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Old 07-06-2018, 06:29 AM   #1
Astromancer
 
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Default Where would you build your colony?

For this, you are a billionaire with a mission. Preserve as much of humanity's heritage as possible. You believe that a truly massive war is brewing and that mankind is unaware of just how destructive the next really big war can/will be.

You basically plan to create a colony/ark to preserve vast amounts of cultural, historical, technological, and scientific, information. You also mean the population of the colony to preserve a wide range of human genetic variability.

So...where are you putting your colony/colonies and why? Extra credit, will you disguise the colony or just hide it?
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Old 07-06-2018, 07:41 AM   #2
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Default Re: Where would you build your colony?

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Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
You basically plan to create a colony/ark to preserve vast amounts of cultural, historical, technological, and scientific, information. You also mean the population of the colony to preserve a wide range of human genetic variability.
Hm, most of that is jsut information and if I'm only preserving [peo[ple for their gnes and not their "peopleness" I don't even need their uplaods. Just their genescans.

So the "Ark" is a massive datatore and I send it out on a cometary orbit that won't come back to the inner system for decades or centuries. Even the AI in charge of it can sleep most of the time but when it does get back to the habital zone that AI can decide where to go.
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Old 07-06-2018, 10:04 AM   #3
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Default Re: Where would you build your colony?

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Hm, most of that is jsut information and if I'm only preserving [peo[ple for their gnes and not their "peopleness" I don't even need their uplaods. Just their genescans.

So the "Ark" is a massive datatore and I send it out on a cometary orbit that won't come back to the inner system for decades or centuries. Even the AI in charge of it can sleep most of the time but when it does get back to the habital zone that AI can decide where to go.
In that case why not make duplicates of the ark system and send some of them out to nearby star systems?
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Old 07-06-2018, 10:10 AM   #4
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Default Re: Where would you build your colony?

The creators of this project would have to assume their records would eventually be found out. So I suggest some kind of randomizing feature for exactly which route such arks would take. If they don't know where the ships are, then the warring factions can't either.
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Old 07-06-2018, 10:30 AM   #5
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Default Re: Where would you build your colony?

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Hm, most of that is jsut information and if I'm only preserving [peo[ple for their gnes and not their "peopleness" I don't even need their uplaods. Just their genescans.

So the "Ark" is a massive datatore and I send it out on a cometary orbit that won't come back to the inner system for decades or centuries. Even the AI in charge of it can sleep most of the time but when it does get back to the habital zone that AI can decide where to go.
And how do you turn this information back into people?

Wouldn't you need to also hide the machinery and raw materials needed to use the information to make new people?

As well as the data store you need the manufacturing machinery and resource gathering machinery and/or a store of resources.
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Old 07-06-2018, 10:36 AM   #6
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Default Re: Where would you build your colony?

I'm pessimistic of space being the answer, and I like the odds of life surviving in some shape or form regardless of what we do to earth. Bacteria is wonderful stuff.



So I'm going to bury my colony seed as deep in the earth as I possibly can. To ensure that no one finds it, I'll put it underneath something I'm pretty certain will be nuked early on: No one goes looking for survivors at ground zero.



The installation will be built as a seed, not as a colony. I'll store as many backups of AI's and Ghosts as I can, and as much genetic material I possibly can. I'll back up as much of the webs as I can.



Then I'll turn the entire thing off, and it will check on humanity every 10 years. 100 years after everyone dies, THEN we will emerge with our seed for humanity.
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Old 07-06-2018, 02:35 PM   #7
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And how do you turn this information back into people?

Wouldn't you need to also hide the machinery and raw materials needed to use the information to make new people?

As well as the data store you need the manufacturing machinery and resource gathering machinery and/or a store of resources.
"New people" were not specified.:)

A.I.s can be patient so all you need is the equipment to start the process. Then that equipment multiplies itself as necessary.
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Old 07-06-2018, 03:16 PM   #8
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Default Re: Where would you build your colony?

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"New people" were not specified.:)

A.I.s can be patient so all you need is the equipment to start the process. Then that equipment multiplies itself as necessary.
However, cloning tanks are cannon in THS (which is what this board deals in) so AIs can create people if it is necessary.
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Old 07-07-2018, 10:42 PM   #9
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Default Re: Where would you build your colony?

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Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
1) You believe that a truly massive war is brewing.
2) Create a colony/ark to preserve vast amounts of cultural, historical, technological, and scientific, information.
3) Preserve as much of humanity's heritage as possible.
4) Preserve a wide range of human genetic variability.
5) Extra credit, will you disguise the colony or just hide it?
The solution would be a combination of all of the previous solutions, and then some. Due to the indefinite magnitudes of 1, 3, and 4, you need to take the seed approach, so that many many copies of 3 and 4 can be made and scattered widely in order to survive 1.

Regarding 5, some seeds will need to be hidden indefinitely. Rather than "disguise" the seeds, you want to include a super-dense, deep time-proof storage unit with minifacturing capacity in *eveything* that might possibly hold one with plausible deniability so that even deliberate, targeted destruction of colony seeds would be impossibly resource-intensive, a task comparable to scouring the solar system of all manmade artifacts.

You'd need to provide for some group communication method so that most any subset of seeds can communicate with the least necessary exposure of vulnerable elements and to have sequestered bundles of materials and automation to bootstrap seeds into somewhat defensible habitats.

Cloud-Nines seem like an efficient choice, if you can make a bundle of them something like a dandelion that will approach a body with an atmosphere and bounce a few times before breaking into a zillion aerostatic structures that all show signs of inhabitation so that any remaining aggression has a miniscule chance of damaging a mature reconstruction of antebellum society.

You'll also need a crew of infomorphic engineers to oversee the work needed for a seed to germinate and mature into something meatbags would want to live in but that aren't prejudiced against meatbags and won't retaliate against the meatbags when they inevitably put meat concerns ahead of sapience concerns.

A similar crew of content providers would be useful to keep the enginers from getting bored and perhaps could keep the archives of 3 up-to-date from the time of seedlaunch to the time of total war under 1.
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Old 07-08-2018, 01:37 AM   #10
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Extra credit, will you disguise the colony or just hide it?
Why not both? "Oops! Our mission to the Oort had a truly massive failure. Either the AI we sent will fix their problem and report back the location and such, or we will write it off as a loss..."

Ideally, you send out multiple of such missions, so you can have them "fail" to find the lost mission.
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