From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Aug 01 2002 - 10:17:54 MDT
Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> ...
> Even with nanotech, how can expansion into the solar system be
> instant? Do you have a reference for NASA claiming that we can
> terraform Mars within 20 years?
>
> --
> Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com>
> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
Instant, perhaps, is hyperbole. If this were rephrased as "In an
extremely short time, from a historical perspective" it wouldn't cause
*that* trouble. But I would still disagree, at least with your
interpretation of his projection.
I suspect that Mars will never be terraformed. Disassembled, perhaps...
My vision says that the future expansion will be basically as a form of
MacroLife, where people may or may not be wearing bodies (or may
possibly switch back and forth), and social harmony will be maintained
via the old practice of expelling dissidents. (Several choices here:
split the colony, have the colony leave the solar system, etc.) One
problem may be coming up with the right quantity of dissidents, once the
endocrine systems are simulated rather than inherrent. If you don't
have enough, you get a kind of stagnation, where local maxima are
obtained, but never a global one. (See the various solutions to the
hill-climbing problem.) Sufficient intelligence won't get around this,
except to show that you must have multiple starting points, with widely
diverse starting premises. Which is where the dissidents come in.
Note that each clump of dissidents needs to be a sufficiently group to
survive and progress on it's own. With some groups, we may depend on
the light cone causing action at a distance to be difficult. That will
allow groups that really can't stand each other communicate without
violence. One can expect that some will "venture forth into the
unknown!" with joy, and others will have been thrown out. Both modes
have been used historically, though the thrown-out one is the more common.
Of course, as is, I suppose, obvious, I'm reading the post-singularity
future with the vision of the past, but I don't see any real
alternative. That just adds a quite enormous amount of uncertainty to
the already precarious projection. But even knowing this, that's still
what I see when I look forwards.
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
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