From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Mon Oct 02 2000 - 00:32:06 MDT
CYMM writes:
> But suppose the machine evolves ten billion times faster - suppose the
> mutation rate is ten billion times that of a human - the boundary conditions
> might preclude the darwinian selection that allows for concomitant coupling
> of the two species' evolution.
Huh? Both systems still evolve. (Of course, you have to have a
population, not a single individuum for it to happen). They still
couple, by virtue of occupying the same timespace. Of course, because
their fitness is not equal, one of the players is going to bite the
dust.
> In fact there may be tons of such entities all around us... in fact we may
> find little evidence of "intelligence" in the universe because WE ARE NOT
> INTELLIGENT!
Of course we're dumb as interstellar dirt, but life doesn't have to be
particularly intelligent to be visible. One of the less likely
solutions to the Fermi's paradoxon is that new physics is just round
the corner, and transcension, being a high-energy event, automatically
sterilizes the expanding wavefront of own pre-transcension tech.
I don't subscribe to that scenario. Not every culture must
automatically transcend. The one which doesn't will get amplified all
over the place and will become visible. Entities which are not
observable must necessarily fall prey to Occam's razor. We don't have
yet any evidence of a new exploitable physics either. Conditions
necessary for emergence of intelligent life seem to be very rare --
due to a cosmic fluke, we seem to have led a highly sheltered life.
> Lastly - in organic evolution, species only coevolve if they interact with
> respect to common environmental resources. If Eliezer's machines evolve very
> rapidly then it might be likely that in a short time - (...say...)
> milliseconds to half a decade - they would not compete substantially for
> resources with the human species.
>
> This will be an adaptive radiation scenario...it is within the realms of
Let's assume we have real world niches and unreal world niches. If the
seed perceives the unreal niches and migrates over there before it
radiates, it effectively vanishes from our universe. If the seed
radiates before that, it will occupy both real world niches and unreal
world niches. The deity may have moved on to the Great Beyond, but
it's retinue left behind is still ruining the real estate prices in
the neighbourhood.
Provided, there's still new physics at all, my bets fall on the second
scenario.
> probability.. because the machines might discover a new physical environment
> into which they could radiate. At the very best we won't notice anything.
Radiating species attempt to fill all available niches. Even if one
class of niches is way cushier, they're expanding as a random cloud in
the genotype/phenotype space, and hence will eventually fill them all.
> Any way you cut it... the future is not good for the all-consuming human
> ego... but this is predictable... primates tend to have big egos - and they
> also tend to be contriol freaks. You walk around with a handful of big
> balloons and someone will come along to burst 'em.
Amen. So let's make lots less ook ook ook and do some thinkin'
instead, for a change.
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