From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sun Sep 08 2002 - 08:23:26 MDT
On Sun, 8 Sep 2002, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> [snip] they would have colonized our local galaxy pocket (it's
> merely 600 megalightyears away), including this one. This a) would be
> highly visible b) you wouldn't be here if they did that.
>
> Since you can see it, Hoag's object is most likely natural.
Sigh. We are back into the same old discussions again.
Make the case that:
(a) There is any point to expanding indefinitely given the low
benefit that any information one receives delayed by many
millions of years *and* the probability that "spawn" become
competitors for oneself in a future resource limited universe.
(b) An expansion could succeed across intergalactic distances.
Since the time for the development of civilizations and
even singularities seems to be order of < 10,000 years
then attempting to colonize anything beyond that light
horizon would seem to be a complete waste of effort.
Resources in space are not *free*. They are more useful locally
than they are in remote distant locations. If you are going to
send them to remote distant locations you have to provide a
justification for that (knowing they might mature as ungrateful
children).
One might colonize and control a galaxy with a single program
(i.e. the only civilization developing within an ~100,000 -
1 million year period) but the odds of that situation being
valid across a collection of galaxies seems very low.
Robert
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