From: Mark Walker (mark@permanentend.org)
Date: Tue Jul 22 2003 - 13:59:08 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com>
And it seems unlikely (to me) that any of those
> paths will involve sending probes or any other endless self-replication
> strategies.
>
Robert, I don't get the feeling you take serious the "just one problem" or
what we might think of as "the iron laws of galactic history" problem. It
looks like we will soon have the technology to send out a genesis probe (the
von Neumann machine on the end of a rocket). If we don't send out such a
probe it looks for all the world that this must be a political decision. Are
there galactic iron laws that prohibit us from doing this? Sometimes you
suggest that this wouldn't be prudent given that your children might come
back and eat you. Surely, if it were only a matter of prudence, and there
are lots of advance alien civilizations ,then one of them would have done
the imprudent thing long ago and there should be genesis probes here right
now. I can think of at least one species that often does not do what is
prudent. Furthermore, prudence is relative to a set of preferences. I can
easily imagine a group of Nietzscheans saying that they think launching a
genesis probe is the highest manifestation of their will to power, and they
are willing to exert their will to power in this way even if it means that
they might be eaten by their children in the future. It seems to me that if
there are a reasonable number of advanced civilizations then there must be
iron laws: political laws stopping genesis probes--a galactic UN of
sorts--or some as yet unknown laws of the universe that prevent the
launching of a genesis probe.
Mark
Mark Walker, PhD
Research Associate, Philosophy, Trinity College
University of Toronto
Room 214 Gerald Larkin Building
15 Devonshire Place
Toronto
M5S 1H8
www.permanentend.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Jul 22 2003 - 14:11:01 MDT