Dec 1, 2015 08:30 PM
Will Our Descendants Survive the Destruction of the Universe?
http://io9.com/will-our-descendants-surv...1744169933
EXCERPT: Billions of years from now, the universe as we know it will cease to exist. The good news is, that gives us a lot of time to prepare, and maybe even figure out a way to cheat cosmic death. Here are some possible ways our descendants might survive a cosmological apocalypse.
[...] philosopher Nick Bostrom and cosmologist Milan M. Ćirković put out a paper in 2000 arguing that an advanced civilization might actually be able to not only engage in this kind of universe-engineering—but it might also be able to transfer information directly into this baby universe. This information could conceivably include uploaded minds, which would make the prospect of immortality a very tantalizing one, indeed. And it’s not crazy to imagine that we could send our minds through a black hole, once they were uploaded to a computer.
Fifteen years, ago physicist Seth Lloyd argued that black holes are the densest and most efficient computational devices capable of existing in our universe. His “ultimate laptop” consists of a kilogram of compressed matter shrunken down to an absolutely miniscule black hole. Owing to Hawking radiation, this computation engine would only last for a fraction of a second (10-19 seconds to be exact), but during that time it would perform about 10^32 operations on a 10^16 bits.
Inspired by this idea and those of Smolin and Susskind, futurist and systems theorist John Smart has connected the prospect of baby universes, whether they be natural or artificial, to the Fermi Paradox, i.e. the realization that we have yet to see signs of extraterrestrial intelligences when we should have by now. It’s conceivable, he says, that all advanced extraterrestrial life rejects its universe of origin, in favor something more interesting in the Great Beyond. Smart calls this the Transcension Hypothesis.
“The more we study universal history, the more it seems every major complexity transition, from galaxies, to life-catalyzing planets, to eukaryotes, to prokaryotes, to humans, to cities, and now, to intelligent computers, occurs via a process I call STEM compression of information production,” Smart tells io9.
By “STEM compression,” Smart is referring to a process in which complex new systems are almost always both denser and more efficient users of Space, Time, Energy, and Matter. This, in turn, causes information, complexity, and intelligence to develop at an accelerating rate. Over time, we’re packing more and more of our stuff into smaller spaces, while simultaneously making more efficient use of information. As a result, intelligence is always racing to inner space, of which there are two types: physical inner space and virtual inner space.
“Our destiny is density, and dematerialization,” says Smart.
This all brings us back to the question of our long-term survival prospects. There’s a very distinct possibility that our posthuman descendants will exist as digital beings, the offshoots of uploaded minds, or the products of entirely new minds and mind-types altogether. True to Smart’s theory, these individuals would be vastly more dematerialized and “immortal” than biological beings....
What to Expect From Aliens When We Make First Contact
http://io9.com/what-to-expect-from-alien...1715402190
EXCERPT: [....] The hunt for radio signals and laser messages may lead us to discover an alien species much like our own. But if an alien spaceship suddenly appeared at our door, it’s highly unlikely that something biological would come out. More likely, some sort of machine would be there to greet us. As NASA’s Chief Historian Steven J. Dick has pointed out, the dominant form of life in the cosmos is probably post-biological. Advanced alien civilizations, either through their own trans-biological evolution or through the rise of their artificially intelligent progeny, are more likely to be machine-based than meat-based. We ourselves may be heading in this direction, as witnessed by current and pending advances in genetics, cybernetics, molecular nanotechnology, cognitive science, and information technology....
http://io9.com/will-our-descendants-surv...1744169933
EXCERPT: Billions of years from now, the universe as we know it will cease to exist. The good news is, that gives us a lot of time to prepare, and maybe even figure out a way to cheat cosmic death. Here are some possible ways our descendants might survive a cosmological apocalypse.
[...] philosopher Nick Bostrom and cosmologist Milan M. Ćirković put out a paper in 2000 arguing that an advanced civilization might actually be able to not only engage in this kind of universe-engineering—but it might also be able to transfer information directly into this baby universe. This information could conceivably include uploaded minds, which would make the prospect of immortality a very tantalizing one, indeed. And it’s not crazy to imagine that we could send our minds through a black hole, once they were uploaded to a computer.
Fifteen years, ago physicist Seth Lloyd argued that black holes are the densest and most efficient computational devices capable of existing in our universe. His “ultimate laptop” consists of a kilogram of compressed matter shrunken down to an absolutely miniscule black hole. Owing to Hawking radiation, this computation engine would only last for a fraction of a second (10-19 seconds to be exact), but during that time it would perform about 10^32 operations on a 10^16 bits.
Inspired by this idea and those of Smolin and Susskind, futurist and systems theorist John Smart has connected the prospect of baby universes, whether they be natural or artificial, to the Fermi Paradox, i.e. the realization that we have yet to see signs of extraterrestrial intelligences when we should have by now. It’s conceivable, he says, that all advanced extraterrestrial life rejects its universe of origin, in favor something more interesting in the Great Beyond. Smart calls this the Transcension Hypothesis.
“The more we study universal history, the more it seems every major complexity transition, from galaxies, to life-catalyzing planets, to eukaryotes, to prokaryotes, to humans, to cities, and now, to intelligent computers, occurs via a process I call STEM compression of information production,” Smart tells io9.
By “STEM compression,” Smart is referring to a process in which complex new systems are almost always both denser and more efficient users of Space, Time, Energy, and Matter. This, in turn, causes information, complexity, and intelligence to develop at an accelerating rate. Over time, we’re packing more and more of our stuff into smaller spaces, while simultaneously making more efficient use of information. As a result, intelligence is always racing to inner space, of which there are two types: physical inner space and virtual inner space.
“Our destiny is density, and dematerialization,” says Smart.
This all brings us back to the question of our long-term survival prospects. There’s a very distinct possibility that our posthuman descendants will exist as digital beings, the offshoots of uploaded minds, or the products of entirely new minds and mind-types altogether. True to Smart’s theory, these individuals would be vastly more dematerialized and “immortal” than biological beings....
What to Expect From Aliens When We Make First Contact
http://io9.com/what-to-expect-from-alien...1715402190
EXCERPT: [....] The hunt for radio signals and laser messages may lead us to discover an alien species much like our own. But if an alien spaceship suddenly appeared at our door, it’s highly unlikely that something biological would come out. More likely, some sort of machine would be there to greet us. As NASA’s Chief Historian Steven J. Dick has pointed out, the dominant form of life in the cosmos is probably post-biological. Advanced alien civilizations, either through their own trans-biological evolution or through the rise of their artificially intelligent progeny, are more likely to be machine-based than meat-based. We ourselves may be heading in this direction, as witnessed by current and pending advances in genetics, cybernetics, molecular nanotechnology, cognitive science, and information technology....