From: Robin Hanson (hanson@dosh.hum.caltech.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 10 1996 - 11:30:37 MDT
Dan Clemmensen writes:
>What if the only logical conclusion A system-wide SI can reach
>it that out-system resoureces are uneconomical?
>Both of your arguments make the same funcamental assuption that
>there is more than one SI in a star system. ...
>the opposite assumption, that a single SI takes over the star system.
>... There may not be a lot of diverse SIs
>in the universe. There may be only one per system, and they may all
>have reached the same super-logical conclusion that star travel is
>uneconomical in terms of the resources that SIs use.
Whether something is "economical" or not is relative to the
preferences of the decision-maker. And the preferences of a single
person like ourselves can effectively be a weighted average of many
different preferences, as if we were composed of parts with many
different preferences.
So to make your scenario plausible, you need a plausible process which
creates this massive convergence to a preference with almost no weight
on long-time-scale returns. One way to get convergence of preferences
is via evolutionary selection, but that process seems to select
exactly for the preferences you don't want in your scenario.
Robin Hanson hanson@hss.caltech.edu http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:35:44 MST