Again, the mental experiment we should perform now is not whether contemporary human scientists, such as we are, can perform these engineering feats but whether or not a human civilization that has expanded its intelligence by trillions of trillions will be able to do so. For now we can say that ultrahigh levels of intelligence will expand outward at the speed of light, while recognizing that our contemporary understanding of physics suggests that this may not be the actual limit of the speed of expansion or, even if the speed of light proves to be immutable, that this limit may not restrict
...more
