From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Sat Jun 08 2002 - 03:43:48 MDT
On Sat, 8 Jun 2002, Samantha Atkins wrote:
> > Actually, successors of expansive, high sustainable reproduction species
> > will rule most of visible universe. This might be not everything, but it's
> > damn close.
>
> We make a lot of assumptions in such projections. I doubt very
Actually, we only make two assuptions: life being able to survive and
propagate across interstellar space. It doesn't have to be intelligent
(though it helps, at least for nucleation), in fact iterated selection of
wavefront organisms tends to generate very streamlined pioneers.
All they have to do is to be able to navigate across empty space, and to
use whatever resources (nucleosynthesis makes for pretty homogenous
substrate, local variations in concentration and postprocessing
nonwithstanding) they find to make copies of itself. This requires no more
smarts than bacteria, insects at best.
> much that many highly advanced species continue to value
> reproduction so endlessly as to rule the visible universe. I
They don't rule. They just live there. And they're hardly advanced, see
above. (But the most hardcore pioneers obviously need an advanced culture
to spawn, which they leave far behind, since if there is hard vacuum life,
it is limited to passive transport, which is slow).
> doubt that many fail to outgrow such a power trip fantasy. I
You're anthromorphising here.
> bet that most of those with enough wisdom to actually survive
> the experience of very high technology find that there are other
We don't need a very high technology in order to colonize space. Arguably,
with enough investments into R&D and launches three decade old technology
is sufficient to live off planet sustainably. Once you're forced to live
on whatever you can wrestle from a hostile place, there is considerable
drive to enhance the technology.
> things of higher value than expanding endlessly and attempting
> to rule everything.
I don't see how applying human value systems (monkey are funny that way)
to not even sentient processes helps us here.
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