Lightspeed delays lead to multiple technological singularities.
By Yudkowsky’s classification, I’m assuming the Accelerating Change Singularity: As technology gets better, the characteristic timescale at which technological progress is made becomes shorter, so that the time until this reaches physical limits is short from the perspective of our timescale. At a short enough timescale the lightspeed limit becomes important: When information cannot traverse the diameter of civilization in the time until singularity further progress must be made independently in different regions. The subjective time from then may still be large, and without communication the different regions can develop different interest and, after their singularities, compete. As the characteristic timescale becomes shorter the independent regions split further.
Crossposted on my blog:
Lightspeed delays lead to multiple technological singularities.
By Yudkowsky’s classification, I’m assuming the Accelerating Change Singularity: As technology gets better, the characteristic timescale at which technological progress is made becomes shorter, so that the time until this reaches physical limits is short from the perspective of our timescale. At a short enough timescale the lightspeed limit becomes important: When information cannot traverse the diameter of civilization in the time until singularity further progress must be made independently in different regions. The subjective time from then may still be large, and without communication the different regions can develop different interest and, after their singularities, compete. As the characteristic timescale becomes shorter the independent regions split further.