Re: The Point of No Return

Eliezer Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Mon, 23 Dec 1996 19:16:41 -0600


> In response to some of Anders Sandberg's ideas about transhuman life
> expanding at the speed of light in order to avoid catastrophe, I
> speculated that two 'genders' might be needed: "lingering learners"
> and "always-pushing-on probes".

The lingering learners would go at slightly less than the speed of
light, thus allowing the whole area to remain in constant communication,
in the sense that an idea occurring at any point in the sphere will
eventually expand to the rest of it. The problem is that this creates
an ever-widening sphere of ignorant probes, and as soon as an area
becomes intelligent, it is annihilated by the onrushing catastrophe.

-- 
         sentience@pobox.com      Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
          http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
           http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer:  Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.