Geeks seem to have this funny blindspot when it comes to premature optimization if the premature optimization is something that would make for a good sci-fi novel.
Your somewhat glib response reminds me this:
But I should remember, Krauss said, that the long run is a very long time. He told me about a meeting he attended at the Vatican a few years back on the future of the universe: "There were about 15 people, theologians, a few cosmologists, some biologists. The idea was to find common ground, but after three days it was clear that we had nothing to say to one another. When theologians talk about the 'long term,' raising questions about resurrection and such, they're really thinking about the short term. We weren't even on the same plane. When you talk about 10^50 years, the theologians' eyes glaze over.
If you would want to experience another world, you wouldn't want to have your sensors/effectors too far away from your brain. And it doesn't matter if you would be flesh or silicon.
Even planets in our solar system are already too far for remote interaction.
It does matter. It is cheaper to send 100 lbs of computer+powersupply, than to send 10,000 lbs of human+lifesupport.
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you wouldn't want to have your sensors far away from your effectors.
If you existed in silico, why would your sensors need to be far away from your effectors?
Edit: Sorry, I corrected my older comment, it was supposed to say "sensors and effectors far away from brain".
You cannot effectively "be present" [1] at the remote world if your perceive-think-act loop would be spread over large distance.
So even if you would be in silico, you would still need to transfer your actual hardware, not just dumb robots.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presence_%28telepresence%29
If, as I originally posited, humans were to evolve into in silico entities, then human beings (= naked apes) would not exist, would they (other than, perhaps, as specimens on display in zoos)?
Geeks seem to have this funny blindspot when it comes to premature optimization if the premature optimization makes for an interesting problem.
Even if the death of the sun is not imminent, it's still an amusing scenario to toss around.
Whatever is around in six billion years is going to be as different from us as we are from bacteria.
Just because web source code looked a lot different fifteen years ago doesn't mean it'll change considerably fifteen years from now. Mutation can be beneficial, but it can also carry the unfortunate cost of breaking compatibility.
No. [edit: Upon further reflection, I may have misunderstood you. If you simply mean that humans and bacteria have a lot of DNA in common, then I of course agree.]
> there is the possibility that we're already nearly evolutionarily optimal for this universe.
So you think humans are the general solution for the global^Wuniversal optimization problem? Unlikely. Even if we assume that humanity is somehow optimal right now, will this be true in even 100,000 years? A global temperature change of a few degrees or a change in the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere could render us utterly non-optimal.
By way of example, consider that 500 million years ago there was considerably more oxygen in the atmosphere than now. This meant that insects could grow much larger than they are today withought needing to invest resources in lungs to support their body mass (insects lack specialized circulatory organs, generally). But fast forward today and giant insects are a manifestly suboptimal solution. I'm personnally grateful.
I was referring to this: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-humans-...
> So you think humans are the general solution for the global^Wuniversal optimization problem?
It's not that we're physically optimal, but that we're good enough to be able to manipulate heat to an extent that makes metallurgy possible, which allows us to non-trivially optimize our environment to ourselves.
1. We do ourselves in
2. We get hit by a giant asteroid