From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@ilr.genebee.msu.su)
Date: Mon Nov 15 1999 - 11:02:00 MST
David Blenkinsop <blenl@sk.sympatico.ca> wrote:
> In the _Diaspora_ novel, the transhuman societies somehow maintain what
> they think of as a wisely nonexponential or nonexpansive security
> arrangement, where they leave enormous tracts of natural resources
> completely untouched.
There is a declining Return on Investment as you get bigger because you
have increased communications delays and power costs. Until we adopt
fundamentally different time scales for entertaining "thoughts" (weeks
or months) it may not make sense to utilize all of the natural resources.
(Sure you can turn all of the asteroids into VR simulations of "you",
but what good does that do "you"?!? We still haven't resolved the
question of whether, assuming you "own" the asteroids whether you
can pull the plug on them when you enter your artistic stage and
want to devote them to some other use...)
> This despite the fact that they could very readily get
> into colonial competition for settling those resources --
The two main motivating forces I see for colonialism were:
a) a desire for freedom -- but in a personal VR, you have the
"ultimate" freedom.
b) the quest for "rare" natural resources (e.g. gold, silver,
spices, etc.) -- these aren't "rare" in a nanotech environment.
Biotech makes all the "spices" you want, and "gold" (e.g.
carbon) is relatively abundant but you have a problem of
getting the carbon to where the energy is or the energy to
where the carbon is. [Mass transport from the Oort cloud
to the inner solar system is time consuming and may waste
mass resources. Energy beamed from the inner solar system
to the Oort cloud is going to take time because you have
beam dispersal and have to grow large receiving antennas.
> or for using them to build an overwhelming force of arms.
In a nanotech environment, the concept of an "overwhelming"
force of arms is very questionable. You have to guarantee
that you have disassembled *every* last little bit of nanotech
in an enclave that can have berserker potential.
> No fighting over the resources of asteroid Ceres for them,
> their Coalition has voting Ceres a mineral preserve, or
> something, and that is that!
If you presume that we can be as "rational" as possible, then
it makes sense to cooperate (game theory says this is most
efficient). We have to allocate resources in an ever
diminishing ROI situation, there will only be a few logical
paths to pursue. What will be the "gold" is clever designs
that can provide the most efficient "thought" using the smallest
resource increments -- energy, matter or space. Probably
"consortiums" pool resources to develop those on varying
time scales (decades, millennia, gigayears, etc.)
> In reality, it isn't at all obvious how to nonviolently settle
> sovereignty claims over newly accessed resources,
There are two obvious possibilities:
a) First to claim it gets it.
b) First to have a plan to optimally use it gets it.
The "claiming" of North America & Africa or the exploration of
the Pacific islands provide a good basis for (a), and the
American farm & railroad land grants provide a good basis
for (b).
> Also, if there are sovereign states that you don't trust,
> how do you know what kind of offense they may be developing
> under cover, on their own turf?
You don't but a sovereign state can't "nano-nuke" another state
if it potentially has hidden berserkers or strong allies. You
only get to be "untrustable" once, unless enclaves/sub-entities
evolve to the point where they have no survival instinct at all.
> For instance, I don't know, myself, that recent
> bombings of Iraq have done anything effective to control hidden
> bioweapons, so what if we were dealing with a nanofactory driven arms
> race instead?
Yep, it makes the cold war look simple. In those cases the
"intelligence" groups could roughly estimate what was being done.
In a nanotech environment that is hard unless you have complete
"openness". Since nano-surveillance is cheap & semi-intelligent
one would argue that those who are trustable are those who let
you observe everything. The question is does the clever
"dispersed" development & assembly approach that I've mentioned,
work around universal surveilance?
> Seemingly, if two sides get into an exponential arms race,
> this is a recipe not only for fighting over space resources,
Why should you fight over resources if there is so much resources
that you can simply go claim something "unclaimed". When you
get to the point where you are claiming "big" stuff or "distant"
stuff where the costs of turning it into something "usable"
are expensive anyway, it makes more sense to divide up the
risks and benefits among as many parties as possible. It
depends a lot on whether you think (a) an individual; (b)
an economic consortium; or (c) a political entity is going
to lay claim to Jupiter or Saturn.
> Or, have I missed something here, something about "exponential rate of
> capital increase" that I don't understand?
No, you understand it -- the physical stuff increases exponentially
but that doesn't mean that "efficient" designs do or your ability
to use it effectively does. If I put one grain of rice on your
front lawn tomorrow, and two the next day and 4 the day after
that you are going to have a *big* problem figuring out what
to do with the rice somewhere after the 25th day.
Claim: The Resource Base grows so much faster than the population
that there is no incentive to fight over the resources until
uploads or AI arrives.
> Now, it's far from apparent how to avoid getting swamped in a
> fast buildup of weapons, even if you try to class some weapons as
> "defensive" in character!
I don't need the surface of a planet covered in berserker bots
to feel safe, I only need a few hundred of them scattered in very
different locations. Or you simply need strong allies.
> Basically, we need the Coalition of Polises to come around and just
> bomb the heck out of anyone who violates the Neutral Zone conventions --
> say, maybe it's not that hard a problem, if the Powers That Be are
> tough enough?
Well, say you are one of the powers -- what constitutes a good
development plan for the available resources and what constitutes
a bad development plan (worthy of bombing if you violate the
neutral/nature/zoo zone)? I.e., how do you "consciously" decide that
the proposed development is a good allocation of the resources?
Robert
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