[H-GEN] RepRapping in Brisbane!

[Robert Brockway]

On Fri, 28 Mar 2008, Arjen Lentz wrote:

> If I'm not mistaken, the current most successful animal life form is in 
> fact the insects. Think flies, ants and all the other crawlies and 
> buzzies.
>
> It depends a bit on how you define dominant - "numbers" of "intelligence" 
> (define that then ;-) or "affecting their environment". Even on the latter, 
> the insects could win. Relative to their size, they can have huge control 
> over their environment and actually do this wilfully.

Humans are invasive and widespread.  They are causing many other species 
to go extinct.  Their collective effect on the environment outweighs any 
single insect species (not insects as a whole, which constitude vast 
numbers of species).

> I wonder what the population containment would look like... and heck it

I've considered a few options, all of which are subject to failure:

- simple reduced production rate
- kill switch with a human finger on the button
- kill switch activated under certain predetermined conditions
- lifespan limiter (perhaps like a telomere)

> doesn't work for humans either, does it, either voluntary or by force (such 
> as the Chinese try to do with their one-child-per-family program).

Another discussion entirely but I postulate they never wanted it to be 
100% successful.  100% success would have been too damaging to their 
economy as many economists of the 70s noted.  They achieved partial 
success (especially in the cities) which I have now concluded was the plan 
all along.  The resultant gender disparity (as a result of the murder 
of baby girls) may have been unintended but I believe the problem wasn't 
as widespread as was once feared.

> Indiscriminate replication is self-destructive, and there too we have 
> ourselves as a shining example.

It's only self destructive is resources are constrained.  If the robots 
cannot leave Earth then it is ultimately self destructive (not that this 
will help the humans they ate before they hit their resource limit).

If they can leave Earth then they would simply continue expanding beyond 
it.  It may be that the first robots to act this way are asteroid mining 
robots so they would already be in an environment of effectively unlimited 
resources.

> So, what about those robots. If they're stupid, it'll sort itself out. If

Depends how fast they replicate.  If it is fast enough they may overwhelm 
the smarter humans before they can properly respond.  The robots will be 
subject to evolution too - so a "malfunction" which causes faster 
replication may result in the mutated robots outclassing their unmutated 
kin.

> they're not, perhaps they deserve to win if there's resource contention with 
> us. Or are we somehow fundamentally more worthy? Of course we're all a tad 
> biased in this respect ;-)

I've been careful to avoid calling us fundamentally more worthy :)  As a 
human I do however have a vested interest in the survival of humans :)

Cheers,

Rob

-- 
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine..."
 	-- RFC 1925 "The Twelve Networking Truths"