Even if stars only make up a small fraction of the matter in the universe, it’s still matter, they’d still probably have something they’d prefer to do with it than this. I’m not really sure what kind of value system (that’s also power-seeking enough to exert control over a broad chunk of the universe) could justify leaving it fallow.
Stars consist mostly of low value hydrogen/helium, but left to their own devices they cook that fuel into higher value heavier elements.
But anyway that is mostly irrelevant—the big picture issue is whether future civs transcend vs expand. The current trajectory of civilization is exponential, and continuing that trajectory requires transcension. Spatial expansion allows for only weak quadratic growth.
Hmm makes sense if you really don’t care about energy. But how much energy will they need, in the end, to reorganize all of that matter?
I don’t think there’s going to be a tradeoff between expansion and transcension for most agents within each civ, or most civs (let alone all agents in almost all civs). If transcension increases the value of any given patch of space by s^t, and you get more space from expansion at s*t^3, well, the two policies are nonexpansion: 2tc vs expansion: 2tt3 :/ there’s no contest. If it’s not value per region of space, if one quantity became negligible relative to the other, that value of expansion is still bigger than the cost of building one self-replicating expansion probe (which is even more negligible), so they do that.
So the EV of continuing spacial expansion is still positive. Unless you can argue that the countervailing value of leaving the stars fallow grows in proportion to the transcension in some way. It sorta looks that way with humans (some sort of moral term resembling diminishing gains on resources, and a love of history and its artifacts (fallow planets) that grows with population size?), but it could go either way.
Even if stars only make up a small fraction of the matter in the universe, it’s still matter, they’d still probably have something they’d prefer to do with it than this. I’m not really sure what kind of value system (that’s also power-seeking enough to exert control over a broad chunk of the universe) could justify leaving it fallow.
Stars consist mostly of low value hydrogen/helium, but left to their own devices they cook that fuel into higher value heavier elements.
But anyway that is mostly irrelevant—the big picture issue is whether future civs transcend vs expand. The current trajectory of civilization is exponential, and continuing that trajectory requires transcension. Spatial expansion allows for only weak quadratic growth.
Hmm makes sense if you really don’t care about energy. But how much energy will they need, in the end, to reorganize all of that matter?
I don’t think there’s going to be a tradeoff between expansion and transcension for most agents within each civ, or most civs (let alone all agents in almost all civs). If transcension increases the value of any given patch of space by s^t, and you get more space from expansion at s*t^3, well, the two policies are nonexpansion: 2tc vs expansion: 2tt3 :/ there’s no contest.
If it’s not value per region of space, if one quantity became negligible relative to the other, that value of expansion is still bigger than the cost of building one self-replicating expansion probe (which is even more negligible), so they do that.
So the EV of continuing spacial expansion is still positive. Unless you can argue that the countervailing value of leaving the stars fallow grows in proportion to the transcension in some way. It sorta looks that way with humans (some sort of moral term resembling diminishing gains on resources, and a love of history and its artifacts (fallow planets) that grows with population size?), but it could go either way.