From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Jun 06 2000 - 11:35:09 MDT
Robin Hanson <rhanson@gmu.edu> writes:
> They conclusion that much more advanced creatures would be visible
> to us is based on the idea that
> A) they would be subject to physical resource constraints that we
> perceive (e.g., visible mass and entropy), and that
> B) their preferences would be such as to make such constraints
> frequently binding.
>
> It seems that people trained primarily in the physical sciences
> appreciate how strong the arguments are for the first of these
> conditions, but do not appreciate that the social sciences offer
> similarly strong arguments for the second condition.
This seems to imply that the social sciences support the strong
convergence hypothesis (that all civilisations converge in some
respects over time), which is a very general statement given the
variety of possible cultures and motivations. Exactly what arguments
do the social sciences offer?
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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