans and posthumans.]

Matter (or rather processing capacity) will likely be scarce
in the long run, since the "growers" will need it, and so does
the "small is beautiful" individuals who don't grow but reproduce
(the "small is beautiful" individuals who don't reproduce will
form an ever shrinking subset of the population, and will not
matter). So there will likely be competition, yes, but not
necessarily war.

War is so wasteful, especially when the enemy could easily deny
you the resources you want by having his nanoprocessors self-destruct
if he is killed; you would have to rebuild them at a noticeable
expense. On the other hand trade might be a very common way of
resolving the scaricity problem. It is of course possible to launch
colonies near lightspead to get at the uncolonized frontier far
away, set up a "info hotel" and wait for the customers to arrive.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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