RE: Suns considered harmful (was: Pluto)

From: Spike (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Sun May 25 2003 - 19:58:37 MDT

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    Robert J. Bradbury:

    >Did not use a makeup mirror to heat things up as a child.
    >I believe I was a bit more scientific and used a magnifying
    >glass... :-) Don't think my mother wore much makeup...

    The mirrors work much better than a magnifying glass
    because they are larger in area. Ma had one that was
    30 cm across. One could really collect a lot of heat
    that way and if one cleverly figured out ways to trap
    heat, one could actually melt some metals in this way.
    It impressed me how much power is pouring down on this
    planet, even tho it is so far out here away from the
    sun. If one forgets the magnitude, it is nearly a
    horsepower per square yard. From that, a better
    two digit figure to remember is about 1300 watts
    per square meter.

    >> Humans are apparently the first emergent sentience here in
    >> this galaxy.

    >I think you are in Eliezer's camp with this comment spike,
    >but I still remain less convinced.

    >See my reasoning, esp. points 1-5 at the end of this msg.
    >
    http://forum.javien.com/XMLmessage.php?id=id::XScpV30s-aRg1-DzBC-XCo9->O
    S9yOBcPd3lO

    >To make a strong assertion that our galaxy is "dead" you
    >have to make a number of other strong assertions...

    OK let me read your site and think it over. I am finding
    the following line of reasoning compelling: any sentience
    would want to think more. The ultimate limit of computability
    would be reached as soon as *every* photon that is emitted
    for any reason is harnessed to flip one bit. Then all that
    bit flipping is used to figure out better and better ways
    to create more and better information more efficiently: the
    AI wants to get smarter. This line of reasoning is sounding
    more inevitable the more I think about it.

    I can see a post-Spike (or post-Singularity) humanity getting
    to the point of wanting to stop all the wastful photon
    barfing within a few hundred years, and actually starting
    in some meaningful way to deal with that waste within 5000.

    spike



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