Re: Meta-Foxes (was: Fermi Paradox)

From: Steve Witham (sw@tiac.net)
Date: Sat Jul 26 2003 - 20:20:22 MDT

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    >Steve Witham wrote:
    >>My assumption is that a metafox can invisibly eat a fox,
    >>but trying to eat rabbits (planets) is such a large-scale
    >>activity that it makes you visible (i.e. a fox).

    Robin Hanson said:

    >I don't see why this would be so, at least per "pound of flesh" or
    >per useful units acquired. If anything I'd think it would be the
    >other way around; foxes could make a lot of noise while they
    >struggle for their life.

    It's sort of for this reason that pounds (mass) being consumed doesn't
    explain the behavior (non-foxiness) we're trying to explain.
    The foxes are so much smaller than the planets! Foxes might have an
    extremely high density of interesting information, or maybe it's not
    interesting to metafoxes--I'm not sure the metafoxes need to be
    "acquiring" anything from the foxes but silence.

    I think the foxes would make the same amount of noise in death
    that they were making just before it, and besides, the issue is how much
    physical display the metafox needs to make. That's why I keep
    steering toward "corruption" as the way the metafoxes work on
    foxes. I don't want to say it has to be computer viruses, but
    that's sort of how I think about it.

      --Steve



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