From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed May 15 2002 - 20:32:57 MDT
On Wed, 15 May 2002, Wei Dai wrote:
> Why must a singleton reproduce and why must its offsprings compete with each
> other?
A singleton, at least of the MBrain form cannot easily reproduce.
It has to wait until it navigates close to sufficient resources
to "duplicate" itself (providing the "kinship" to keep things
safer over the long term). It takes a *long* time to navigate
things the size of solar systems.
> Why should that be? By the time a later wave arrives, the earlier wave
> could have independently developed to the same technological level, and it
> would have a defensive advantage.
The "independent development" takes time. You don't just overnight
turn natural solar systems into JBrains or MBrains. If "development"
includes star-lifting that probably takes millions of years, by
that time the system will have orbited several percent around
the galaxy and be in a completely different neighborhood. If
you have mastered the kinship problem for "lesser gods" then
there is probably a host of new brown dwarves you can let
the JBrains go develop.
It is futile to attempt to take on anything with robust nanotech
that has had enough time to develop berserker-bots. The only
way I could imagine attempting a a takeover of a berserker
prepared civilization would be if you can generate and direct
moderately large black holes. And then the contents of the
system isn't much good to you.
If robust nanotech develops and people disperse through the
solar system relatively rapidly, and we have some means
for collectively enforcing space based property rights
(courts everyone respects?) I don't think there is any
competition except in the virtual realm. There its much
easier to give up your virtual property (CPU cycles) if
someone else has a better use for them than you happen
to have right now.
Robert
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