Post-Scarcity Economics

[IntLibber]

Until about 1700, and despite the writings of Copernicus, the overwhelming majority of astronomers still believed that the earth was at the centre of the universe.

And your point being?

Aristarchus of Samos (third century BC, quoted by Archimedes) had already proposed a Heliocentric model and attempted to measure the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

The fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 brought a flood of Greek scholars, with their collections of ancient manuscripts, to Italian city states eager to turn new knowledge into profit. But our modern journey to equal and then surpass the Greeks would not be complete until two and a half centuries later.

Aristarchus may have proposed it, but it was not accepted. Instead they adopted the Earth centered model that was endorsed by Aristotle and Ptolemy.

The thing I never quite got was why the Catholic church would treat Aristotle's opinion as Catholic fact when he vastly predated Jesus and thus was a pagan, versus good christian astronomers like Copernicus and Galileo. Furthermore, I have always wondered why, when christian ideology put hell beneath us, i.e. at the center of the earth, would the catholics make Hell the center and thus most important place in the universe...

[IntLibber]

Time will be the main scarce commodity when labor and energy are essentially unlimited.

Depends on status of immortality:) It would be definitely nice to have a little bit more time to finish all projects I ever wanted to start...

Time scarcity is partly a matter of "nowness." All those projects you want to do, you can't do them all at once. The list is not static, so while you take the time to do one project, you gain other interests and add other projects to the list. Some projects may never make it to the front of the list. In the meantime, someone else will do a similar project before you, so they get the kudos, not you. This will apply to individuals and corporations.

Theres a lot more to it than that. For instance, lets say you need to disassemble an asteroid with nanotech to get at the resources. Normal exponential growth of the replicators gives you a relatively short period of time but that number is false because it counts on all the replicators replicating constantly, when in fact the only replicators that will replicate will be those at or near the edge of the goo where they can get at disassembled raw resources with which to build offspring with. Thus instead of growing based on a cubic volume of replicators, it is growing merely based on a square exponent as the surface area expands.

The larger the body you need to disassemble, the more things will slow down as the disassembly goo body expands. In order to accelerate disassembly the nanites will need to expend time and energy travelling to spread out, etc. Once disassembly is complete you then need the replicators to disassemble themselves.

[djolds1]

Aristarchus may have proposed it, but it was not accepted. Instead they adopted the Earth centered model that was endorsed by Aristotle and Ptolemy.

I do wonder (and worry) what deep insights will be overlooked or ignored when a GUT is finally declared "correct."

The thing I never quite got was why the Catholic church would treat Aristotle's opinion as Catholic fact when he vastly predated Jesus and thus was a pagan, versus good christian astronomers like Copernicus and Galileo. Furthermore, I have always wondered why, when christian ideology put hell beneath us, i.e. at the center of the earth, would the catholics make Hell the center and thus most important place in the universe...

The theology of Aquinas et al is strongly based on Aristotelian logic, and Aristotle's system is of the "one brick" variety - pull out one brick and the whole edifice collapses. You don't attack thousand year old established and stress-tested systems of belief easily.

[TallDave]

The thing I never quite got was why the Catholic church would treat Aristotle's opinion as Catholic fact when he vastly predated Jesus and thus was a pagan, versus good christian astronomers like Copernicus and Galileo.

Once the Church endorses it, it must be God's truth. If the Church was wrong to endorse it... well, that opens a very unpleasant can of worms.

This kind of thinking is what destroyed the Islamic empire. They went from the most educated and enlightened civlization on Earth to a shabby cultural backwater sitting on some oil because they gave up reason and relied on dogma.

It's funny, if not for the Sack of Baghdad the last 900 years might have been a lot different. The Abbasids there were pretty liberal.

[TallDave]

Theres a lot more to it than that. For instance, lets say you need to disassemble an asteroid with nanotech to get at the resources. Normal exponential growth of the replicators gives you a relatively short period of time but that number is false because it counts on all the replicators replicating constantly, when in fact the only replicators that will replicate will be those at or near the edge of the goo where they can get at disassembled raw resources with which to build offspring with. Thus instead of growing based on a cubic volume of replicators, it is growing merely based on a square exponent as the surface area expands.

That's an interesting point.

When I said time was the last scarce commodity, I was originally thinking of big projects like terraforming Mars and Venus, or building Dyson rings/spheres. The amount of overall energy required must increase very quickly as you reduce the desired time-to-completion, and even if your energy source is more or less inexhaustible you still can't push the time required below certain minimum values.

[djolds1]

Once the Church endorses it, it must be God's truth. If the Church was wrong to endorse it... well, that opens a very unpleasant can of worms.

This kind of thinking is what destroyed the Islamic empire. They went from the most educated and enlightened civlization on Earth to a shabby cultural backwater sitting on some oil because they gave up reason and relied on dogma.

Not quite. In crude terms, Catholic theology holds that when observations of nature and scripture conflict, scripture (or rather, current interpretations of scripture) are wrong. Its a religious dogma well structured to support the development of systematic science. al-Ghazali's dogma by contrast is not so structured.

[TallDave]

Isn't that more of a modern Catholic view?

But I agree in principle, I have heard Muslims complain about how ridiculous it is that modern discoveries have to be attributed to something the Prophet said before they can be accepted.

[IntLibber]

Theres a lot more to it than that. For instance, lets say you need to disassemble an asteroid with nanotech to get at the resources. Normal exponential growth of the replicators gives you a relatively short period of time but that number is false because it counts on all the replicators replicating constantly, when in fact the only replicators that will replicate will be those at or near the edge of the goo where they can get at disassembled raw resources with which to build offspring with. Thus instead of growing based on a cubic volume of replicators, it is growing merely based on a square exponent as the surface area expands.

That's an interesting point.

When I said time was the last scarce commodity, I was originally thinking of big projects like terraforming Mars and Venus, or building Dyson rings/spheres. The amount of overall energy required must increase very quickly as you reduce the desired time-to-completion, and even if your energy source is more or less inexhaustible you still can't push the time required below certain minimum values.

Right. Theres further limits. See, as we advance into the singularity, the demand for computational resources will continue to grow exponentially (hence why nanites would be needed to disassemble asteroids, to build orbiting computronium infrastructure). Eventually, the posthuman society will seek to disassemble the terrestrial planets. Mercury first, since its got the closest access to solar power, then Mars cause its a shallower gravity well than Venus, then Venus, then Earth. Google "Matrioskha Brain". Its a solar system where the plane of the ecliptic is a series of rings of computronium which are powered by waste photons emitted by the next ring inward, and which dumps waste heat to the next ring outward, with the rings all nested like a Matrioskha doll.

Now, disassembling the planets is more than getting eaten up by grey goo. At a certain depth, the magma will be too hot for nanites to deal with, even when made of diamond. The heat will swamp out the optical computers of the nanites with noise.

Mass disassembled on planetary surfaces needs to be moved into orbit, so a lot of energy needs to go into accellerating that mass to orbital and escape velocities to get into solar orbit. As the mass of the planet is reduced, this energy requirement drops, obviously, but it still delays the disassembly significantly, as does the need to cool the mantle and core of the planets. Geothermal energy will be utilized to power space elevators to move that mass into space.

Eventually the posthuman society will seek to disassemble the jovian planets. Getting all that mass out of those extremely deep gravity wells will take a LOT of energy and a LOT of time. over 200 years alone for Jupiter at maximum speed.

The singularity is not going to finish quickly.