Against the Empire
Abstract
It is argued that the "generic" evolutionary pathway of advanced technological civilizations are more likely to be optimization-driven than expansion-driven, in contrast to the prevailing opinions and attitudes in both future studies on one side and astrobiology/SETI studies on the other. Two toy-models of postbiological evolution of advanced technological civilizations are considered and several arguments supporting the optimization-driven, spatially compact model are briefly discussed. In addition, it is pointed out that there is a subtle contradiction in most of the tech-optimist and transhumanist accounts of future human/alien civilizations' motivations in its postbiological stages. This may have important ramifications for both practical SETI projects and the future (of humanity) studies.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0805.1821,
title = {Against the Empire},
author = {Milan M. Cirkovic},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0805.1821},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
17 pages, no figures, accepted in JBIS