From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Wed May 15 2002 - 23:06:29 MDT
At 04:47 PM 5/15/02 -0700, Wei Dai wrote:
>> I think what you would see is a succession of colonizing beings (control
>> of the hardware layer is too important to be given away), wave after wave
>> after the pioneers passed. Similiar to what you see after volcanic
>> eruptions.
>Why should that be? By the time a later wave arrives, the earlier wave
>could have independently developed to the same technological level, and it
>would have a defensive advantage.
Maybe not, if being surrounded continuously by a lot of very smart
computronium working flat out gives the home SI, and its later progeny, an
advantage over
(a) a small SI outward bound at moderate sub-light velocity, awake and
processing and trying to keep up to date via emailed reports from home, or
(b) a tiny seed SI outward bound arbitrarily close to c, but therefore
inactive and restricted to catch-up once it arrives and compiles itself out
of local materials.
Damien Broderick
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