From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sat Mar 09 2002 - 14:23:14 MST
Eugene Leitl wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Mar 2002, Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
>
>>Dunno. Ask me when we get anywhere close to the supposed limits . The
>>
>
> We're traversing a sequence of kinetic bottlenecks in our development.
> Right now they're technologically artefacted, but passing through each of
> them brings us closer and closer to the hard limits of physical reality.
Or closer to once again finding new resources beyond the limits
we thought were hard.
> Given what we know, absolute hard limits are given by amount of energy and
> matter in the local solar system (anything else doesn't matter, as the
> creation rate in a given volume soon outstrips transport rate through a
> crossection, i.e. sufficiently large volumes are effectively isolated).
Everything else doesn't matter only assuming that the relevant
costs stay roughly the same as to make your equation firmly
relevant. What we know is not static.
> Before we reach them, we will have a period whether bit beings can
> multiply faster than matter can be restructured into habitats (ms vs. hour
> and day range). Depending on the level of technology, it can take hundreds
> to thousands years to bring our local system to the hard limit.
>
Ah, I feel better. :-)
>
>>"rat race" only makes sense if there is no way to better the
>>fundamentals of your condition beyond that of rats or of much more
>>
>
> Last time I looked no one has found a way to strip Darwin in context of
> self replication.
>
Darwinian interpretation often goes far beyond the realities of
evolution. And I think we need reminding that we largely will
shape our own evolution from this point on. We are not bound as
strictly to our evolutionary programming as we once were.
>
>>in-your-face scarcity. It pays not to mistake current context for laws
>>of reality.
>>
>
> Please show me a mechanism by which you're supposed to get out of
> darwinian evolution sustainably. Proposing Eden without a mechanism how to
> get there and to stay there is not scientific.
It is as "scientific" as positing that "nature red of tooth and
claw" is the best we can expect regardless of how much we know
and what we do. Perhaps we cannot produce much of a relative
utopia. But if we cannot or do not trouble ourselves to even
envision one then we certainly cannot.
- samantha
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