Once AI is developed, it could “easily” colonise the universe.
I also see this claimed often but my best guess also is that this might likely be the hard part. Getting into space is already hard. Fusion could be technologically impossible (or not energy positive).
Thank you. An interesting read. I found your treatment very thorough given its premises and approach.
Sadly we disagree at a point which you seem to take as given without further treatment but which I question:
The ability and energy to set-up infrastructure to exploit interplanetary resources with sufficient net energy gain to sufficiently mine mercury (much less build a dyson sphere).
The problem here is that I do not have refereneces to actually back my opinion on this and I didn’t have enough time yet to build my complexity theoretic and thermodynamics arguments into a sufficiently presentable form.
I also see this claimed often but my best guess also is that this might likely be the hard part. Getting into space is already hard. Fusion could be technologically impossible (or not energy positive).
Fusion is technologically possible (c.f., the sun). It just might not be technologically easy.
The sun is not technology (=tools, machinery, modifications, arrangements and procedures)
It seems like there is steady progress at the fusion frontiers
Though in the case of ITER the “steady progress” is finishing pouring concrete for the foundations, not tweaking tokamak parameters for higher gain!
Fission is sufficient.
Is this an opinion or a factual statement. If the latter I’d like to see some refs.
http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/intergalactic-spreading.pdf
Thank you. An interesting read. I found your treatment very thorough given its premises and approach. Sadly we disagree at a point which you seem to take as given without further treatment but which I question:
The ability and energy to set-up infrastructure to exploit interplanetary resources with sufficient net energy gain to sufficiently mine mercury (much less build a dyson sphere).
The problem here is that I do not have refereneces to actually back my opinion on this and I didn’t have enough time yet to build my complexity theoretic and thermodynamics arguments into a sufficiently presentable form.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ii5/baseline_of_my_opinion_on_lw_topics/
We already have solar panel setups with roughly the required energy efficiency.