From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Aug 06 2001 - 18:03:51 MDT
Josh Cahoon brought up the interesting asymmetry over various
dimensions as regards the desirability of personal processing.
Adrian wrote
>> Why should we want the graph to be unbound on
>> that [the time] axis rather than x or z?
> Because we can become infinite on w without crowding out anybody else.
> Time exists for each of us independently. On the other hand, we all
> must share x, y, and z; for anyone to become infinite in all three of
> those would be to immediately eliminate all other life (and all other
> matter) in the universe.
If total resources in the three spatial dimensions are finite,
then you *are* crowding out other entities at some point in
the future. My counter-argument to this is, why should they
exist at the price of your life?
The same goes for our present 3-D universe. I would gladly
run independent copies of my own program lightyears away
despite the lack of communication, and despite the fact that
by using resources there I was instrumental in preventing
other life forms from being born and using them. This does
*not* need either justification or explanation; all day long
we optimize our own lives using resources that could instead
have been devoted to producing more of our kind. The advocates
of population control constantly enjoin us to be selfish in
just this way.
What needs explaining is why we would ever relinquish resources
for anyone else. But our kindness and consideration of other
beings is amply explained in the current evolutionary literature.
Anders writes
> Because the goal is increased complexity/information content, and we can
> only make it diverge by becoming unbounded in the time direction (we are
> bounded by our lightcone at least in the others).
I would say that versions of ourselves spreading though intergalactic
space at approximately c would indeed experience unboundedness in the
three spatial directions, at least in the sense that they would obtain
new processing roughly in proportion to the cube of the time that they'd
been in flight.
>> Actually, I think the above is pretty silly reasoning.
>> Just thought I'd throw it out there.
> It may be silly, but it is not stupid.
:-) I didn't think it either silly or stupid.
But no one can top Mark Walker's remark:
> As middle-age approaches, I for one am having no
> trouble spreading out on a couple of nontemporal axes.
> [-Mark]
Lee
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