Common objections to this narrative are that there won’t be enough compute, or data, for this to happen. These don’t hold water after a cursory examination of our situation. We are nowhere near close to the physical limits to computation (the theoretical limit set by physics is, to a first approximation, as many orders of magnitude above current infrastructure as current infrastructure is above the babbage engine).
And we are nowhere, nowhere, nowhere, nowhere near being able to even begin approaching them. We’re closer to nanotech. We’re closer to dyson spheres. I can’t emphasize this enough. It’s like an iron-age armorsmith worrying about the physical limits of tensile strength.
Hardware overhang is a legitimate concern but you hurt your argument quite badly by mixing it with this stuff. In the whole history of the universe no one will ever be hit in the head with an entire ringworld. It’s steel you have to worry about.
Noted. It’s the sentence after that (below) that is the more important one, so perhaps that should go first (and the rest as a footnote [Edit: I’ve now made these changes to OP]).
And we are nowhere, nowhere, nowhere, nowhere near being able to even begin approaching them. We’re closer to nanotech. We’re closer to dyson spheres. I can’t emphasize this enough. It’s like an iron-age armorsmith worrying about the physical limits of tensile strength.
Hardware overhang is a legitimate concern but you hurt your argument quite badly by mixing it with this stuff. In the whole history of the universe no one will ever be hit in the head with an entire ringworld. It’s steel you have to worry about.
Noted. It’s the sentence after that (below) that is the more important one, so perhaps that should go first (and the rest as a footnote [Edit: I’ve now made these changes to OP]).