Re: poly: The singleton hypothesis

At 11:59 AM 5/4/98 -0700, Peter McCluskey wrote:
>Is there something fundamentally different about advanced
>nanopowers that eliminates the importance of intellectual and technological
>improvements,

My intuition is that given trillions of Jupiter brains working for billions
of years, there will be no room left for technological or intellectual
improvements: the limits of feasibility will be coincident with the limits
of possibility. We will reach the highest possible level of development,
and so will any aliens we run into.

Our technology is already up against fundamental physical laws in several
areas: the speed of light is an annoying constraint on communications, and
the strength of materials at ordinary pressure is limited by the energy of
chemical bonds. Such constraints can only increase.

Of course, I may be wrong, and progress may be endless. It would be more
fun that way, but it doesn't seem likely.

--CarlF
Received on Mon May 4 20:55:21 1998