A Message for Vernor Vinge

Dear Dr. Vinge, Please tell us you are actively writing a sequel to "Children of the Sky".  "Fire Upon the Deep" was outstanding and it is in my top 5 all time list of science fiction books.  I know it took you 20 years to write the sequel to "Fire Upon the Deep".  I can wait 20 more years for the third book in the trilogy, but I hope it comes a lot sooner.

There are some great hints and foreshadowing throughout Children of the Sky.  I can't wait to read more about the Blight.

A few weeks ago I bought a hardcover edition of "Children of the Sky" in a grocery store for $4.95.  I felt like I was stealing.  I started reading it but after 4 pages decided that I first needed toread "Fire Upon the Deep" again (for the 4th time).

Sincerely,

Sean O'Brien

To anyone reading this: if you know Vernor Vinge could you forward him this link?

Geek's Guide to Self Publishing

I just finished listening to one of the best podcasts I've ever heard.  Episode 83 of Wired's Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. This episode dealt in depth on topics of self-publishing, with detailed information about the Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing.  Guests Hugh Howie and Tobias Buckell gave outstanding information and advice on self-publishing, including how to choose between indie and traditional publishing.

I give this my highest recommendation.  The only problem here is that most people will think this is only for science fiction writers.  But everything I heard makes this a fantastic reference for anyone considering self-publishing.

A Galaxy to Call My Own

My first short story in the Kindle Store is now available.  I would appreciate your support. A Galaxy to Call My Own

It's a Fermi Paradox story.  Doesn't resolve the Paradox or support it, it's just set in a universe with no other aliens....rather that's how the story starts.

Incidentally.  The story is set in NGC 6217, and that's the galaxy shown on the cover:

Barred spiral galaxy NGC 6217

 

The Efficient Berserker Hypothesis

There are multiple explanations for the Great Silence, also known as the Fermi Paradox. I'd like to explore the idea of the Berserker, a device constructed to destroy and prevent advanced species from expanding into interstellar space. I have coined the term "Efficient Berserker" to describe the constructs of one civilization whose Berserkers are so powerful and numerous that this single species is capable of policing the entire Milky Way Galaxy.  This ties in with the idea of Von Neumann and/or Bracewell probes.  The reason we haven't seen any of them yet is that they are quietly waiting for evidence that we have reached a key scientific milestone.  Then they will strike.

In the Efficient Berserker Hypothesis there is no need for multiple species to build the probes.  And there is no need for that species to survive the billions of years that their probes scour the Milky Way looking for targets.  Each probe can build a few more, enough to replace the aging and failing systems, but not enough to create a runaway growth scenario which so frightened Carl Sagan.

The Berserker Hypothesis explains one of the key problems with the Great Silence.  Why is it that not one single species has built Bracewell Probes to fill the Milky Way?  The answer is that they did, perhaps as many as 1000 different species.  Then the Efficient Berserkers hunted them down, destroyed the probes, and then sterilized the system to prevent construction of any more probes.

Every critical question of the Fermi Paradox can be resolved by assuming an Efficient Berserker in the Milky Way.  Whether it is radio or optical communication arrays, panspermia craft seeding the galaxy with life, Kardashev II civilizations, Matrioshka Brains, this theory can explain why we humans see no evidence of intelligent life.

If this theory is correct then the human race is on the verge of extinction.  One key event such as a neutrino communications array, dark matter energy beams, or maybe just colonization of an asteroid, any of these could lead to our extermination.

This theory can smoothly merge into the Quarantine Scenario, or the Prime Directive.  In either of these the Berserker is non-violent, but powerful.  It actively prevents species from moving out into the galaxy until we have reached a required level of maturity.  It may even intervene in an emergency to prevent us from exterminating ourselves.

 

Code 46 and viral driven behavior

Watched a mediocre scifi movie a few days ago, Code 46. Apart from some boring scenes setting the dreamlike mood, and some stupid sex scenes, there was one brilliant idea.

In this movie viruses have profound power over people.  A woman is given a virus which causes her revulsion when she is near a man whose genetics matches hers.

The idea that viruses modify human behavior would have been pure science fiction a few years ago, but that was before discoveries about a virus which causes rats to change their behavior such that they are more likely to be eaten by cats.

A hundred years from now will we have a long list of human behaviors which are primarly caused by viruses?

If we could purge all viruses from our bodies how many dysfunctional and destructive behaviors would vanish from our lives?

Sex will soon be replaced

Within 20 years we will have headsets which will deliver electromagnetic pulses directly to the pleasure centers of our brain.  The sensation will be many times more powerful and pleasurable than sex.  And instead of 10 to 20 minutes of pleasure each day we will have 10-12 hours of overwhelming pleasure every day. As soon as this is available many of our world's problems will go away, abortion rates will plummet as almost nobody will have sex unless they are specifically trying to make a child.  Sexually transmitted diseases and rape will be a thing of the past. Male aggression will almost vanish which will directly lead to lower crime rates.  Drug abuse will go away as the headsets take over.  Our society's addition to sex will fade.  And since we'll all have self-driving cars we can use them during commutes.

Larry Niven called them wireheads.  We'll see them everywhere, we will be them.

Update July 12, 2012   Article from The Week on electroneural stimulation.  We are closer than I thought.

What is the Singularity?

Many people scoff and have problems even understanding the Singularity.  With credit to Charlie Stross the singularity is defined as a specific 13 year period from 2047 through 2060.  Here is a chart of the computational speed of the fastest computer in the world, as measured in floating point operations per second.  You can see that today we have a computer rated at 8.16 petaflops. A human brain has the computational power of approximately 100 petaflops.  So even today the most powerful computer is an imbecile as compared with a human.  It will be 2016 before the fastest computer can claim to match the power of a human brain.  That is NOT the beginning of the singularity.

The population of this planet will soon peak out at 9 billion souls.   9 billion people have the computing power of about 10^27 flops (1000 yottaflops).  Does that sound like a lot?

According to this chart in the year 2047 the fasted computer in the world will have the capacity of 1% of all existing human brains.  13 years later the fastest computer in the world will be 100 times more powerful than all human brains combined.  This sudden transition of the dominant computing species on Earth is the Singularity.  That's it.  It's pretty easy.  It's going to happen unless we destroy our computer chip manufacturing infrastructure.

A more radical view is to use the top curve, the sum computer power of the 500 fastest computers in the world.  Next year this sum will match a human brain.  The singularity (the transition from 1% to 99%) will span the years 2042 to 2055.  A pessimistic view says that a human brain has more like 1000 petaflops, or even 10,000.  That just pushes the singularity out another 5-10 years.  It does not even remotely change this argument.

If you don't believe this will happen then you need to give a very good, very technical reason why this growth curve will stop.  It cannot just slow down, that only delays the transition a few years.  If you do not have a well defined technical reason for proving this computing growth curve will stop then you have no argument against the singularity.

We simply cannot know or predict the consequences when 1000 yottaflop intelligence is actively rewriting its own software and designing its own offspring, when exaflop and zettaflop constructs are free to think and create for themselves.  Anyone who says they know what will happen is simply wrong.  The real truth is that we really do not know, we cannot know.  How will we even communicate when less than 0.01% of the computing in our solar system is done by human brains?

And a final note.  These beings will grow 1000 times more powerful every 11 years.  Unless our population suddenly grows 1000x every 11 years then we cannot even conceive of keeping up.  By the 22nd century human brains will be an infinitesimal portion of the computing power of this solar system.  If you want to know what it might look like read Accelerando by Charlie Stross.  This might be the most important book ever written.

RIP Robert Bradbury

Robert Bradbury the person who introduced us to Matrioshka Brains has passed away.  Here's an eloquent memorium from George Dvorsky. I wonder if we will ever learn that there are billions of Matrioshka Brains in the Milky Way, most of them far from the galactic center.  We currently call them dark matter.

If I had my choice of where to live in the Milky Way I would want to be as far as possible from the monster black hole at its center.

Alien Microbes

Richard Hoover of NASA claims to have found alien microbes inside of a meteorite (right side,  left side is a real terrestrial bacterium).

I predict 2 types of responses:  pathological rejection and people who equate this with sentient space faring beings.

Frankly I think panspermia is the only theory of evolution which makes much sense.  Integrate evolution over 10 billion planets and 10 billion years and you get believable statistics.

Realistic Time Travel

In the quantum mechanics or statistical mechanics sense a forbidden event is never completely impossible.  Rather it is extremely improbable based upon some symmetry, entropy, or energy constraint.  I propose that in most situations time travel into the past is extremely improbable. Theorem:   Time travel into the past has an exponentially increasing improbability as changes to the timeline become observable.

Corollary 1:  Time travel into the past is allowed if and only if it does not disrupt the timeline.

Corollary 2:  The butterfly effect is included in timeline disruptions.

Corollary 3:  The butterfly effect does not apply below the level of Heisenberg uncertainty.

Sending a human backwards in time to Earth would create a sudden pressure wave as the air (or water) at that location is displaced.  The butterfly effect implies this will always be a forbidden transition.

But a human could be sent to a height where the air pressure is essentially zero then gradually move downward.  However it is unlikely that a human could move around and do anything useful without causing sufficient changes to prevent the trip in the first place.

Sending a tiny robot back in time is much more likely to result in no disruptions to the timeline, especially if that robot does little more than float around on air currents and observe.

A time machine will attempt to send a tiny robot back in time hundreds or millions of times per second.  Attempt after attempt is rejected by the timeline, but there is a statistical chance of success.  After millions or trillions of attempts a delivery vector is found resulting in an identical timeline and the robot is successfully transferred.

Would insertion of a tiny robot into a hurricane result in any changes to the timeline?  The minute changes to the air currents at the arrival point could be quickly washed out by the extreme winds in a hurricane.  Perhaps the target location with the highest chance of success is the Atlantic ocean during hurricane season.

And how would that robot return to our time?  The same way rocks travel forward in time.  The robot would find a quiet place and sit there until it is found.  It doesn't even need power for that part of its mission.  Success only requires non-volatile memory and perhaps a long lived radioisotope to make it easier to find under the detritus of the centuries.

This might mean that a careful search would reveal some of these robots sitting around important places like Jerusalem or Dealey Plaza.  But if we found one and decoded the stored media that would change the timeline and wouldn't the trip have been forbidden in the first place?