Re: poly: ESS for HPLD

On Dec 5, 2:50pm, carl feynman wrote:

> Similarly, if oases are galaxies, it takes a few times 10^6 years to travel
> between them, which is long enough to extract most of the nuclear energy
> from their stars. However, the gravitational potential energy of the

How do you do that? Use solar energy to extract hydrogen and fuse it on
your own? Do the numbers work out?

On Dec 5, 4:15pm, "Perry E. Metzger" wrote:

> haven't been applied. HOWEVER, we don't see a planet filled with
> maximally destructive creatures decimating everything in their
> path. Why?

We do: they're called "humans". Locally, Australians call them
"rabbits", Indians called them "white men", and someone has probably
called them "goats". The first successful prokayrote probably put in a
good performance as well. Lacking HPLD status, none of these organisms
has utterly devastated its area, and new lifeforms evolve to live in the
new ecosystem. (Although rabbits and goats do a good job of
desertification.) Most of the time Earth resembles the inner parts of
Carl's expanding volumes, although with a different geometry (unbounded
and finite, and all that.) Different life forms, competing in a
somewhat stable arms race, or else outright cooperating as Western
humans do.

Another way of describing Carl's results: peaceful civilization in the
core, which (the civilization) he called one replicator, and somewhat
more ruthless expanders at the frontier. This sounds historically
familiar. Peace in the cities, cutthroats in the gold rush. One
question is whether some of the frontier entities might find it
worthwhile to double back and attack the civilized core. The frontier
has more resources; pre-HPLD, the core might have better technology. In
the HPLD everyone is equal, but the expanders might prefer to continue
going for the dead resources than trying to prey on the developed and
defended core. (But the active resources of the core might be higher on
the food chain and easier to extract, apart from defenses, which is why
I consider the case at all.)

Also interesting is what happens if one sphere meets an alien sphere.
If the expanders are all mentally flexible they might recognize the
futility of combat, accept their new boundaries, and settle down. I'm
not sure if we can say anything about the possibility of their
bouncing back to attack their own cores, using any superiority of
resources they might still have.

(Or passing through each other, to attack each other's core, while
getting to see new things themselves.)

-xx- ROU Random Identity X-)

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Received on Fri Dec 5 23:02:11 1997