Re: Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter

[Lawrence Crowell]

Systems do not often scale linearly. I can't answer how the complexity of 
astro-structures would scale. To answer that definitively would require a 
bit of research and calculation. Even life has scale limitations, which is 
one reason Godzilla is not realistic.

LC

On Friday, February 16, 2018 at 1:56:09 PM UTC-6, John Clark wrote:
>
> Lawrence Crowell >
>
>> *> I keep trying to implore the prospect that mega-tech programs most 
>> likely do not scale in the linear fashion you keep advocating.*
>
>
> You keep saying it does not scale but you don’t say why. Life has 
> certainly scaled
> ​ beautifully​
> , it started with one small creature, all life has a common ancestor, but 
> look how big 
> ​and wonderful ​
> it has become
> ​!​
> Nanobots can reproduce themselves just like living things can and 
> ​they ​
> are very very good at doing the same thing over and over again. If they 
> know how to make one 
> ​square​
>  foot of a Dyson Sphere then they know how to make a complete Dyson 
> Sphere, and if they also know how to make a rocket a quarter as powerful as 
> the one Elon Musk recently launched (actually one percent might do, maybe 
> less) then they know how 
> ​to ​
> put a Dyson Sphere around every star in the galaxy in just 50 million 
> years. The universe is 13.8 billion years old but we see no hint of them 
> and we should unless we’re the first or disaster is about to hit us just as 
> it has every other civilization when 
> ​they​
>  reach our point.
>
> *> As they might evolve and migrate around the galaxy they would remain at 
>> least modest in scale*
>
>
> So ET has a opportunity to add to its brainpower and think deeper thoughts 
> and do grander things
> ​ ​
> but prefers not to. Maybe so, I did say that navel gazing, stagnation and 
> drug
> ​ ​
> addiction
> ​ ​
> might be the answer to the Fermi Paradox.
>
> *> For complex adaptive systems, such as evolving nanobots or vN probes, 
>> there most likely are scaling rules in both spatial dimensions as well as 
>> temperature and energy. *
>
>
> If such rules exist they are irrelevant because nanobots don’t become 
> larger or more energetic, they just become more numerous
>
> *> So either IGUS/ETI *
>
>
> This is becoming alphabet soup, you told me what IGUS stood for but I’ve 
> already forgotten. Can’t we just call it ET?
>
> *> is extremely rare or there are limits to the scale of their activities.*
>
>
> I agree
> ​.​
> ​Non​
> existence would limit the scale of their activities
> ​,​
> and destruction or electronic drug addiction would too.
> ​ 
>
>  John K Clark​
>
>

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Re: Satellites show sea level rise is accelerating

[Brent Meeker]

On 2/16/2018 10:12 AM, John Clark wrote:

107 Nobel laureates sign
​ed a​
letter
​strongly criticizing
 Greenpeace over
​its mindless opposition to all forms of ​
GMOs
​:


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/06/29/more-than-100-nobel-laureates-take-on-greenpeace-over-gmo-stance/?utm_term=.1979bc3b12cb

And its not just Greenpeace.


As far as I can tell it is just Greenpeace.  And how many of the 107 
Nobel laureates consider themselves environmentalists...I'd guess ALL.


Brent

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Re: Neural networks score higher than humans in reading and comprehension test

[Pierz]

However, challenging the “comprehension” description, Gary Marcus 
, PhD, a Professor of Psychology and Neural Science 
at NYU, notes in a tweet that “the SQUAD test shows that machines can 
highlight relevant passages in text, not that they understand those 
passages.”

On Wednesday, January 17, 2018 at 5:16:04 AM UTC+11, John Clark wrote:
>
> Microsoft achieved 82,650 on the Stanford University reading and 
> comprehension test, the best human score so far is 82,304.
>
>
> http://www.kurzweilai.net/deep-neural-network-models-score-higher-than-humans-in-reading-and-comprehension-test?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=c8f5d1257b-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6de721fb33-c8f5d1257b-282205341
>
> John K Clark
>

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Re: Satellites show sea level rise is accelerating

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

What energy systems would you reco? Exclusive even of GMO chat etc..


-Original Message-
From: John Clark 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Fri, Feb 16, 2018 1:12 pm
Subject: Re: Satellites show sea level rise is accelerating



On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 6:12 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:





​> ​
you have casually exaggerated based on the imagined policies of strawman 
environmentalists.



​Environmentalists 
claim to occupy the moral high ground but they have one hell of a lot to answer 
for. They managed to get DDT banned in 1972, the most powerful ​weapon we had 
against malaria causing mosquitos. The following is a graph of malaria deaths 
over time, tell me if you can spot something unusual about it in the early 
1970s.



http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iXynnlm8k18/ULg0ZsR1SlI/Dow/8mhm5gJm8dY/s1600/F5.large.jpg
 




At one time I
​ ​
called myself an
​ ​
environmentalists
​ ​
but no longer, the very word has become polluted and no longer means what it 
once did. Every large mainstream environmental organization opposes 
insecticides,
​ ​
herbicides and artificial fertilizer but they also oppose genetically modified 
plants even though they don't need insecticides,
​ ​
herbicides
​ ​
or
​ ​
artificial fertilizers
​.​ 
107 Nobel laureates sign
​ed a​
 letter 
​strongly criticizing
 Greenpeace over 
​its mindless opposition to all forms of ​
GMOs
​:







https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/06/29/more-than-100-nobel-laureates-take-on-greenpeace-over-gmo-stance/?utm_term=.1979bc3b12cb



And its not just Greenpeace. Normal rice has no vitamin A and hundreds of 
millions of people eat almost nothing but rice so they get sick from vitamin A 
deficiency, about 2 million people
​ ​
die from 
​it ​
each
​ ​
year and a half a million children go blind. Scientists used genetic 
engineering to make "golden rice"
​ ​
that does contain
​ ​
vitamin A, but
​ ​
every large
​ ​
mainstream
​ ​
environmental organization opposes the use of it with every fibre of their 
being. Why? Because its genetically modified and that means it must be the work 
of the devil.
​ ​
To environmentalists the shooting of one gorilla at a zoo is a great tragedy 
but 8 million people starving to death each year (which GMO's could help 
prevent) is just a statistic.  


And of course every large mainstream
​ ​
environmental organization opposes
​ ​
greenhouse gasses, but they also oppose nuclear power plants even though they 
produce no greenhouse gasses and h
​has​
 
​by far ​
the best safety record of any power source.  
​More​
 people have died fallen off ladders installing ​rooftop solar cells than have 
died building or operating nuclear power plants.



 John K Clark





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Re: Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter

[John Clark]

Lawrence Crowell 

> *> I keep trying to implore the prospect that mega-tech programs most
> likely do not scale in the linear fashion you keep advocating.*


You keep saying it does not scale but you don’t say why. Life has certainly
scaled
​ beautifully​
, it started with one small creature, all life has a common ancestor, but
look how big
​and wonderful ​
it has become
​!​
Nanobots can reproduce themselves just like living things can and
​they ​
are very very good at doing the same thing over and over again. If they
know how to make one
​square​
 foot of a Dyson Sphere then they know how to make a complete Dyson Sphere,
and if they also know how to make a rocket a quarter as powerful as the one
Elon Musk recently launched (actually one percent might do, maybe less)
then they know how
​to ​
put a Dyson Sphere around every star in the galaxy in just 50 million
years. The universe is 13.8 billion years old but we see no hint of them
and we should unless we’re the first or disaster is about to hit us just as
it has every other civilization when
​they​
 reach our point.

*> As they might evolve and migrate around the galaxy they would remain at
> least modest in scale*


So ET has a opportunity to add to its brainpower and think deeper thoughts
and do grander things
​ ​
but prefers not to. Maybe so, I did say that navel gazing, stagnation and
drug
​ ​
addiction
​ ​
might be the answer to the Fermi Paradox.

*> For complex adaptive systems, such as evolving nanobots or vN probes,
> there most likely are scaling rules in both spatial dimensions as well as
> temperature and energy. *


If such rules exist they are irrelevant because nanobots don’t become
larger or more energetic, they just become more numerous

*> So either IGUS/ETI *


This is becoming alphabet soup, you told me what IGUS stood for but I’ve
already forgotten. Can’t we just call it ET?

*> is extremely rare or there are limits to the scale of their activities.*


I agree
​.​
​Non​
existence would limit the scale of their activities
​,​
and destruction or electronic drug addiction would too.
​

 John K Clark​

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Re: Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter

[John Clark]

On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 8:38 PM, Lawrence Crowell <
goldenfieldquaterni...@gmail.com> wrote:


*> There are bacterial flagella and Eukaryotic flagella. Bacteria flagellum
> is a single polypeptide chain. It is connected to a protein that protons
> are pumped into. This induces the rotational motion.*


​I know. That's why I said "macroscopic.

*​> ​On a macroscopic level the wheel requires a road.*
>

​Is it your contention that in a macroscopic world without roads ​

​here would never be a need for a part that can move in 360 degrees? ​The
very first wheel ever inverted was probably used for forming clay in
pottery making.

John K Clark

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Re: Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter

[agrayson2000]

On Friday, February 16, 2018 at 9:32:10 AM UTC-7, Lawrence Crowell wrote:
>
> I keep trying to implore the prospect that mega-tech programs most likely 
> do not scale in the linear fashion you keep advocating. There might be 
> nanobots or von Neumann probes in this galaxy if they remain small or 
> modest in dimensions. This would most likely be the prospect I should 
> think. As they might evolve and migrate around the galaxy they would remain 
> at least modest in scale, maybe remain tiny and only scale up as 
> communicating collectives that might occur intermittently. I do not know 
> the scaling rules that might apply. Geoffrey West has made a bit of a 
> career out of the physics of scaling rules for complex systems. For complex 
> adaptive systems, such as evolving nanobots or vN probes, there most likely 
> are scaling rules in both spatial dimensions as well as temperature and 
> energy. 
>
> I would say that if ETI/IGUS can exist and do so at a density of one per 
> galaxy per N-millions of years (N not very large), then some of them would 
> have launched vN probes and other systems into space that might migrate out 
> and adapt. Among the 1500 galaxies in the Virgo cluster only about 50 
> million light years away there are none that show evidence of large scale 
> engineering. Below is an astrophoto of the Virgo cluster. Within 100 
> million light years where the Hubble relation v = Hd, H = 70km/sec/Mpc (Mpc 
> = megaparsec) then we have v = 1750 km/sec on average which is a low z = 
> v/c ~ .0058 region of the universe. There are around 5x10^4 galaxies in 
> this region and we see no large scale artificial activity. So either 
> IGUS/ETI is extremely rare or there are limits to the scale of their 
> activities.
>
> LC
>

*OR, they exist but have no motivation to send out nanobots. What's to be 
gained? AG*

>
>  [image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/ESO-M87.jpg]
> On Friday, February 16, 2018 at 9:24:48 AM UTC-6, John Clark wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 12:05 PM, Telmo Menezes  
>> wrote:
>>
>> ​> ​
>>>
>>> *What if nanotech *is* the filter? Then, the civilizations that survive​ 
>>> ​could be the ones that avoid that trap somehow.*
>>
>>
>> ​
>> If Drexler style Nanotechnology had been developed anywhere in the galaxy 
>> that fact would be obvious by now regardless of if the civilization that 
>> originally developed it survived or not.
>>
>>>
>>
>>> * ​> ​Another possibility is that nanotech is possible and civilizations 
>>> do​ ​eventually build dyson spheres around their stars, but have​ 
>>> ​absolutely​ ​no incentive to go beyond their star system -- this is 
>>> easily​ ​justifiable by the speed of light limit. We haven't seen one of 
>>> those either, but it is also not true that there isn't the slightest sign:*
>>>
>>> https://www.seti.org/whats-up-with-tabby-star
>>
>>  
>>  
>> ​That article is out of date, a lot of research has been done on Tabby's 
>> star since then and things change fast. Several astronomers (including 
>> Tabetha Boyajian after whom Tabby's Star is named) have concluded in a peer 
>> reviewed article in "Astrophysical Journal" that the puzzling dimming is 
>> not caused by a solid object but by microscopic dust particles:
>>
>> https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.07556.pdf
>>
>> They closely examined the rate of dimming of the ultraviolet light and 
>> the infrared light coming from the star and they found the rate of dimming 
>> between the two was significantly different; and a Dyson Sphere, completed 
>> or not, wouldn't do that. The only thing that would scatter light like that 
>> is lots and lots of microscopic dust.  Yes it's odd that a mature star like 
>> Tabby would have such a thick cloud of dust in orbit around it and nobody 
>> is quite sure why it's there, but whatever caused the dust it sure doesn't 
>> look like ET is responsible for the dimming.
>>
>>>
>> ​> ​
>>> Maybe they are not computationalists
>>
>>
>> Then some disaster must have prevented them from becoming 
>> super-intelligent. 
>>  
>>
>>> >
 ​>​
 So what? Fragmented or not Intelligence
 ​ ​
 would be a major force effecting the large scale structure of the 
 universe.
>>>
>>>
>>> ​>* ​*
>>> *A two-star-system civilization would already be fragmented, unless it​ 
>>> ​is somehow possible to transcend the speed of light constraint.*
>>
>>
>> ​I have no choice but to repeat myself: 
>> So what? Fragmented or not Intelligence
>> ​ ​
>> would be a major force effecting the large scale structure of the 
>> universe.
>>  
>>
>>> ​>>​
 All it would take is one individual in one civilization to take an once 
 or so of matter and turn it into a Von Neumann  Probe
>>>
>>>
>>> *​> ​Can you build an atomic bomb? *
>>
>>
>> If I had some U235 I could make an A-bomb.
>> ​ ​
>> Making
>> ​ ​
>> one just takes a lot of effort (aka money) if you only have 2 large 
>> hands, but if I had very small hands it would be easy to
>> ​ ​
>> separate
>>

Re: Satellites show sea level rise is accelerating

[John Clark]

On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 6:12 PM, Brent Meeker  wrote:

*​> ​you have casually exaggerated based on the imagined policies of
> strawman environmentalists.*


​Environmentalists
claim to occupy the moral high ground but they have one hell of a lot to
answer for. They managed to get DDT banned in 1972, the most powerful
​weapon we had against malaria causing mosquitos. The following is a graph
of malaria deaths over time, tell me if you can spot something unusual
about it in the early 1970s.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iXynnlm8k18/ULg0ZsR1SlI/Dow/8mhm5gJm8dY/s1600/F5.large.jpg



At one time I
​ ​
called myself an
​ ​
environmentalists
​ ​
but no longer, the very word has become polluted and no longer means what
it once did. Every large mainstream environmental organization opposes
insecticides,
​ ​
herbicides and artificial fertilizer but they also oppose genetically
modified plants even though they don't need insecticides,
​ ​
herbicides
​ ​
or
​ ​
artificial fertilizers
​.​
107 Nobel laureates sign
​ed a​
letter
​strongly criticizing
 Greenpeace over
​its mindless opposition to all forms of ​
GMOs
​:


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/06/29/more-than-100-nobel-laureates-take-on-greenpeace-over-gmo-stance/?utm_term=.1979bc3b12cb

And its not just Greenpeace. Normal rice has no vitamin A and hundreds of
millions of people eat almost nothing but rice so they get sick from
vitamin A deficiency, about 2 million people
​ ​
die from
​it ​
each
​ ​
year and a half a million children go blind. Scientists used genetic
engineering to make "golden rice"
​ ​
that *does* contain
​ ​
vitamin A, but
​ ​
every large
​ ​
mainstream
​ ​
environmental organization opposes the use of it with every fibre of their
being. Why? Because its genetically modified and that means it must be the
work of the devil.
​ ​
To environmentalists the shooting of one gorilla at a zoo is a great
tragedy but 8 million people starving to death each year (which GMO's could
help prevent) is just a statistic.

And of course every large mainstream
​ ​
environmental organization opposes
​ ​
greenhouse gasses, but they also oppose nuclear power plants even though
they produce no greenhouse gasses and h
​has​

​by far ​
the best safety record of any power source.
​More​
 people have died fallen off ladders installing ​rooftop solar cells than
have died building or operating nuclear power plants.

 John K Clark

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Re: Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter

[Lawrence Crowell]

I keep trying to implore the prospect that mega-tech programs most likely 
do not scale in the linear fashion you keep advocating. There might be 
nanobots or von Neumann probes in this galaxy if they remain small or 
modest in dimensions. This would most likely be the prospect I should 
think. As they might evolve and migrate around the galaxy they would remain 
at least modest in scale, maybe remain tiny and only scale up as 
communicating collectives that might occur intermittently. I do not know 
the scaling rules that might apply. Geoffrey West has made a bit of a 
career out of the physics of scaling rules for complex systems. For complex 
adaptive systems, such as evolving nanobots or vN probes, there most likely 
are scaling rules in both spatial dimensions as well as temperature and 
energy. 

I would say that if ETI/IGUS can exist and do so at a density of one per 
galaxy per N-millions of years (N not very large), then some of them would 
have launched vN probes and other systems into space that might migrate out 
and adapt. Among the 1500 galaxies in the Virgo cluster only about 50 
million light years away there are none that show evidence of large scale 
engineering. Below is an astrophoto of the Virgo cluster. Within 100 
million light years where the Hubble relation v = Hd, H = 70km/sec/Mpc (Mpc 
= megaparsec) then we have v = 1750 km/sec on average which is a low z = 
v/c ~ .0058 region of the universe. There are around 5x10^4 galaxies in 
this region and we see no large scale artificial activity. So either 
IGUS/ETI is extremely rare or there are limits to the scale of their 
activities.

LC


[image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/ESO-M87.jpg]
On Friday, February 16, 2018 at 9:24:48 AM UTC-6, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 12:05 PM, Telmo Menezes  > wrote:
>
> ​> ​
>>
>> *What if nanotech *is* the filter? Then, the civilizations that survive​ 
>> ​could be the ones that avoid that trap somehow.*
>
>
> ​
> If Drexler style Nanotechnology had been developed anywhere in the galaxy 
> that fact would be obvious by now regardless of if the civilization that 
> originally developed it survived or not.
>
>>
>
>> * ​> ​Another possibility is that nanotech is possible and civilizations 
>> do​ ​eventually build dyson spheres around their stars, but have​ 
>> ​absolutely​ ​no incentive to go beyond their star system -- this is 
>> easily​ ​justifiable by the speed of light limit. We haven't seen one of 
>> those either, but it is also not true that there isn't the slightest sign:*
>>
>> https://www.seti.org/whats-up-with-tabby-star
>
>  
>  
> ​That article is out of date, a lot of research has been done on Tabby's 
> star since then and things change fast. Several astronomers (including 
> Tabetha Boyajian after whom Tabby's Star is named) have concluded in a peer 
> reviewed article in "Astrophysical Journal" that the puzzling dimming is 
> not caused by a solid object but by microscopic dust particles:
>
> https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.07556.pdf
>
> They closely examined the rate of dimming of the ultraviolet light and the 
> infrared light coming from the star and they found the rate of dimming 
> between the two was significantly different; and a Dyson Sphere, completed 
> or not, wouldn't do that. The only thing that would scatter light like that 
> is lots and lots of microscopic dust.  Yes it's odd that a mature star like 
> Tabby would have such a thick cloud of dust in orbit around it and nobody 
> is quite sure why it's there, but whatever caused the dust it sure doesn't 
> look like ET is responsible for the dimming.
>
>>
> ​> ​
>> Maybe they are not computationalists
>
>
> Then some disaster must have prevented them from becoming 
> super-intelligent. 
>  
>
>> >
>>> ​>​
>>> So what? Fragmented or not Intelligence
>>> ​ ​
>>> would be a major force effecting the large scale structure of the 
>>> universe.
>>
>>
>> ​>* ​*
>> *A two-star-system civilization would already be fragmented, unless it​ 
>> ​is somehow possible to transcend the speed of light constraint.*
>
>
> ​I have no choice but to repeat myself: 
> So what? Fragmented or not Intelligence
> ​ ​
> would be a major force effecting the large scale structure of the universe.
>  
>
>> ​>>​
>>> All it would take is one individual in one civilization to take an once 
>>> or so of matter and turn it into a Von Neumann  Probe
>>
>>
>> *​> ​Can you build an atomic bomb? *
>
>
> If I had some U235 I could make an A-bomb.
> ​ ​
> Making
> ​ ​
> one just takes a lot of effort (aka money) if you only have 2 large hands, 
> but if I had very small hands it would be easy to
> ​ ​
> separate
> ​ ​
> the one U235 atom that I want from the 140 U238 atoms that I don't want. 
> And if I had 6.02*10^23 of those small hands I could just keep doing the 
> same thing over and over and then very soon I'd have enough for a bomb. 
> Making an H-bomb would be more complicated but if I also had some Lithium-6 
> deuteri

Re: Satellites show sea level rise is accelerating

[John Clark]

On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 4:15 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

​> *​*
> *The Climatologists have pushed the worst-case scenario for 30 yeas.*


30 years ago they said if we don't do something drastic in 10 years it will
be too late, well if it's too late than why are they still
​ ​
yapping about
​climate change​
 now?

​*> ​*
> *We do need clean sources of power that is super-abundant-to replace the
> dirty, so what do we want to do?*
>

​The very first thing I'd do is dramatically increase research spending on
​Liquid Fluoride Thorium​

​Reactors. And a dramatic increase in spending would not cost much because
right now we are spending nothing on it.


> ​> ​
> I am leery of injecting sulphur into the atmosphere to cool things
> because...ice age--especially if we do this and we get another volcano.
>

​
But that's the beauty of
​ ​
Myhrvold's
​ ​
artificial volcano
​ ​
idea, you're not doing anything irreversible
​. If you change your mind​
you just turn a valve on a hose and in about a year the sulfur dioxide
​ levels in the upper atmosphere are back to where they were before you
started. ​

John K Clark

 ​

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Re: Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter

[John Clark]

On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 12:05 PM, Telmo Menezes 
wrote:

​> ​
>
> *What if nanotech *is* the filter? Then, the civilizations that survive​
> ​could be the ones that avoid that trap somehow.*


​
If Drexler style Nanotechnology had been developed anywhere in the galaxy
that fact would be obvious by now regardless of if the civilization that
originally developed it survived or not.

>

> * ​> ​Another possibility is that nanotech is possible and civilizations
> do​ ​eventually build dyson spheres around their stars, but have​
> ​absolutely​ ​no incentive to go beyond their star system -- this is
> easily​ ​justifiable by the speed of light limit. We haven't seen one of
> those either, but it is also not true that there isn't the slightest sign:*
>
> https://www.seti.org/whats-up-with-tabby-star



​That article is out of date, a lot of research has been done on Tabby's
star since then and things change fast. Several astronomers (including
Tabetha Boyajian after whom Tabby's Star is named) have concluded in a peer
reviewed article in "Astrophysical Journal" that the puzzling dimming is
not caused by a solid object but by microscopic dust particles:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.07556.pdf

They closely examined the rate of dimming of the ultraviolet light and the
infrared light coming from the star and they found the rate of dimming
between the two was significantly different; and a Dyson Sphere, completed
or not, wouldn't do that. The only thing that would scatter light like that
is lots and lots of microscopic dust.  Yes it's odd that a mature star like
Tabby would have such a thick cloud of dust in orbit around it and nobody
is quite sure why it's there, but whatever caused the dust it sure doesn't
look like ET is responsible for the dimming.

>
​> ​
> Maybe they are not computationalists


Then some disaster must have prevented them from becoming
super-intelligent.


> >
>> ​>​
>> So what? Fragmented or not Intelligence
>> ​ ​
>> would be a major force effecting the large scale structure of the
>> universe.
>
>
> ​>* ​*
> *A two-star-system civilization would already be fragmented, unless it​
> ​is somehow possible to transcend the speed of light constraint.*


​I have no choice but to repeat myself:
So what? Fragmented or not Intelligence
​ ​
would be a major force effecting the large scale structure of the universe.


> ​>>​
>> All it would take is one individual in one civilization to take an once
>> or so of matter and turn it into a Von Neumann  Probe
>
>
> *​> ​Can you build an atomic bomb? *


If I had some U235 I could make an A-bomb.
​ ​
Making
​ ​
one just takes a lot of effort (aka money) if you only have 2 large hands,
but if I had very small hands it would be easy to
​ ​
separate
​ ​
the one U235 atom that I want from the 140 U238 atoms that I don't want.
And if I had 6.02*10^23 of those small hands I could just keep doing the
same thing over and over and then very soon I'd have enough for a bomb.
Making an H-bomb would be more complicated but if I also had some Lithium-6
deuteride I think I know enough to make a reasonable stab at it.
​ ​
Unfortunately
​ ​
there is no
​ ​
great secret that you need to know to make a
​ ​
nuclear weapon and there hasn't been for about 40 years. Every nation that
tried to make an H-bomb was successful on their first attempt, and the
second H-bomb ever tested on the planet was over 3 times more powerful than
expected and ended up killing some Japanese fishermen as a result even
though they were well outside the official danger area.

In the case of a Dyson Sphere if you know how to make one square foot of it
then you know how to make the entire thing because being a sphere one part
of it is identical with every other part of it.

>

> *​> ​but aren't you a bit too quick to assume that a technology that​ ​has
> only been theorized is necessarily feasible?*


Nanotechnology doesn't involve any new laws of physics and we already have
an existence proof of a crude form of Nanotechnology developed by mindless
random mutation and natural selection, its called life. ​
And intelligence can do a lot better than randomness. ​

>
>
>> ​>​
>> All a Von Neumann probe needs is energy and atoms, carbon being the most
>> ​ ​
>> important although other elements would come in handy. Stars provide lots
>> of
>> ​ ​
>> energy and there are plenty of nice juicy atoms in asteroids and planets.
>
>
> *​>​All that and the probe itself, which does not exist circa now*
>

​
I know, that is
​ ​
the
​ ​
Fermi paradox. All I have to do is glance
​ ​
at
​ ​
the night sky to know there is no
​ ​
Von Neumann probe
​ ​
in the entire galaxy. But why? Either we're the first or civilizations
always get destroyed when they get to our level.

 John K Clark

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