From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sat May 24 2003 - 14:46:23 MDT
On Sat, 24 May 2003, Spike wrote:
> The vapor pressure. Water ice would need to be cold indeed
> to prevent it from being lost thru sublimation.
Spike, you raise an interesting point here. And though I've
got the Handbook of Chemistry & Physics open to the Vapor Pressure
pages I am not (at least without significantly more thought)
able to reasonably interpret the data (esp. the extent to which
ice would be worse than iron or better than LN2). So I
cannot evaluate your assertion at this time.
I would only make two points -- (1) it seems reasonable that one might
encase ice, LN2, etc. *within* a nanotube sheath and so classical
vapor pressure analysis may not apply. (2) The outer layers of
an MBrain *are* going to be very very cold -- you have to bear
in mind that computers tend to *like* it cold -- there is much less
disruption of the "order" by random molecular motions. And I have
gone to some lengths in various papers to postulate precisely
how cold one might run. It *is* very very cold (at least respective
to current "standards").
> Well, right, but of course we as humans need not actually
> ever be uploaded to continue with my notion of Earth-origin
> intelligence bursting forth into the galaxy.
I've got nothing wrong with the concept of an "Earth-origin
intelligence" (its the only "intelligence" we know of) but
I've got big problems with "bursting forth into the galaxy".
The human body had *not* evolved to be able to do this --
there may be alien species out there that "naturally" have
these capabilities but *we* do not (i.e. "space" and "humanity"
are not something easily mixed). So to "reasonably"
anticipate exploring the galaxy one is going to need to
improve the current standard life form to do it. That
either means a significantly upgraded human genome or
AIs designed and built from scratch.
> It would be nice of course, but uploading of a meat brain is
> a far more difficult problem than building an MBrain.
Now, this is by far your most interesting claim. And one that
many extropians should consider thinking about.
The process of "uploading" of a meat brain is at this time mostly
a mystery to us. In large part because I do not think we have a
robust understanding of things like motivations that are entirely
coded at the hormone level, self-awareness, self-direction, etc.
But that does *not* imply that we might make very rapid progress
in this area over the next 5, 10 or 20 years (Anders might comment);
after all we *do* have the human genome in our hands at this time.
But, on the other hand building an MBrain (at least in this solar
system) looks to be a thousand year project (look at my planetary
dismantlement times). There may be some clever ways to speed this
up but I really doubt that improvements in physical mass processing
will exceed informational comprehension improvements over the next
century. And I sincerely doubt that we would fail to understand
the human mind in a robust way over the next century (again Anders
might comment).
So, I would conclude that uploads might well come first.
If that happens then it may be a very dangerous time.
(Both from Eliezer's perspective of non-friendly AIs
[I would assert that if one can upload, one can probably
generate a non-friendly AI fairly easily] as well as
the perspective of Robin's "If Uploads Come First"
(http://hanson.gmu.edu/uploads.html) raise serious questions).
If that happens and a number of extropians aren't on the early
adopter list (so we can save each other in spite of ourselves)
then my bets would be that human civilization as we know it is toast.
So things like the timing of MBrain construction and
sufficient understanding of the human brain to allow
uploading *are* significant.
> Dont back away from it, Robert, your vision of an MBrain
> is sheer brilliance. Do maintain ownership of that idea.
(thanks)
> There is no need to assume we will do otherwise or colonize the
> galaxy in any other form besides an enormous flock of interdependent
> orbitting nodes.
There is one minor detail in the evolution of civilizations worth
thinking about.
That is the fact that being larger (more distributed) implies
that one thinks slower (due to speed of light limitations).
The most advanced civilizations want to become smaller,
not larger. I think there is a significant lack of
exploration between the Fermi Paradox and the fact that
developing a greater intelligence most probably requires
becoming smaller.
I think Anders begins to consider this issue with his
development of a "Chronos" neutronium brain -- but I
have significant problems with whether I/O from any
such entity is feasible. (Or whether the bandwidth
of any external I/O can deal with the amount of internal
information being produced.) [Side note to Anders
and others -- I'm not talking theories here -- I
want real no-magic-physics, yes-I-can-build-this-device
examples.]
There is a quote from some one of the various documents of
SETI literature that I have read [the source I cannot remember] --
but the quote would in effect be "If you give the theoreticians
*long* enough they can explain anything". On the ExI list (at
least some, perhaps most of the time) you don't get that long.
Robert
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