Science buff- Like Barack Obama? Better not like manned spaceflight then

[Blake]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
No. Use your imagination a bit and think of all the possibilities before responding.

With all due respect, creating new universes is not really my business. You'll forgive me if I'm not inclined to devote thought on how to build a better universe or something.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Blake


With all due respect, creating new universes is not really my business. You'll forgive me if I'm not inclined to devote thought on how to build a better universe or something.

Didn’t mean to offend Blake. Its not my business wither, but a new universe is a hell of a legacy, I can really see entropy wining, especially if its possible to transfer a bit of info (credits ).

[The Mad Monk]

It's only a legacy if the inheritors know it.

[Heraclitus]

Who say's they couldn't?

[The Mad Monk]

Who says they could?

[Blake]

I'm going to bring up an old suggestion of mine. It's related to the Value of Life.

The optimal way to colonize the stars, is by making fully mechanical seed ships. These seed ships contain DNA encoded into electronic format (allowing for an utterly huge genebank, in effect). They have machinery which is capable of synthesizing living cells. They also have lots of robots for building factories and stuff (and lots of blueprints).

The seedships are also based on self-replicating robotics, in that they can build a seedship factory which will start cranking out new seedships.

When a seedship reaches a system it lands on an asteroid and builds a factory system, it starts building orbiting habitats and terraforming planets. Once it has some nicely climate-controlled habitats it starts manufacturing embryos, incubates them in artificial wombs and raises them with android nannies. It colonizes the habitats and planets with these new lifeforms. The human (and other intelligent in the case of uplifted species) beings also get educated on the history and culture of earth.

(As another note, it also tweaks the DNA of lifeforms to suit local planetary habitats, when doing so will be easier than terraforming the planet).

The seedships would work a lot better than sending organic matter across space. They would be magnitudes of times smaller and cheaper, they could be launched at much higher speeds and sustain higher accelerations. Additionally they can self-replicate much faster than building conventional colony ships and populating them with flesh and blood colonists. This would allow any faction using seedships to spread, much, much faster at colonizing worlds.

So we've established that it's an efficient way to spread the human genetics and culture across a galaxy - sending no actual flesh and blood humans, just inorganic seeds which can grow new humans.

Now the question is:

Is there any point?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Blake


Now the question is:

Is there any point?

Yes, if you believe in preserving the species. It's the ultimate in self-preservation, in attempting to negate the thanatic aspect of existence.

[Blake]

Here's another aspect.

As I said, the factions which embrace this technology would spread the fastest.

What's more, with a seedship, there is no particular need to have a true, factual complete history of the earth. A faction could for example, include a history and culture which is very heavily biased towards Christian Indoctrination, and thus spawn many pure-Christian worlds. Any religion (or any faction) which refuses on moral grounds to use this growth paradigm, would soon find themselves outnumbered a billion to one...

Which would have to raise some other serious philosophical questions...

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Blake
I'm going to bring up an old suggestion of mine. It's related to the Value of Life.

The optimal way to colonize the stars, is by making fully mechanical seed ships. These seed ships contain DNA encoded into electronic format (allowing for an utterly huge genebank, in effect). They have machinery which is capable of synthesizing living cells. They also have lots of robots for building factories and stuff (and lots of blueprints).

The seedships are also based on self-replicating robotics, in that they can build a seedship factory which will start cranking out new seedships.

When a seedship reaches a system it lands on an asteroid and builds a factory system, it starts building orbiting habitats and terraforming planets. Once it has some nicely climate-controlled habitats it starts manufacturing embryos, incubates them in artificial wombs and raises them with android nannies. It colonizes the habitats and planets with these new lifeforms. The human (and other intelligent in the case of uplifted species) beings also get educated on the history and culture of earth.

(As another note, it also tweaks the DNA of lifeforms to suit local planetary habitats, when doing so will be easier than terraforming the planet).

The seedships would work a lot better than sending organic matter across space. They would be magnitudes of times smaller and cheaper, they could be launched at much higher speeds and sustain higher accelerations. Additionally they can self-replicate much faster than building conventional colony ships and populating them with flesh and blood colonists. This would allow any faction using seedships to spread, much, much faster at colonizing worlds.

So we've established that it's an efficient way to spread the human genetics and culture across a galaxy - sending no actual flesh and blood humans, just inorganic seeds which can grow new humans.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Originally posted by Blake
Now the question is:

Is there any point?

That depends on the species and possibly on the culture of the species. To some that could be like asking if there is any point in breathing. A related question is can we place any constraints on range of answers different species/cultures could give to your question?

[Blake]

The "belief" question is the more profound one.

Remember, that the most successful faction will be the one which devotes ALL of it's efforts to expansion, and NONE to non-expansion , the more you enjoy any activity other than expansion, the poorer you are at expansion.

This means that the entire galaxy then universe will be consumed by the super-expanders, the "race" of post-humans which derives enjoyment only from expanding.

And then there will be nowhere left to expand, every single resource in the universe will have been used to expand to consume every single resource, then the only place to expand is inwards, through cannibalization. Life will have become entropy itself, accelerating the running-down of the universe as all the "living" things "expand inwards" at the expense of each other, with each new, more effective strain of expanders consuming the older strains.


Roughly, the expansion paradigm goes like this:

Expansion is the goal of life.
Expansion is the only worthy goal as those which devote the most effort to expansion are the ones which shall inherit the universe (and via democracy or sheer weight of numbers, become "right").
Those which do not enjoy expansion, shall be first crowded out then exterminated by the ones which do. Those which don't share in the joy of expansion (to the maximum extent), deserve to be exterminated so beings which do share in the joy of the holy expansion can exist.


Here's an example:

One faction, devotes 50% of it's effort to expansion (the rest is devoted to nice things to enjoy), and grows at 10% per year.

Another faction, devotes 100% of it's effort to expansion, and grows at 11% per year. (we can say that the most limiting factors on expansion are things like distance and available planets, but that giving your all does provide a small benefit)

At 100 years:
10% race = x13780 (28.8% of population)
11% race = x34064 (71.2% of population)

At 500 years:
10% = x496 billion billion (1.1% of population)
11% = x45,865 billion billion (98.9% of population)


This simple example illustrates the IMPERATIVE behind putting ALL effort towards expansion. Being even slightly wasteful, having even the slightest bit of free time for play in your philosophy, the slightest bit of mercy for your competitors, leaves your faction at a huge disadvantage on galactic scales. The entire faction must be bent towards expansion, all research being directed towards expanding faster, all fat must be trimmed from the faction.

Does the expansion paradigm really point towards a happy future?

And in the end, there is nowhere left to the expand to! The expansion paradigm expands itself into purposelessness.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Blake
The "belief" question is the more profound one.

Remember, that the most successful faction will be the one which devotes ALL of it's efforts to expansion, and NONE to non-expansion , the more you enjoy any activity other than expansion, the poorer you are at expansion.

This means that the entire galaxy then universe will be consumed by the super-expanders, the "race" of post-humans which derives enjoyment only from expanding.

And then there will be nowhere left to expand, every single resource in the universe will have been used to expand to consume every single resource, then the only place to expand is inwards, through cannibalization. Life will have become entropy itself, accelerating the running-down of the universe as all the "living" things "expand inwards" at the expense of each other, with each new, more effective strain of expanders consuming the older strains.


Roughly, the expansion paradigm goes like this:

Expansion is the goal of life.
Expansion is the only worthy goal as those which devote the most effort to expansion are the ones which shall inherit the universe (and via democracy or sheer weight of numbers, become "right").
Those which do not enjoy expansion, shall be first crowded out then exterminated by the ones which do. Those which don't share in the joy of expansion (to the maximum extent), deserve to be exterminated so beings which do share in the joy of the holy expansion can exist.


Here's an example:

One faction, devotes 50% of it's effort to expansion (the rest is devoted to nice things to enjoy), and grows at 10% per year.

Another faction, devotes 100% of it's effort to expansion, and grows at 11% per year. (we can say that the most limiting factors on expansion are things like distance and available planets, but that giving your all does provide a small benefit)

At 100 years:
10% race = x13780 (28.8% of population)
11% race = x34064 (71.2% of population)

At 500 years:
10% = x496 billion billion (1.1% of population)
11% = x45,865 billion billion (98.9% of population)


This simple example illustrates the IMPERATIVE behind putting ALL effort towards expansion. Being even slightly wasteful, having even the slightest bit of free time for play in your philosophy, the slightest bit of mercy for your competitors, leaves your faction at a huge disadvantage on galactic scales. The entire faction must be bent towards expansion, all research being directed towards expanding faster, all fat must be trimmed from the faction.

Does the expansion paradigm really point towards a happy future?

And in the end, there is nowhere left to the expand to! The expansion paradigm expands itself into purposelessness.

Your unstated conclusion being that any species intelligent enough to technologically compete would necessarily reject expansion as a goal long before significantly colonizing the galaxy? What about inherently short sighted species?

[Blake]

An inherently short-sighted species will have inherit difficulties in successfully launching an interstellar colony ship. If doing such a thing is any kind of investment, it's an ultra-long-term altruistic investment from the perspective of the vast majority of society. For a short-sighted species to do this, the people funding the spaceship would have to be the ones riding it, requiring a peculiar breed of madness (essentially abandoning all their wealth to take a cold lonely ride out into the void with uncertain consequences).


The kind of technology to successfully colonize an extrasolar planet, should be quite sufficient to bring to pass any number of OTHER existential risk scenarios, such as grey-goo or green-goo.

It is likely, that a single motivated madman will be able to destroy civilization (due to individuals becoming so empowered by technology), before a single motivated madman can fund an extrasolar colony ship.

This means in order for a society to survive to the point in time where it can launch extrasolar colony ships, it must have taken measures against existential risks.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Blake
An inherently short-sighted species will have inherit difficulties in successfully launching an interstellar colony ship. If doing such a thing is any kind of investment, it's an ultra-long-term altruistic investment from the perspective of the vast majority of society. For a short-sighted species to do this, the people funding the spaceship would have to be the ones riding it, requiring a peculiar breed of madness (essentially abandoning all their wealth to take a cold lonely ride out into the void with uncertain consequences).


The kind of technology to successfully colonize an extrasolar planet, should be quite sufficient to bring to pass any number of OTHER existential risk scenarios, such as grey-goo or green-goo.

It is likely, that a single motivated madman will be able to destroy civilization (due to individuals becoming so empowered by technology), before a single motivated madman can fund an extrasolar colony ship.

This means in order for a society to survive to the point in time where it can launch extrasolar colony ships, it must have taken measures against existential risks.

short sightedness admits to degrees. Humans for instance heatedly debate multi millenia storage of nuclear waste and yet there is little to no meaningful discussion about the eventual death of the sun at the end of it's life cycle.

Imagine an expanding species determining the whole galaxy will be consumed in 300,000 years and it's not hard to imagine them responding with all the fatalism we give to the death of our sun.