X-Message-Number: 5534
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: Replies to Clark and Metzger
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 1996 03:19:24 +1100 (EST)

Perry Metzger writes,

>Lets take food production, for example. Land degradation is a smooth,
>continuous process as is the increase in demand for food. 

Wow, never heard of the logistic map? 

>When food
>prices rise sufficiently, the owners of the land will have more than
>sufficient incentive for land reclamation and cleanup, and as I've
>noted, given the smooth nature of these processes it is unlikely to
>creep up on us suddenly.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand how the continuity of a function
influences its rate of increase, so this appears to be a non-sequitur.
Please explain your reasoning.

>I don't think you understand. Your feeble little attempts to plot
>global food production are trivial in comparison with the quantity of
>work being done by the millions of people working every day in the
>trading of food commodities world wide. You are unlikely to produce
>any information more accurate than that generated by the marketplace.

Non-sequitur again? Sure, commodities markets tell us some things about
present supply and demand. Actually, they're not very good even for
this, as the supply is often fabricated for political purposes (for a
good example you might examine the way that the Japanese manipulate the
Australian coal-mining industry in order to benefit Japanese steel), and
demand always ignores the economically disenfranchised. Also, of course,
commodities markets are subject to chaotic behaviour the same as any
market ...

But anyway, I see no reason why commodities markets should pay
attention to the ecological/economic woes of future generations -
the people who play these markets are trying to turn bucks, not forsee
the future. If they don't benefit in the short term by taking the long
view, what suggests to you that they will take that view?

>[snip] However, I have grave doubts that we will EVER see massive
>worldwide famine again so long as war and the like do not seriously
>disrupt global production and trade.

Without useful data to support it, what authority does your opinion convey?

>Free markets do amazing things, you know. 

By gum, they do. Good and bad. They feed some people, and they let others
starve. They boom and they bust. But do they forecast the future? You
said that any such attempt would be "deranged" - so what's your point?

--

John Clark writes,

>If things don't work out after 570 million years let it evolve for another 
>billion or two, the simulation would be working so fast you could easily 
>afford to. 

>Besides, I think we could improve the very process of evolution.  [...]

We don't know how unlikely human-like intelligence is - we don't have a
representative sample to use to estimate that. For all we know, we could
be one of a trillion life-supporting earth-like planets, but the only
one to have evolved human-like intelligence. But of course I concede
that this appears unlikely.

>I don't see why Lamarckian evolution couldn't, in principle, be used to 
>evolve things other than memes. 

I agree that ideas evolve in sort of a Lamarckian way - beyond that we
get into our philosophical disagreements - but what sort of "things" do
you mean here?

>If you have nanotechnology besides having the ability of moving atoms around 
>you also can detect the position of atoms in an existing object. As long as 
>you had access to the object, all you'd need is a good look at it and you 
>could duplicate it, or simulate it, you don't need to know how it works.

I daresay you'd have a lot of work to do to simulate neurons by simulating
their every atom.

>If they are indifferent to us then they wouldn't bother hiding from us.  

Who says They're hiding? If They're nanite-based They might do most of
Their technology on microscopic scales - and how many microscopists do we
have looking for intelligent life? 

>I think if a race or hyper intelligent cosmic ET's existed, it would be the  
>single most obvious fact about the universe, but at least in this universe,  
>I just don't see it. 

Consider what these ET's could be like ... 

If They want to roam the universe, They want to economise on travel-time. Ergo
relativistic travel might suit Them very well. And of course, working on such
scales, solar sails are more than adequate to achieve that. They would prefer
to live in places with the lowest possible entropy, so as to derive the most
work from their environment - the surfaces of stars, perhaps? 

Maybe large parts of the universe - including stars - *are* Their artifacts. 
How could we distinguish Their artifacts from "natural" objects?

>Or maybe somebody else has already tried the AI evolution experiment, maybe  
>we're somebody else's half finished simulation running on a nano computer. 

And that could explain the Fermi paradox :-) I'm strongly reminded of
Lem's Cyberiad story about the HPLD's. 

>A race of ET's that thought everything was just peachy exactly the way it is 
>now wouldn't be super intelligent, because they wouldn't have the need or 
>even the desire to improve themselves. Actually they wouldn't feel the need 
>to do much of anything. If everything is perfect and all your goals have been 
>fulfilled then brain power is a useless commodity. 

I don't imagine we can second-guess Them any more than lichen can 
second-guess us. Who knows what Their aims might be? The only thing
I'd bet on is that, if They exist, we are incapable of understanding 
Them, and that we will be until the singularity occurs (if ever).

Peter Merel.


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