Long-term strategy for the Solar System

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by mindstalk

"best and the brightest": how would you classify modern astronauts?

Pretty bright, and very physically capable, but not the best intellectually. The "best" are the ones who design the rockets and space station parts, and figure out how to teach the astronauts to use it all. In other words, many of the "best and brightest" live less than an hour from downtown Denver, and work at the Lockheed Martin facility in Waterton Canyon, about 20 minutes away from me.

Originally Posted by mindstalk

If it's just a matter of economics, you're right. But it's not. There's a romantic cachet about space that just doesn't apply to, say, Mongolia or South Georgia Island or even Alaska. It's true that the best and the brightest won't be emigrating en masse, drawn by the thrills of the wilderness -- and that has been a common SF meme, probably part of "fans are slans" and contempt for the "teeming masses" of Earth. OTOH, I don't think it's fair to say that spacers will just be second tier minds.

There's nothing "just" about being a second-tier mind. Or even a third-tier mind. Above average is above average. The issue was, "the best of the best." The best of the best stay where they receive maximum rewards for being the best, and the intellectual environment needed to remain the best.

Originally Posted by mindstalk

For one thing, something that the brightest often value more than mere money is a challenge; the problem-solving of "space is hard" can in fact be a draw.

You also have to think about diversity and marginal analysis. The population levels in THS space are still pretty small; factors that tell us what 40% of the population will or won't do aren't the factors that tell us what 0.1% of the population will do. People tend to move to cities, but some people move away, to try self-sufficient or close-to-wilderness lifestyles. The first fact is relevant for big migrations, the second is relevant for telling us whether anyone will be there, though it has to be teamed up with whether they can afford to move away, or get someone to pay for them.

Oh, I have no doubt that you'd see some really bright contrarians head for space. I also don't think that, even if they started out as "the best of the best" (which I consider highly doubtful), they'd remain that way for long. They couldn't compete with those who remain on Earth, at the center of art and science.

The "best of the best" are smart enough to realize that, which is why they'd leave colonization of Mars to others.

[SuperGamera]

Once the beanstalk is complete, the cost to bring people into space will drop, making more "marginal" colonists economically attractive for colony growth. There may be conflicts between the "original" colonists and the "beanstalkers".

Of course, I watched Blade Runner last night, so "Have a Better Life in the Off-World Colonies" is running through my head today.

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by SuperGamera

Once the beanstalk is complete, the cost to bring people into space will drop, making more "marginal" colonists economically attractive for colony growth. There may be conflicts between the "original" colonists and the "beanstalkers".

Of course, I watched Blade Runner last night, so "Have a Better Life in the Off-World Colonies" is running through my head today.

My own feeling is that the long-term gov't planning in THS is pretty much tied to certain social and economic issues that can be summarized as follows:

(a) Helium-3 and energy.
- by 2150 the system's energy consumption will have more than tripled
- Lunar He3 will be exhausted c. 2125.
- Barring a major change in standard of living, gas giant He3 will be the primary energy source powering Earth

(b) SAIs and Ghosts
- Also by c.2125 it should be generally cheaper (it already almost is) to make an original SAI including hardware than to educate human being.
- while it's not cheap to make an original ghost and xoxing of sais remains illegal in many areas, it's only constrained by (i) fairly artificial laws against this. This is a *highly* unstable situation as is likely to have about the same effect as prohibition against drugs, i.e., very little, because there is a strong incentive for state, individual or corporate actors to violate the taboo to improve productivity since all you need is relatively cheap storage media and hardware
- Either way, the population of SAIs and ghosts are set to vastly explode.
- This also makes a mockery of conventional GNP calculations, since the fully xoxable sapient work force can potential expand at mass production rates rather than being limited by the traditional 20+ years of eduction
- The primary constraint then becomes the cost of the standard $50,000 mainframe ... and certainl by 2125 (the TL shift "starting" at 2101...) a Complexity increase jump of +1 (at minimum) will have occurred and reduced that baseline cost to $10,000 (assuming you xox, ie., don't pay for software.

(c) Pop increase and General space resources
- the increased GNP of significantly - probably by a factor of 10 - increasing the effective GNP of Fifth Wave nations over a 2100-2150 period due to a roughly 10-fold (at least, possibly more; depends on whether you're buying the software or copying it) increase in the laboring population will have odd ripple effects partly depending on whether the labor force is free or not.
- especially where the SAIs are free (but even if they aren't) they become consumers as well as laborers (just like your own computer wants more software and toys... now imagine it talking to you explaining why it needs them to be more productive and earn more for you...) .
- there's no real reason to believe that SAIs who are fully sapient would be happy to just stay in the virtual realm. Your AI wants a nice car shell it can drive too... pets... more hardware... secure backup systems in lunar rifts.
- so the economy is kind of exploding. Earth, however, lacks the "room" for this - more in a social then a resource sense - there's too many regulations, etc. to vastly increase industry to support a 10-fold sapient consumer population increase
- so that means doing more stuff in space. Hence, the EU space elevator and vastly increased competition for access to the rich near-earth asteroids.
- SAIs and ghosts have every reason to settle space - lots of energy, good resources, and less job competition with humans and annoying environmental regs.
- so, massive cleanup of the L4/L5 area as the EU gradually moves to clear out the freaks and geeks and gentrify, and massive expansion of NEA settlement area.
- possible minor - major development of the Venus area, mostly because it's in a good orbital location for low energy shipping with the belt-mercury-L5 setup and it's nice to have a planet no one cares much about for certain industrial processes
- (also around 2150 it will start becoming economically desirable to mine the asteroid belt for raw materials.)

(d) Space elevator.
- cheap to emigrate to space if you're a human, but mostly useful for bringing stuff DOWN from the vastly expanded orbital L4/L5 manufacturing infrastructure (a lot of the orbital material is moved to avoid getting in the way of the elevator) to the still huge Earth population
- space elevator itself spawns huge increase in L4/L5 (it's out of the way of the elevator but near enough that's shipping is cheap)
- importance of protecting the space elevator will further increase EU presence in high orbital space.
- alteration of Earth's moon from a He3 resource economy to a manufacturing/R&D economy

(e) Superhuman intelligence
Examination of the SAI development curve suggests that by 2120-2130 they should be up to c. SAI-13 with baseline IQ+5. This is by no means godlike, but is certainly significant and given actual IQ may be higher than the racial base, means a fair number of IQ 18-20 AIs may be at least theoretically around unless artificially constrained from getting that smart.

(f) continued tension between humans and not-humans, mitigated by a big blurring of the line as not-humans live in humans heads, are owned by humans, are based on them, and engage in social relationships with them.

(g) China faced with huge social stresses as it struggles over how best to integrate from 4th to 5th wave while facing the threat of losing its primacy to the SAI-powered EU (and US etc.) that has now reached (original GURPS) TL11. Romantics and those wanting a good space war may wish to postulate a Robert Heinlein situation in which social controls are tightened but the colonials on Mars and forward-thinking corporates (and AIs/bioroids/etc.) declare independence along with part of the Plan SF leading to a China vs. China struggle...

(h) Continued drops in the cost of making nanoviruses, SAI robots, proteus viruses, new forms of bioengineered wild life, microbot swarms, etc. plus a continued balkanized earth lead to ever-increasing risk of major catastrophe when fifth wave bio/nano hacking is performed in areas under 3rd wave governments or failed states. Something like the Doolittle plague or a von neumann event or whatever is easily countered if it erupts in Beijing or Paris but is rather less easily handled if it occurs in a backwater 3rd or 2nd wave area and has time to spread. None of this is likely to cause a significant threat to civilization but it could make a godawful mess and lead to more calls to make sure all these baseline humans and/or wild life get properly upgraded with appropriate immune systems and that already ubiquitous surveillance systems spread through the rest of earth. Which in turn encourages people and governments who would rather not live in such a situation to go elsewhere, with the space elevator at least providing a relatively cheap ticket off and the Main Belt probably the best place to stay out of people's way (as it is likely not gentrified until the 2150+ period). This will not be a huge movement, but could easily expand the population by of that area by a significant factor.

(i) New technology. Tech is not going to stop moving and any government is going to plan for this (and have R&D).
- The emergent tech on p. 152 of THS should have emerged or be closer to doing so, though true nanofacs of the Drexler sort may still be "on the horizon". In particular metamorphosis and neurviruses give those with meat bodies or bioshells some more ways to live.
- By 2150, the next generation of fusion drives will available (equivalent to the TL10 drives in GURPS Spaceships) should be around. The main effect is that fusion rockets will be about as efficient as fusion pulse drives, reducing the cost of deep space flight and the military can roughly double or triple their Isp.

- also, high impulse drives with c. Isp 150,000 (but low acceleration) should be available which will make outer-system exploration and travel a bit handier.

[JAW]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Oh, I have no doubt that you'd see some really bright contrarians head for space. I also don't think that, even if they started out as "the best of the best" (which I consider highly doubtful), they'd remain that way for long. They couldn't compete with those who remain on Earth, at the center of art and science.

The "best of the best" are smart enough to realize that, which is why they'd leave colonization of Mars to others.

Well - even if telecommuting to mars is would not be exactly real time they'd still could easily have the copy of earth internet - and all other published media - there within minutes of publications. So I dont think being on Mars (or wherever) would be that big of a disadvantage.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

(b) SAIs and Ghosts
- Also by c.2125 it should be generally cheaper (it already almost is) to make an original SAI including hardware than to educate human being.
- while it's not cheap to make an original ghost and xoxing of sais remains illegal in many areas, it's only constrained by (i) fairly artificial laws against this. This is a *highly* unstable situation as is likely to have about the same effect as prohibition against drugs, i.e., very little, because there is a strong incentive for state, individual or corporate actors to violate the taboo to improve productivity since all you need is relatively cheap storage media and hardware
- Either way, the population of SAIs and ghosts are set to vastly explode.
- This also makes a mockery of conventional GNP calculations, since the fully xoxable sapient work force can potential expand at mass production rates rather than being limited by the traditional 20+ years of eduction
- The primary constraint then becomes the cost of the standard $50,000 mainframe ... and certainl by 2125 (the TL shift "starting" at 2101...) a Complexity increase jump of +1 (at minimum) will have occurred and reduced that baseline cost to $10,000 (assuming you xox, ie., don't pay for software.

You know, to me this sounds like the TSA will have the most strongly expanding SAI population on Earth, since they have the fewest scruples about xoxing servitor SAIs when they need them.

At least until one of the TSA nations screws up and the SAIs end up being in charge. After all, just because you copy them it doesn't mean you understand them, and if some place suddenly ends up with a few thousand supposedly loyal SAIs who end up following their own agendas, things are bound to get... interesting.

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

there's no real reason to believe that SAIs who are fully sapient would be happy to just stay in the virtual realm. Your AI wants a nice car shell it can drive too... pets... more hardware... secure backup systems in lunar rifts.

Computer hardware I can believe, but I’m not so convinced about the rest, I can see a meme “Artificial isn’t as good as real” but I think Artificial intelligences might be somewhat resistant to it. What makes reality such a cool place? You only have a single un-reprogrammable physics engine? Why drive when you can travel at the speed of light? Why doesn’t weblife make for equally good pets? It might even be Ssssslllllooooowwwww*, if you spend too long there, you won’t be able to keep up with all the cool culture coming from those AI who run themselves 10 to 100 times faster than conventional time.


*Depending on whether or not you accept the idea the programmes can be run at higher complexity at 10X the speed per +1 jump.

[mindstalk]

Speed of light travel by infomorphs requires trusting the Net and recipient servers.

Depending on assumptions, reality may well be more detailed than virtuality for the indefinite future. Informorphs can easily acquire new senses, which makes detailed simulation *harder*.

Whether AIs actually will be able to run much faster than humans, and what the power costs of shuffling bits back and forth faster and faster might be, is another assumptions thing. One can argue for 10x the computation, 100x the power requirements.