From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Aug 06 2003 - 22:58:06 MDT
BillK writes
> 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?
Well, Bill that cannot be a good argument in general: after all,
here on Earth itself there have been many "unprecedented"
developments, such as the beginning of life itself. Also, please
specify whether you mean "the visible universe" or the whole
infinite universe. But I will leave to Randall further analysis
of your arguments there. Next you turn to Rafal:
> On Tue Aug 05, 2003 11:19 Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>
> > Basically, an r-strategist is a k-strategist in optimal
> > circumstances, with no competition. A k-strategist is
> > an r-strategist in lean times. No basis for assuming
> > any strategy as universal among space-capable civs.
>
> This statement is incorrect. The fact that a few populations move from
> one strategy to the other is well-known and much studied. Several
> species have been studied which go through repeated and regular
> population 'Boom and Bust' cycles. They start off as r-strategists and
> breed furiously. Next phase, they hit one of the limits, move to being
> K-strategists and the population collapses. Then the cycle starts over
> again.
You may wish to comment upon the difference that happens at
the periphery of an expanding population versus what happens
in the interior. At the periphery, why would k-strategists
evolve?
> As a rule, populations DO NOT change from r-strategy to K-strategy.
> Once a Z-strategy elephant - always a Z-strategy elephant.
> Similarly, once an r-strategy rat - always an r-strategy rat...
> It is most unlikely (I believe impossible) that a K-strategy
> post-singularity civilization will suddenly decide that a better
> survival strategy is to breed like rats and swamp the universe.
I wish that you would try harder to think of very advanced
life in other than terms relating to familiar species.
Future species will obviously be at least as malleable
and adaptable as humans have shown themselves to be.
You wrote earlier
> It seems probable to me that an advanced civilization will be a
> K-strategy, monoculture population with no need or desire for rapid
> reproduction. (They may send out probes for curiosity's sake, but no
> expansion).
No way. Advanced civilization will resemble---from the
outside---The Blob, all absorbing and all engulfing.
The term "reproduction" that I used was meant quite
abstractly---literally turning remote matter into
intelligence something like one already is. Not genes
and DNA.
> The other alternative, of course, is as Lee originally
> suggested, that we are actually the first intelligent
> species in our light cone.
Isn't that where all the evidence points at present?
Actually, I want to thank Rafal for bringing up in
a different post
> ### Have you read "Burning the Cosmic Commons:
> Evolutionary Strategies for Interstellar
> Colonization" by Robin Hanson?
There are quite a number of productive places in that
essay to take off from
http://hanson.gmu.edu/filluniv.pdf
Lee
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