4 ms·
I've often thought along these same lines (c.f. Asimov's Galaxia concept) but I think that this one-ness will inherently be limited by distance. Thoughts can be
by staktrace 7y ago
I've often thought along these same lines (c.f. Asimov's Galaxia concept) but I think that this one-ness will inherently be limited by distance. Thoughts can be propagated across a planet pretty quickly but if we become a multi-planet civilization I would expect each planet to have it's own "one mind" (or whatever you want to call it) simply because of communication latency.
- urb 7y agoThought doesn't have mass. I see no reason to discount superluminal communication.
- staktrace 7y agoFair point. Another argument in favor of multiple one-ness is that of monocultures. In general things that become a monoculture are more vulnerable to sudden death. For long term survival diversity is good, and I imagine that planet-level conciousnesses would spawn daughter conciousnesses as they expand to other planets. Those daughter conciousnesses would further evolve and reproduce rather than being strongly tied to the parent.
- mrob 7y agoSuperluminal communication breaks causality regardless of whether mass is involved, and we have no evidence that effects can happen before they are caused.
- the-dude 7y agoAre you sure about that? Bits have mass.
- urb 7y agoThe underlying substrate on which bits register has mass but do they?
- mrmonkeyman 7y agoWhat is a bit without its substrate? Abstractions cannot travel outside the head they originate in.
- the-dude 7y agoThere are more electrons in your RAM if you set bits to 1.
- dreamcompiler 7y agoPhotons don't have mass either. Yet they cannot exceed the speed of light.