DanielVarga comments on What are our domains of expertise? A marketplace of insights and issues - Less Wrong

22 Post author: Morendil 28 April 2010 10:17PM

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Comment author: DanielVarga 10 May 2010 12:38:30PM *  1 point [-]

I am afraid the analogy is not clear enough for me to apply it, and explicitly reproduce the relevant version of the counterarguments you are implying. I would be thankful if you elaborated.

In the meanwhile, let me note that the Doomsday argument floats in an intellectual vacuum, while my proposed 0-1 law for expansion speed could in principle be a proven theorem of economics, sociology, computer science or some other field of science, instead of being the wild speculation what it is. My goal to understand the physics of optimally efficient computational processes is motivated by exactly this: I wish to prove the 0-1 law, from still very speculative and shaky, but at least more basic assumptions.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 11 May 2010 07:25:24AM -1 points [-]

I see, your proposed argument isn't directly analogous to the standard Doomsday Argument, but more like a (hypothetical) variant that gives a number of non-anthropic reasons for expecting doom in the near future, and also says "BTW, a near future doom would explain why we have low birth rank."

I'm not sure that such anthropic explanations make sense, but if you're not mainly depending on anthropic reasoning to make your case, then the counterarguments aren't so important.

BTW, I agree it is likely that alien civilizations would expand at near the speed of light, but not necessarily to finish some computation as quickly as possible. (Once you're immortal, it's not clear why speed matters.) Another reason is that because the universe itself is expanding, the slower those civilizations expand, the less mass/energy they will eventually have access to.