From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Thu Dec 09 1999 - 02:47:02 MST
At 03:34 PM 8/12/99 +0100, Anders wrote:
>But unless people start to copy themselves as crazy, memories
>might just be a small fraction of the whole dataspace.
>
>> Is it realistic to expect resources to hold out?
>
>There is enough space for huge populations of uploads in the solar
>system, and if they are cautious about using resources there will
>likely be enough memory space for extremely long lifetimes.
This interests me greatly, because Robin Hanson objected a couple of years
ago that my treatment of the Wonders of the Nano Future in THE SPIKE is
inconsistent - I claimed that matter compilers and the like will
permit/encourage a gift economy utopia (with a bit of luck), whereas the
prospect of uploads (where I simultaneously take Robin's vivid
extrapolations seriously) would put savage pressure on resources,
foreclosing the former option. (I think that's what he was telling me.)
My brutish unmathematical mind tends to side with Anders in this debate.
But maybe I've misunderstood him as well. (I also suspect that the kind of
mad-dog ravening exponential runaway that *could* happen under, say,
Robert's scenarios changes everything so wildly that *anything* we say
makes no difference - Eliezer's long-held position, of course.)
Any comments?
Damien Broderick
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