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Are you arguing that the probes would be too difficult, or that the civilization/AI would simply choose not to use them? If we assume that the system is still w

Are you arguing that the probes would be too difficult, or that the civilization/AI would simply choose not to use them? If we assume that the system is still working at the behest of or at least in cooperation with its human creators, I think "because we can" is enough to make it happen. We seem to have an innate drive to expand and explore and see what's out there.

xoa 8y ago
>Are you arguing that the probes would be too difficult, or that the civilization/AI would simply choose not to use them? I'm arguing a strong AI (singly or civilization based around some) might simply choose not to go the full "deconstruct everything in every solar system in the galaxy" route, because by virtue of its very existence it can't actually travel easily or at all. Exploration sure, but in the form of lots of star wisps and maybe a few stealthy replications in oort clouds or systems already checked for activity. Now if a civilization explicitly chose to avoid strong AI, or at least put some sort of firm cap on it, precisely due to foreseeing being locked to their star (or maybe their star and a few near neighbors) that'd be different, but would that actually be stable itself? It would be risky if they encountered an alien stronger AI too perhaps. I mean we're by definition in pretty deep pure speculation territory here, and others have devoted far more thought to any of this then I. I'm just saying that if there is no magic then everything still has to deal with the laws of thermodynamics and relativity. And widely spread concentrated point energy/mass sources (stars/solar systems) are what everything has to work with in that case, which means there has to be a pretty hard tradeoff between "intelligence" (processing/storage ability) and to what extent something can exist away from stars or move between them. Even go a fraction of the way towards maxing out what you can do with the available mass and energy in a solar system and it's simultaneously hard to go away from a solar system right? So basically I'm saying going maximal von Neumann across the galaxy isn't clearly the ultimate end state of a civ reaching strong AI level.
- red75prime 8y ago
  0.0001% of Sun energy output can give about 500000m/s^2 acceleration to a million tonne payload, if I'm not mistaken.
- resu_nimda 8y ago
  Even go a fraction of the way towards maxing out what you can do with the available mass and energy in a solar system and it's simultaneously hard to go away from a solar system right? I don't understand the "too big/locked to a star" idea. It's not like all that mass/energy would be locked into one giant indivisible entity (if that is your assumption, why?). With current space travel, we don't attempt to move our entire civilization to the Moon or to Mars in one big go. We send out a small piece that establishes itself and then grows, and perhaps over time the rest is migrated if necessary, but the original entity goes on existing for some time while the probe gets established. I'm not saying they would deconstruct everything in every solar system but it seems it would be pretty likely for a civilization at that level to develop a program that establishes some kind of presence in as many systems as possible.
  - xoa 8y ago
    >It's not like all that mass/energy would be locked into one giant indivisible entity (if that is your assumption, why?) Yeah it is. That's the assumption right from the start here, embodied in "strong AI" and that I've repeatedly and explicitly referred to throughout including a reflection on why it might be consciously avoided and whether that could work too. A strong AI could grow to use any amount of available computational and memory capacity, and might well need to in order to accomplish some things. There would certainly be advantages to having a higher degree of thought possible. That's the whole question raised by the OP of this thread. Again, if you want to instead theorize why strong AI might be explicitly avoided by a civilization that's fine, but that's not the premise I was replying to originally is all.
    - resu_nimda 8y ago
      I guess I just don’t share your belief that strong AI is necessarily equivalent to a paperclip maximizer that will seek to assimilate all available resources into one monolithic mass. Do the humans have any say in this, any control? If not, how/why are they being kept alive? Again, even if the AI is so myopic that it won’t spare any resources to expand into other systems, the humans will still want to.

xoa 8y ago

>Are you arguing that the probes would be too difficult, or that the civilization/AI would simply choose not to use them? I'm arguing a strong AI (singly or civilization based around some) might simply choose not to go the full "deconstruct everything in every solar system in the galaxy" route, because by virtue of its very existence it can't actually travel easily or at all. Exploration sure, but in the form of lots of star wisps and maybe a few stealthy replications in oort clouds or systems already checked for activity. Now if a civilization explicitly chose to avoid strong AI, or at least put some sort of firm cap on it, precisely due to foreseeing being locked to their star (or maybe their star and a few near neighbors) that'd be different, but would that actually be stable itself? It would be risky if they encountered an alien stronger AI too perhaps. I mean we're by definition in pretty deep pure speculation territory here, and others have devoted far more thought to any of this then I. I'm just saying that if there is no magic then everything still has to deal with the laws of thermodynamics and relativity. And widely spread concentrated point energy/mass sources (stars/solar systems) are what everything has to work with in that case, which means there has to be a pretty hard tradeoff between "intelligence" (processing/storage ability) and to what extent something can exist away from stars or move between them. Even go a fraction of the way towards maxing out what you can do with the available mass and energy in a solar system and it's simultaneously hard to go away from a solar system right? So basically I'm saying going maximal von Neumann across the galaxy isn't clearly the ultimate end state of a civ reaching strong AI level.

red75prime 8y ago
0.0001% of Sun energy output can give about 500000m/s^2 acceleration to a million tonne payload, if I'm not mistaken.
resu_nimda 8y ago
Even go a fraction of the way towards maxing out what you can do with the available mass and energy in a solar system and it's simultaneously hard to go away from a solar system right? I don't understand the "too big/locked to a star" idea. It's not like all that mass/energy would be locked into one giant indivisible entity (if that is your assumption, why?). With current space travel, we don't attempt to move our entire civilization to the Moon or to Mars in one big go. We send out a small piece that establishes itself and then grows, and perhaps over time the rest is migrated if necessary, but the original entity goes on existing for some time while the probe gets established. I'm not saying they would deconstruct everything in every solar system but it seems it would be pretty likely for a civilization at that level to develop a program that establishes some kind of presence in as many systems as possible.
- xoa 8y ago
  >It's not like all that mass/energy would be locked into one giant indivisible entity (if that is your assumption, why?) Yeah it is. That's the assumption right from the start here, embodied in "strong AI" and that I've repeatedly and explicitly referred to throughout including a reflection on why it might be consciously avoided and whether that could work too. A strong AI could grow to use any amount of available computational and memory capacity, and might well need to in order to accomplish some things. There would certainly be advantages to having a higher degree of thought possible. That's the whole question raised by the OP of this thread. Again, if you want to instead theorize why strong AI might be explicitly avoided by a civilization that's fine, but that's not the premise I was replying to originally is all.
  - resu_nimda 8y ago
    I guess I just don’t share your belief that strong AI is necessarily equivalent to a paperclip maximizer that will seek to assimilate all available resources into one monolithic mass. Do the humans have any say in this, any control? If not, how/why are they being kept alive? Again, even if the AI is so myopic that it won’t spare any resources to expand into other systems, the humans will still want to.