When the parts of large systems evolve independently, to adapt to differing local circumstances, their values may also evolve independently.
Light travels fast, and information is cheap. The parts of large systems seem unlikely to “evolve independently” in the future—rather they will communicate and pool their knowledge, since they will have been built to do so.
In particular colonised regions will do R+D and then beam energy and information to the settlers on the colonisation front—where it is needed—while the setters will send back news of the environments they are encountering.
By “independently” I do not mean no interdependence. I mean not completely interdependent. You can’t predict one perfectly just by looking at the others.
Perfect prediction seems like a rather demanding criterion. I can’t predict the behaviour of one of my cells perfectly—but that has more to do with difficulty in establishing initial conditions, a lack of knowledge of the laws of physics and computational intractability than it does with a lack of shared heritable material.
Also: some value drift within a single large organism may be seen as being permissible. The galactic federation may tolerate a few rebels—the point is more that it exhibits large scale unity and is not threatened by the rebels—because they are too few or too weak.
Serious disharmony would have to be something larger—disagreement about which side of the galaxy will launch an intergalactic colonisation mission, for instance.
I do not agree with Robin’s argument that:
Light travels fast, and information is cheap. The parts of large systems seem unlikely to “evolve independently” in the future—rather they will communicate and pool their knowledge, since they will have been built to do so.
In particular colonised regions will do R+D and then beam energy and information to the settlers on the colonisation front—where it is needed—while the setters will send back news of the environments they are encountering.
By “independently” I do not mean no interdependence. I mean not completely interdependent. You can’t predict one perfectly just by looking at the others.
Perfect prediction seems like a rather demanding criterion. I can’t predict the behaviour of one of my cells perfectly—but that has more to do with difficulty in establishing initial conditions, a lack of knowledge of the laws of physics and computational intractability than it does with a lack of shared heritable material.
Also: some value drift within a single large organism may be seen as being permissible. The galactic federation may tolerate a few rebels—the point is more that it exhibits large scale unity and is not threatened by the rebels—because they are too few or too weak.
Serious disharmony would have to be something larger—disagreement about which side of the galaxy will launch an intergalactic colonisation mission, for instance.