
May 14th, 2003, 03:08 PM
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Join Date: May 2003
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Re: "Real" ringworlds
Quote:
Every single living organism on this planet .... wants to do only one thing: Find and fix problems.
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Thats not stricly true. There is no concious disire to "fix problems". Its simply that those that do not "fix problems" die. Conside a group of foxes and a group of rabits. The foxes chase the rabits, the slow rabits are caught and die, so the remaining rabits are the only ones that can breed and the next generateion are on average faster. The slow foxes don't catch any rabits and die of starvation. Therefore only the fastest foxes breed and the next generatin is also, on average, faster than the previous one. This kills the slower of the new rabits, which get faster, and then starve the slower foxes, which get faster,..... and so on ad infinitum. Until you get light speed rabitts
We have ears because long ago things with ears did better than things without ears. Then things with relatively good ears did better than things with relatively bad ears. etc
Its a great debate whether this applies to emivromentaly mannipulative organisms (humans) because there nothing to compare us with. As a species, nothing hunts us, we dont have to struggle for food, we change our eviroment to suit us rahter than us changing to suit our enviroment, virtually everyone has children.
The question is, given everything else is equal, will a group that builds a ringworld do better than a group that doesn't build a ringworld. But how do you measure better?
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When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side facing down. I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat. The two will hover, spinning inches above the ground. With a giant buttered cat array, I could conquer the world.
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