From: Randall Randall (randall@randallsquared.com)
Date: Thu Aug 07 2003 - 10:07:41 MDT
On Wednesday, August 6, 2003, at 04:40 PM, BillK wrote:
> On Tue Aug 05, 2003 10:37 am Randall Randall wrote:
>>
>> I read all that (really!) and I don't think it matters,
>> because, essentially, the universe at large is not the
>> world as we know it. The current evolutionary space is
>> incredibly limited in comparison to even our galaxy, and
>> all the strategy differences are for environments which
>> are already full of competing organisms.
>>
>> Those arguments will be great for explaining why not every
>> solar group sends out colonization groups when the visible
>> universe is full of life. It doesn't at all provide an
>> explanation of why a single solar group wouldn't bother to
>> colonize any of the astronomically greater resources
>> available and visible to it.
>>
>
> Hmmmm. So you are saying that you believe something will happen that
> has
> never happened before in the history of the universe? (Because there is
> no sign of them out there). And all the other times that the opposite
> happened in the past in our history, don't matter?
As far as we know, every new thing humans do has never happened before
in the history of the universe. More below.
> Any civilization is a product of its past history. An immortal
> Z-strategy post-singularity civilization will be master of its local
> environment and using intelligence beyond our understanding to
> control its own evolution. As a Z-strategy civilization it will
> have a long history of seeking very low reproductive rates before it
> gained access to very large (possibly unlimited) resources.
>
> The r-strategy populations that maximise reproduction in our world are
> all natural evolution cases where suddenly an abundance of food becomes
> available. The post-singularity civilization is consciously controlling
> its own evolution. Big difference!
I think the problem is that we've been discussing "a civilization" as
if that term meant a thing, more-or-less indivisible, like a person.
I don't think it's meaningful to talk about actions or motives of
groups, but it's convenient shorthand for "most members of". Of course,
using that shorthand leads to an evitable argument between those who
just use it as shorthand, and those who've internalized a concept of
group-as-thing.
Basically, I think you're begging the question when you assume that
a "post-singularity civilization [...] consciously controlling" itself
is possible without that "civilization" being a single person.
So let me qualify this to say that any civilization which is not
actually
a single person cannot control its own change. So if we're discussing
groups which have an internal governance that is so absolutely
totalitarian
that they can, for a time, control rate and direction of change, I would
say that I don't expect groups like that to last long. My guess is that
dystopias of control like this have a lifetime which is loosely
inversely
correlated to how complete the control is.
There's a whole 'nother problem with your statement, in my opinion. Let
me repeat part of that statement here so that I don't go off-track:
> An immortal Z-strategy post-singularity civilization will be master of
> its local environment and using intelligence beyond our understanding
> to
> control its own evolution.
Evolution, I submit, is meaningless in the context of a single entity.
In
that case, change is merely change. Evolution is something that happens
with competing entities. (Seems trivial, I know). Applying that to our
discussion, when I talk about evolution of civilizations, I don't mean
change within a civilization. I've mentioned why I don't expect there
to be only one civilization, above, so the only remaining objection is
if there is some universal reason why propagation or expansion results
in
*less* of the entity or group expanding.
This may not be as verbose as it could be. If it doesn't seem to make
sense, let me know and I'll try to unpack it.
-- Randall Randall <randall@randallsquared.com> "Not only can money buy happiness, it isn't even particularly expensive any more." -- Spike Jones
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Aug 07 2003 - 10:18:49 MDT