Zubon, I thought of that possibility, and one possible singleton-imposed solution is “Who says that subjective time has to run at the same rate for everyone?” You could then do things fast or slow, as you preferred, without worrying about being left behind, or for that matter, worrying about pulling ahead. To look at it another way, if people can increase in power arbitrarily fast on your own playing field, you may have to increase in power faster than you prefer, to keep up with them; this is a coordination/competition problem, and two singleton solutions are to fence off people who grow too fast, or to slow down their subjective time rates so that the competence growth rate per tick of sidereal time is coordinated.
Ramarren, Banks added on that part later, and it renders a lot of the earlier books nonsensical—why didn’t the Culture or the Idarans increase their intelligence to win their war, if it was that easy? I refuse to regard Excession as canon; it never happened.
Unknown, the question is how much of this divergence is due to (a) having moved further toward reflective equilibrium, (b) unusual mistakes in answering a common question, (c) being an evil mutant, (d) falling into an uncommon but self-consistent attractor.
Ramarren, Banks added on that part later, and it renders a lot of the earlier books nonsensical—why didn’t the Culture or the Idarans increase their intelligence to win their war, if it was that easy? I refuse to regard Excession as canon; it never happened.
Eh? Subliming doesn’t help you win wars. It may or may not grant superintelligence and various other god-tier powers, but for balance reasons it also makes you stop caring about this universe, and you drift off into … well, nobody knows.
OTOH, not only have the Minds have deliberately engineered their society so vast numbers of humans commit suicide when “their time is up”, but “infinite fun space” is implied to contain entire civilizations, simulated down to the quantum level, so … screw the Culture. Seriously.
Everyone would want subjective time to run as fast as possible for themselves. If they “skip” a thousand years and go straight to the Mind age, that’s not become a Mind a thousand years earlier. It’s losing a thousand years of being a human.
Of course, you could have them skip to the Mind age, and then let them have an extra thousand years later on.
OK, I take that back. The idea that a tortoise is faster than a runner is preposterous and counterintuitive.
Therefore humans can become Minds
Provided that knowledge is not infinite
But of course that is a preposterous idea too, so I take that one back too, I don’t want to provoke the anger of my anonymous friend and get another wedgie.
We encourage you to downvote any comment that you’d rather not see more of—please don’t feel that this requires being able to give an elaborate justification. -LW Wiki Deletion Policy
Folks are encouraged todownvote liberally on LW, but the flip-side of that is that people will downvote where they might otherwise just move on for fear of offending someone or getting into an argument that doesn’t interest them. You might want to be less sensitive if someone brings one of your posts to −1 - it’s not really an act of aggression.
This is fun!
To tell you the truth (my thruth not the absolute one) I dont care. I am having a blast trying to unravel what (and how) most people write here.
Zubon, I thought of that possibility, and one possible singleton-imposed solution is “Who says that subjective time has to run at the same rate for everyone?” You could then do things fast or slow, as you preferred, without worrying about being left behind, or for that matter, worrying about pulling ahead. To look at it another way, if people can increase in power arbitrarily fast on your own playing field, you may have to increase in power faster than you prefer, to keep up with them; this is a coordination/competition problem, and two singleton solutions are to fence off people who grow too fast, or to slow down their subjective time rates so that the competence growth rate per tick of sidereal time is coordinated.
Ramarren, Banks added on that part later, and it renders a lot of the earlier books nonsensical—why didn’t the Culture or the Idarans increase their intelligence to win their war, if it was that easy? I refuse to regard Excession as canon; it never happened.
Unknown, the question is how much of this divergence is due to (a) having moved further toward reflective equilibrium, (b) unusual mistakes in answering a common question, (c) being an evil mutant, (d) falling into an uncommon but self-consistent attractor.
Eh? Subliming doesn’t help you win wars. It may or may not grant superintelligence and various other god-tier powers, but for balance reasons it also makes you stop caring about this universe, and you drift off into … well, nobody knows.
OTOH, not only have the Minds have deliberately engineered their society so vast numbers of humans commit suicide when “their time is up”, but “infinite fun space” is implied to contain entire civilizations, simulated down to the quantum level, so … screw the Culture. Seriously.
Everyone would want subjective time to run as fast as possible for themselves. If they “skip” a thousand years and go straight to the Mind age, that’s not become a Mind a thousand years earlier. It’s losing a thousand years of being a human.
Of course, you could have them skip to the Mind age, and then let them have an extra thousand years later on.
Hello, I think that Zeno paradox of Achilles and the tortoise fits perfectly here...
-1!
OK, I take that back. The idea that a tortoise is faster than a runner is preposterous and counterintuitive.
Therefore humans can become Minds
Provided that knowledge is not infinite
But of course that is a preposterous idea too, so I take that one back too, I don’t want to provoke the anger of my anonymous friend and get another wedgie.
Folks are encouraged to downvote liberally on LW, but the flip-side of that is that people will downvote where they might otherwise just move on for fear of offending someone or getting into an argument that doesn’t interest them. You might want to be less sensitive if someone brings one of your posts to −1 - it’s not really an act of aggression.
This is fun! To tell you the truth (my thruth not the absolute one) I dont care. I am having a blast trying to unravel what (and how) most people write here.
Cheers!
Are you suggesting running a simulation at an exponentially slower speed ,:-\