BIS: Extraterrestrial liberty and colonising the universe

In this talk at the British Interplanetary Society, Stuart Armstrong (from the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University) talks about extraterrestrial liberty: outrunning the law in the depth of space. Who would win, the pursuer or the pursued?

It depends on who moves first. In a more advanced human future, it would be comparatively "easy" to escape from centralised control by sending probes at the most distant galaxies at speeds that can never be caught. Conversely, it would be "easy" to prevent this by seeding the whole universe with police probes that will forestall any such escapes (six hours of the sun's energy are all that's required).

There results also have strong implications for the Fermi Paradox, since it would have been easy for alien civilizations in nearby galaxies to cross over to the Milky Way, and for the future fate of intelligent life through the cosmos.

Full paper at http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/up...

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