Re: Humpty Dumpty Sat on a Wall [was Re: Cold and Dark?]

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
25 Oct 1999 18:42:25 +0200

"Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@www.aeiveos.com> writes:

> The guy from the JPL who viewed my Bioastronomy paper said the requirement
> for a CC was under question.

This is good news. After all, it is to my knowledge the natural constant with the smallest magnitude so far, so uncertainty about it seems likely.

> I believe the assumption is that
> Supernovas have the same brightness at all ages and that is very
> iffy IMO unless you can prove that the composition of the SNs is
> the same. Distant/Old SNs occur in an "unintelligent"/"virginal" universe,
> Recent/Near SNs occur (potentially) in an "intelligent"/"engineered"
> universe.

Besides, there is more heavy elements around these days, and they might act as catalysts for various reactions.

> So, what's the problem? In 50 years we send out 200 billion AI
> nanoships to each galaxy at .99c. They reach all of the galaxies
> (in something around 18-20 billion light years), astroengineer them into
> Kardashev Type III galaxy-ships (take a billion years, we've got
> plenty of time), compute how much energy & matter must be expended
> to turn the ships around and get them back to the origin by
> CurrentEra+149 billion years. The matter and energy expended
> in the process is lost to the expanding universe (operating costs,
> what can you do?), but most of the matter and energy of any use gets
> returned to the starting point (presumably at sub-black-hole densities).

Sounds reasonable. (And I mean it. The details are just engineering :-)

One problem might be avoiding collapse - it is possible to do if you rotate or charge matter, but in this case it has to be done in-flight and mistakes are going to be costly.

What if there are another group of postaliens out there, trying to drag all their mass to *their* origo? Sounds like a transhumanist space opera - "Galaxy Rangers" :-)

> So now you have most of the M&E in the universe in one place.
> Construct a single-crystaline ultra-SI and spend the rest of the
> time (> 10^89 years until all the matter evaporates) throwing
> information bottles into subspace or building alternate universes
> and tunnels into them.

I wonder about the heat dissipation of the SCUSI; my biggest jupiter brain in my paper was just a billion degree quark matter structure, this may have some problems dissipating energy well. Sounds like a follow up paper - "everyday life among the galaxy brains".

> Whenever we read papers regarding current perspectives on physics
> and astronomy, it is almost always done from the Occams Razor
> bias that "intelligence" is hard and rare. Flip the position!!!
> What if "intelligence" is easy and common? What if the universe
> is populated/dominated by entitites at the end points of the
> evolution of an Extropian philosophy? What if the **simplest**
> explanation for what we observe *has* to incorporate the evolution
> of intelligence to the allowable limits?

Why stars? :-)

> We shouldn't be studying negative energy, we should be looking
> for disappearing mass. We should be trying to figure out ways
> of standing on the shoulders of those who have had a lot more time
> to think about these problems than we have had.

What if all the missing mass really is missing, the gravitational effects have just not become obvious?

> > Perhaps the most optimistic thing about these two papers is not their
> > conclusions, but the fact that physical eschatology and the effects
> > intelligent life can have on the universe are not being increasingly
> > studied by physicists. It is hardly a mainstream topic, but it is no
> > longer utterly beyond the pale.
>
> ... Until the sub-SI-Robert showed them how to do it...

Do drop in when you are here in Stockholm to get your Nobel prizes :-)

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