I take this as another sign favoring transcension over expansion, and also weird-universes.
The standard dev model is expansion—habitable planets lead to life leads to intelligence leads to tech civs which then expand outward.
If the standard model was correct, barring any wierd late filter, then the first civ to form in each galaxy would colonize the rest and thus preclude other civs from forming.
Given that the strong mediocrity principle holds—habitable planets are the norm, life is probably the norm, enormous expected number of bio worlds, etc, if the standard model is correct than most observers will find themselves on an unusually early planet—because the elder civs prevent late civs from forming.
But that isn’t the case, so that model is wrong. In general it looks like a filter is hard to support, given how strongly all the evidence has lined up for mediocrity, and the inherent complexity penalty.
Transcension remains as a viable alternative. Instead of expanding outward, each civ progresses to a tech singularity and implodes inward, perhaps by creating new baby universes, and perhaps using that to alter the distribution over the multiverse, and thus gaining the ability to effectively alter physics (as current models of baby universe creation suggest the parent universe has some programming level control over the physics of the seed). This would allow exponential growth to continue, which is enormously better than expansion which only provides polynomial growth. So everyone does this if it’s possible. Furthermore, if it’s possible anywhere in the multiverse, then those pockets expand faster, and thus they was and will dominate everywhere. So if that’s true the multiverse has/will be edited/restructured/shaped by (tiny, compressed, cold, invisible) gods.
Barring transcension wierdness, another possibility is that the multiverse is somehow anthropic tuned for about 1 civ per galaxy, and galaxy size is cotuned for this, as it provides a nice sized niche for evolution, similar to the effect of continents/island distributions on the earth scale. Of course, this still requires a filter, which has a high complexity penalty.
I raise my standard point, that there is a huge insufficiently explored possibility space in which lack of interstellar expansion is neither a choice nor indicative of destruction/failure to form in the first place, but merely something that is not practically possible with anything reliably self replicating in the messy real world. Perhaps we must revisit the assumption of increasing mastery over the physical world not having an upper bound below that point.
It’s not binary of course, there’s a feasibility spectrum that varies with speed. On the low end there is a natural speed for slow colonization which requires very little energy/effort, which is colonization roughly at the speed of star orbits around the galaxy. That would take hundreds of millions of years, but it could use gravitational assists and we already have the tech. Indeed, biology itself could perhaps manage slow colonization.
Given that the galaxy is already 54 galactic-years old, if life is actually as plentiful as mediocrity suggests, then the ‘too hard’ explanation can’t contain much probability mass—as the early civs should have arose quite some time ago.
I find it more likely that the elder civs already have explored, and that the galaxy is already ‘colonized’. It is unlikely that advanced civs are stellavores. The high value matter/energy or real estate is probably a tiny portion of the total, and is probably far from stars, as stellar environments are too noisy/hot for advanced computation. We have little hope of finding them until after our own maturation to some post-singularity state.
The high value matter/energy or real estate is probably a tiny portion of the total, and is probably far from stars, as stellar environments are too noisy/hot for advanced computation.
Can you expand on this?
All computation requires matter/energy. If a civ wants to increase its amount of computation, then eventually it will need to use up that huge majority of matter that resides in stars. I think it was the Significant Digits hpmor fanfic where Harry remarked that the stars were huge piles of valuable materials that had inconveniently caught fire and needed to be put out. Of course, it’s still necessary to have a practical way of star lifting.
One alternative is that advanced civs find a way to use dark matter instead, or some other physics we don’t really understand yet.
The high value matter/energy or real estate is probably a tiny portion of the total, and is probably far from stars, as stellar environments are too noisy/hot for advanced computation.
Extrapolating from current physics to ultimate computational intelligences, the most important constraint is temperature/noise, not energy. A hypothetical optimal SI would consume almost no energy, and it’s computational capability would be inversely proportional to it’s temperature. So at the limits you have something very small, dense, cold, and dark, approaching a black hole.
Passive shielding appears to be feasible, but said feasibility decreases non-linearly with proximity to stars.
So think of the computational potential of space-time as a function of position in the galaxy. The computational potential varies inversely with temperature. The potential near a star is abysmal. The most valuable real estate is far out in the interstellar medium, potentially on rogue planets or even smaller cold bodies, where passive shielding can help reduce temperatures down to very low levels.
So to an advanced civ, the matter in our solar system is perhaps worthless—the energy cost of pulling the matter far enough away from the star and cooling it is greater than it’s computational value.
All computation requires matter/energy.
Computation requires matter to store/represent information, but doesn’t require consumption of that matter. Likewise computation also requires energy, but does not require consumption of that energy.
At the limits you have a hypothetical perfect reversible quantum computer, which never erases any bits. Instead, unwanted bits are recycled internally and used for RNG. This requires a perfect balance of erasure with random bit consumption, but that seems possible in theory for general approximate inference algorithms of the types SI is likely to be based on.
that the stars were huge piles of valuable materials that had inconveniently caught fire and needed to be put out.
This is probably incorrect. From the perspective of advanced civs, the stars are huge piles of worthless trash. They are the history of life rather than it’s future, the oceans from which advanced post-bio civs emerge.
This idea implies a degree of coordination that does not happen in actual ecologies we have seen. Thus we get trees extravagantly sucking up mineral nutrients and building massive scaffolds to hold their photosynthetic structures over their competition, and weeds that voraciously multiply and compete with each other to take up every bit of sunlight and soil they can that the bigger things can’t establish themselves in, rather than a thin scum of microbial mats that efficiently intercepts energy. You are implying a climax community without any other seres, and large amounts of material that while not being used efficiently are not used at all.
Things that reproduce themselves effectively become more common regardless of efficiency, and even multicellular organisms built of exquisite coordination get cancer.
Given that physics is the same across space, the math/physics/tech of different civs will end up being the same, more or less. I wouldn’t call that coordination.
To extend your analogy, plants don’t grow in the center of the earth—and this has nothing to do with coordination. Likewise, no human tribes colonized the ocean depths, and this has nothing to do with coordination.
I suspect you misunderstand my objection and that I may have used only half of the appropriate analogy
A universe in which your proposed ubiquitous low-matter low-energy interstellar computers exist is one in which space-based self-replication and manufacturing is a thing that happens. This implies the existence of a whole slew of ‘ecological niches’. Indeed, the sort that is generally thought of in these circles (more-or-less industrially turning large amounts of matter near stars into stuff that intercepts light and uses the resultant energy for something or other) is rather simpler, is more similar to the demonstrated cases of terrestrial biology / human industry, and has more matter and energy available than what you propose. The low temperature low energy devices would be more akin to crazy deep extremophile lithotrophic bacteria or deep sea fish on Earth, living slow metabolisms and at low densities and matter/energy fluxes, while things in star systems would be akin to photosynthetic plants and algae at the surface, living at high densities at high flux.
In any situation other than perfect coordination, that which replicates itself more rapidly becomes more common. You will have adaptation and evolution. It doesn’t matter if more computation can be done in one place than another—in terms of sheer matter and energy, that which uses high energy fluxes and large amounts of matter will replicate to large numbers and be dominant in terms of amount of stuff and effect on the physical universe. Other stuff could still exist, but most stuff would be of this faster heavier type. Niches will be filled. And a stellar system niche is not akin to the deep ocean if an interstellar niche is compared to the surface of the Earth, if anything it’s the opposite. The deep sea niche may be where you see all kinds of fascinating bioluminescence and long distance signaling epiphenomena that these organisms care about and of a sort you dont see at the surface, but in terms of biomass the surface niche dominates. Furthermore, competition amongst different things mean they often do things inefficiently so as to gain advantages over each other—those that do become more common faster.
The low temperature low energy devices would be more akin to crazy deep extremophile lithotrophic bacteria or deep sea fish on Earth, living slow metabolisms and at low densities and matter/energy fluxes,
Hmm I think you misunderstood my model. At the limits of computation, you approach the maximal computational density—the maximum computational capacity per unit mass—only at zero temperature. The stuff you are talking about—anything that operates at any non-zero temp—has infinitely less compute capability than the zero-temp stuff.
So your model and analogy is off—the low temp devices are like gods—incomprehensibly faster and more powerful, and bio life and warm tech is like plants, bacteria, or perhaps rocks—not even comparable, not even in the same basic category of ‘thing’.
In any situation other than perfect coordination, that which replicates itself more rapidly becomes more common.
Of course. But it depends on what the best way to replicate is. If new universe creation is feasible (and it appears to be, from what we know of physics), then civs advance rather quickly to post-singularity godhood and start creating new universes. Among other things, this allows exponential growth/replication which is vastly superior to puny polynomial growth you can get by physical interstellar colonization. (it also probably allows for true immortality, and perhaps actual magic—altering physics) And even if that tech is hard/expensive, colonization does not entail anything big, hot, or dumb. Realistic colonization would simply result in many small, compact, cold civ objects. Also see the other thread.
What you are saying doesn’t follow from the premises, and is about as accurate as me saying that magic exists and Harry Potter casts a spell on too-advanced civilisations.
I take this as another sign favoring transcension over expansion, and also weird-universes.
The standard dev model is expansion—habitable planets lead to life leads to intelligence leads to tech civs which then expand outward.
If the standard model was correct, barring any wierd late filter, then the first civ to form in each galaxy would colonize the rest and thus preclude other civs from forming.
Given that the strong mediocrity principle holds—habitable planets are the norm, life is probably the norm, enormous expected number of bio worlds, etc, if the standard model is correct than most observers will find themselves on an unusually early planet—because the elder civs prevent late civs from forming.
But that isn’t the case, so that model is wrong. In general it looks like a filter is hard to support, given how strongly all the evidence has lined up for mediocrity, and the inherent complexity penalty.
Transcension remains as a viable alternative. Instead of expanding outward, each civ progresses to a tech singularity and implodes inward, perhaps by creating new baby universes, and perhaps using that to alter the distribution over the multiverse, and thus gaining the ability to effectively alter physics (as current models of baby universe creation suggest the parent universe has some programming level control over the physics of the seed). This would allow exponential growth to continue, which is enormously better than expansion which only provides polynomial growth. So everyone does this if it’s possible. Furthermore, if it’s possible anywhere in the multiverse, then those pockets expand faster, and thus they was and will dominate everywhere. So if that’s true the multiverse has/will be edited/restructured/shaped by (tiny, compressed, cold, invisible) gods.
Barring transcension wierdness, another possibility is that the multiverse is somehow anthropic tuned for about 1 civ per galaxy, and galaxy size is cotuned for this, as it provides a nice sized niche for evolution, similar to the effect of continents/island distributions on the earth scale. Of course, this still requires a filter, which has a high complexity penalty.
I raise my standard point, that there is a huge insufficiently explored possibility space in which lack of interstellar expansion is neither a choice nor indicative of destruction/failure to form in the first place, but merely something that is not practically possible with anything reliably self replicating in the messy real world. Perhaps we must revisit the assumption of increasing mastery over the physical world not having an upper bound below that point.
It’s not binary of course, there’s a feasibility spectrum that varies with speed. On the low end there is a natural speed for slow colonization which requires very little energy/effort, which is colonization roughly at the speed of star orbits around the galaxy. That would take hundreds of millions of years, but it could use gravitational assists and we already have the tech. Indeed, biology itself could perhaps manage slow colonization.
Given that the galaxy is already 54 galactic-years old, if life is actually as plentiful as mediocrity suggests, then the ‘too hard’ explanation can’t contain much probability mass—as the early civs should have arose quite some time ago.
I find it more likely that the elder civs already have explored, and that the galaxy is already ‘colonized’. It is unlikely that advanced civs are stellavores. The high value matter/energy or real estate is probably a tiny portion of the total, and is probably far from stars, as stellar environments are too noisy/hot for advanced computation. We have little hope of finding them until after our own maturation to some post-singularity state.
Can you expand on this?
All computation requires matter/energy. If a civ wants to increase its amount of computation, then eventually it will need to use up that huge majority of matter that resides in stars. I think it was the Significant Digits hpmor fanfic where Harry remarked that the stars were huge piles of valuable materials that had inconveniently caught fire and needed to be put out. Of course, it’s still necessary to have a practical way of star lifting.
One alternative is that advanced civs find a way to use dark matter instead, or some other physics we don’t really understand yet.
See this post.
Extrapolating from current physics to ultimate computational intelligences, the most important constraint is temperature/noise, not energy. A hypothetical optimal SI would consume almost no energy, and it’s computational capability would be inversely proportional to it’s temperature. So at the limits you have something very small, dense, cold, and dark, approaching a black hole.
Passive shielding appears to be feasible, but said feasibility decreases non-linearly with proximity to stars.
So think of the computational potential of space-time as a function of position in the galaxy. The computational potential varies inversely with temperature. The potential near a star is abysmal. The most valuable real estate is far out in the interstellar medium, potentially on rogue planets or even smaller cold bodies, where passive shielding can help reduce temperatures down to very low levels.
So to an advanced civ, the matter in our solar system is perhaps worthless—the energy cost of pulling the matter far enough away from the star and cooling it is greater than it’s computational value.
Computation requires matter to store/represent information, but doesn’t require consumption of that matter. Likewise computation also requires energy, but does not require consumption of that energy.
At the limits you have a hypothetical perfect reversible quantum computer, which never erases any bits. Instead, unwanted bits are recycled internally and used for RNG. This requires a perfect balance of erasure with random bit consumption, but that seems possible in theory for general approximate inference algorithms of the types SI is likely to be based on.
This is probably incorrect. From the perspective of advanced civs, the stars are huge piles of worthless trash. They are the history of life rather than it’s future, the oceans from which advanced post-bio civs emerge.
This idea implies a degree of coordination that does not happen in actual ecologies we have seen. Thus we get trees extravagantly sucking up mineral nutrients and building massive scaffolds to hold their photosynthetic structures over their competition, and weeds that voraciously multiply and compete with each other to take up every bit of sunlight and soil they can that the bigger things can’t establish themselves in, rather than a thin scum of microbial mats that efficiently intercepts energy. You are implying a climax community without any other seres, and large amounts of material that while not being used efficiently are not used at all.
Things that reproduce themselves effectively become more common regardless of efficiency, and even multicellular organisms built of exquisite coordination get cancer.
Given that physics is the same across space, the math/physics/tech of different civs will end up being the same, more or less. I wouldn’t call that coordination.
To extend your analogy, plants don’t grow in the center of the earth—and this has nothing to do with coordination. Likewise, no human tribes colonized the ocean depths, and this has nothing to do with coordination.
I suspect you misunderstand my objection and that I may have used only half of the appropriate analogy
A universe in which your proposed ubiquitous low-matter low-energy interstellar computers exist is one in which space-based self-replication and manufacturing is a thing that happens. This implies the existence of a whole slew of ‘ecological niches’. Indeed, the sort that is generally thought of in these circles (more-or-less industrially turning large amounts of matter near stars into stuff that intercepts light and uses the resultant energy for something or other) is rather simpler, is more similar to the demonstrated cases of terrestrial biology / human industry, and has more matter and energy available than what you propose. The low temperature low energy devices would be more akin to crazy deep extremophile lithotrophic bacteria or deep sea fish on Earth, living slow metabolisms and at low densities and matter/energy fluxes, while things in star systems would be akin to photosynthetic plants and algae at the surface, living at high densities at high flux.
In any situation other than perfect coordination, that which replicates itself more rapidly becomes more common. You will have adaptation and evolution. It doesn’t matter if more computation can be done in one place than another—in terms of sheer matter and energy, that which uses high energy fluxes and large amounts of matter will replicate to large numbers and be dominant in terms of amount of stuff and effect on the physical universe. Other stuff could still exist, but most stuff would be of this faster heavier type. Niches will be filled. And a stellar system niche is not akin to the deep ocean if an interstellar niche is compared to the surface of the Earth, if anything it’s the opposite. The deep sea niche may be where you see all kinds of fascinating bioluminescence and long distance signaling epiphenomena that these organisms care about and of a sort you dont see at the surface, but in terms of biomass the surface niche dominates. Furthermore, competition amongst different things mean they often do things inefficiently so as to gain advantages over each other—those that do become more common faster.
Hmm I think you misunderstood my model. At the limits of computation, you approach the maximal computational density—the maximum computational capacity per unit mass—only at zero temperature. The stuff you are talking about—anything that operates at any non-zero temp—has infinitely less compute capability than the zero-temp stuff.
So your model and analogy is off—the low temp devices are like gods—incomprehensibly faster and more powerful, and bio life and warm tech is like plants, bacteria, or perhaps rocks—not even comparable, not even in the same basic category of ‘thing’.
Of course. But it depends on what the best way to replicate is. If new universe creation is feasible (and it appears to be, from what we know of physics), then civs advance rather quickly to post-singularity godhood and start creating new universes. Among other things, this allows exponential growth/replication which is vastly superior to puny polynomial growth you can get by physical interstellar colonization. (it also probably allows for true immortality, and perhaps actual magic—altering physics) And even if that tech is hard/expensive, colonization does not entail anything big, hot, or dumb. Realistic colonization would simply result in many small, compact, cold civ objects. Also see the other thread.
What you are saying doesn’t follow from the premises, and is about as accurate as me saying that magic exists and Harry Potter casts a spell on too-advanced civilisations.