Re: The Point of No Return

Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@nada.kth.se)
Wed, 25 Dec 1996 16:07:53 +0100 (MET)


On Mon, 23 Dec 1996, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote:

> > 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.

I would like to point out that the catastrophe isn't really relevant to this
scenario, since the reason the technosphere emerges is not to escape it but
the general tendency for life to grow and spread. I just brought up the
technosphere concept to show that it is in principle possible to deal even
with catastrophes spreading at lightspeed.

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