Me in 2018: Spaceship Earth is the truth is a narrative of a courageous crew risking a lot to discover an odd new territory. However the area we discover is extra cultural than bodily. … The economic period … moved us into new uncharted cultural territory. … resulted in giant and speedy adjustments to our tradition and social group. … usually entangled with externalities, coordination failures, and different causes to doubt their internet worth. So humanity continues to enterprise out into new untried and dangerous cultural areas, through adjustments to cultural circumstances with which we don’t have a lot expertise, and which thus threat catastrophe and destruction. The nice crew of Spaceship Earth ought to fastidiously weigh these dangers when contemplating the place and how briskly to enterprise. (Extra)
Me in 2023: area of dimension D=1024, plus one time dimension. … have virtually no interiors; they’re virtually all floor … atoms couple rather more strongly to photons … most atom bonding comes from practically proper angle covalent bonds. Which in the event that they kind through random accretion creates molecules within the form of spatial random walks. … Inflexible buildings require brief loops within the community of bonds, and for prime D these appear unlikely to kind on account of random conferences of atoms … molecular bond loops are sometimes fairly lengthy. … enable quite a lot of wiggling and reshaping alongside brief stretches, and solely resist deformations solely on comparatively giant scales. … on the smallest scales pure objects ought to be liquids, not solids nor metals. … connectivity ought to be international … [Not clear] tips on how to assemble non-crazy-huge machines and sign processing gadgets …
Its density falls in [cosmological] time very similar to it does in low D, however its distances enhance way more slowly. … laborious to see something very far. … laborious to have a complete view of every little thing in all instructions, and likewise very laborious to see very far in anybody route, even in the event you focus your whole consideration there. … practically inconceivable for the goal to see such a missile coming or to dam its arrival. However any prolonged object in all probability doesn’t know very nicely the places or orientations of its many components, neither is it even nicely knowledgeable about a lot of the different objects which it straight touches. … Civilizations also needs to be capable of broaden in area at a really speedy t^(D-1) pace. … solely engaging forces are of a lot use. (Extra)
I’ve struggled to get individuals see extra clearly the problems and dangers of humanity dwelling in and exploring an unlimited excessive dimensional area of attainable cultures. However I simply realized that these points may be just like these of creatures foraging in high-dimensional bodily areas. So on this submit I’ll return to my prior evaluation of high-D life, and retreat a bit from a few of my prior assumptions, to focus extra on tips on how to forage there.
So, think about a excessive dimensional (D in 10 to 1000) universe the place a low density materials is made out of ball-and-stick-type atoms related into in twisty floppy low-dimensional-link networks, networks that are largely related on international scales. I received’t say how precisely these atoms work, however they bond to one another and work together with gentle and gravity a lot as do our atoms.
Despite the fact that it appears fairly laborious to create machines out of such supplies, I assume that in such an unlimited universe pure choice ultimately finds a approach. And so creatures, and even packs of them, fabricated from such materials forage in it for “meals” that offers them negentropy to drive their engines, and materials to make their our bodies. (Perhaps “meals” is atoms that may add extra covalent bonds if fastidiously twisted to be extra compact.)
I assume the fabric of this universe, formed into these floppy networks, has a fancy hard-to-predict fractal geography, as does the meals inside it. As meals as soon as eaten takes a very long time to refresh (if ever), creatures can’t get sufficient meals by staying in a single place, and so should regularly seek for meals.
Due to the low density, excessive dimension, and unpredictability of movement, such creatures can’t use gentle to usefully see a lot moreover the fabric they’re at, or to speak throughout materials gaps. However they will talk over modest distances through sound within the materials, and may gather and share maps of the topology of the fabric connections between the locations they’ve been.
Creatures who simply randomly journey this community looking for meals, backtracking once they attain dead-ends, face excessive dangers of operating out of meals and dying. A greater technique is to make use of the truth that the excessive dimensionality permits ropes connecting creatures to be fairly brief and low-cost, even once they cross monumental volumes of area and materials. So creatures who can’t discover native meals can use these brief ropes to maneuver to the place meals is plentiful. And creatures who’re close to plentiful meals, however fear that it’d run out, will pay others to scout elsewhere for brand new meals bonanzas.
Thus when bodily looking out a excessive dimensional area for uncommon hiding meals, there are large scale and coordination beneficial properties from accumulating a community of ropes that join creatures, permitting newly discovered meals alternatives to be shared by all.
Now let’s make an analogy to a species or civilization exploring a excessive dimensional area of attainable cultures. Such a civilization can achieve by having numerous subcultures that discover very completely different components of the overall area, but can speak to one another. Members can change to extra profitable subcultures as these are recognized. Probably the most profitable subcultures may subsidize some to discover the remainder of tradition area.
If conformity pressures as a substitute induce members to all be part of one dominant subculture, which will come at an excellent price to future adaptiveness, even when all of them initially joined probably the most adaptive out there subculture. And that appears to be taking place in our world as we speak. A world monoculture is pulling in a lot of the world, slowing exploration of the remainder of tradition area. And so when our important tradition extra clearly drifts into maladaption, there received’t be many good choices then for members to change to.
