From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Dec 13 2002 - 09:51:55 MST
As some of you know, I think I made the point at Extro 3
so very long ago (5 years now), that the long term survival
of any intelligence was limited by its hazard function.
And further, that the only "being" that could minimize its
hazard function was a "distributed, replicated intelligence".
(As much as Damien might like to maintain "there can be only
one", it just doesn't work in the long run. You have to
be distributed in space to avoid point source failures.
Interestingly this may mean there is a tradeoff in longevity
vs. intelligence.)
Some numbers from the a recent New Scientist article:
"Counting the number of asteroids we see in the sky suggests
that over the past 250 million years, Earth should have been
hit around 440 times by asteroids larger than one kilometre
across."
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993171
That (potentially) is our hazard function. (As I mentioned
in a previous post supernovas should not be ignored as well,
though they may be less frequent.)
Now, to be realistic, the short term hazard function is much
higher. Be it risks from bioterrorists or for example John Grigg
crawling around in canyons in Arizona. But I do not believe that the
average person on the extropian list really thinks they might
live even one million years and "walks the talk". (Being realistic
at current accident rates, ones non-aging lifespan is probably
limited to a few thousand years.)
So the question(s) in my mind become should we fix this and how
do we do so? (Or do we punt and say the "singularity" will take
care of everything?).
Robert
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