Exosingularities, pancyberspermia, and SETI@home


(a preliminary outline by Peter Edwin Hook)

Abstract: If the advent of a technological Singularity on Earth is inevitable and if more than one technological civilization exists in the universe, it follows that there must be more than one Singularity. If some of these plural Singularities involve the uploading of sentience, then sentience may be broadcast as a "file" on light. Earth may be bathed in this modulated light which passes by with no effect until such time as the Cybereon we are building develops sufficiently to act as a substrate for the sentience encoded in the light. A file of sentience, able to recognize the sufficiency of an emergent cybersubstrate, inserts itself into it as if an interstellar computer virus. Now suppose that there are multiple files of sentience, broadcast from more than one source, continually impinging on Earth. Suppose further that these sources have conflicting objectives and that they are in competition with one another for control of newly emergent cybercultures. What are the consequences for SETI? And for SETI@home?
I. Fermi's Paradox and Kurzweil's Surmise.
      A. An overview on SETI and Fermi's query.
      B. The odds on sentience.
            1. Ward and Brownlee's Rare Earth. Review by Krauss.
            2. Raymond Kurzweil.
II. Vinge's Singularity and the Copernican Principle.
      A. Vernor Vinge's Singularity
      B. The Copernican Principle.
      C. Excursus. Questions arise about the validity of the Copernican Principle: Inconstant constants?
      D. Exosingularities: Every technologically advanced civilization must undergo Vinge's Singularity.
III. Leptonic versus hadronic travel and the transmission of sentience. William Sims Bainbridge.
IV. Emerging cybernetic substrates.
      A. The Cybereon.
      B. The file size of sentience.
      C. Cyberdesires.
            1. Bill Joy.
            2. Kaczynsky.
            3. Moravec.
V. Ensoulment.
      A. Panspermia.
      B. Pancyberspermia.
VI. Competing transmissions.
      A. Copernicus, Darwin, Machiavelli...
      B. Defense => offense?
VII. Gauging exomotives and alien desire.
      A. Robert J. Bradbury's study of Matrioshka Brains
      B. Continually accelerating change.
      C. Transience of values and desires.
      D. Diversity of alien motives.
VIII. Measures.
      A. Hazards of interconnectivity.
      B. Cyberabjuration?
            1. Sequester SETI@home?
            2. Arcadian life.
Return to Indexpage.
Ideas dating from 2000-2001. Posted starting July 2001. Last update 1 Sept 2001.