Of course, the true upper limit might be much higher than current human intelligence But if there exists any upper bound, it should influence the “FOOM”-scenario. Then 30 minutes head start would only mean arriving at the upper bound 30 minutes earlier.
Rasmus Faber: plausible upper limits for the ability of intelligent beings include such things as destroying galaxies and creating private universes.
What stops an Ultimate Intelligence from simply turning the Earth (and each competitor) into a black hole in those 30 minutes of nigh-omnipotence? Even a very weak intelligence could do things like just analyze the OS being used by the rival researchers and break in. Did they keep no backups? Oops; game over, man, game over. Did they keep backups? Great, but now the intelligence has just bought itself a good fraction of an hour (it just takes time to transfer large amounts of data). Maybe even more, depending on how untried and manual their backup system is. And so on.
Rasmus Faber: plausible upper limits for the ability of intelligent beings include such things as destroying galaxies and creating private universes.
What stops an Ultimate Intelligence from simply turning the Earth (and each competitor) into a black hole in those 30 minutes of nigh-omnipotence? Even a very weak intelligence could do things like just analyze the OS being used by the rival researchers and break in. Did they keep no backups? Oops; game over, man, game over. Did they keep backups? Great, but now the intelligence has just bought itself a good fraction of an hour (it just takes time to transfer large amounts of data). Maybe even more, depending on how untried and manual their backup system is. And so on.