Bandwidth Explains Fermi's Paradox

"We uploaded via the router," Amber says, and looks confused for a moment. "There's a network on the other side of it. We were told it was FTL, instantaneous, but I'm not so sure now. I think it's something more complicated, like a lightspeed network, parts of which are threaded through wormholes that make it look FTL from our perspective. Anyway, Matrioshka brains, the end product of a technological singularity – they're bandwidth-limited. Sooner or later the posthuman descendants evolve E...

 Imagination Builds On Our Experiences

...you can’t have a storage space that is filled to the brim with boxes. How would you ever come inside? Where would you pull out the boxes to find what you need? How would you even see what boxes were available and where they might be found? You need space. You need light. You need to be able to access your attic’s contents, to walk inside and look around and see what is what. And within that space, there is freedom. You can temporarily place there all of the observations you’ve gathe...

 You Can Choose Your Memories

In the earliest days of research, memory was thought to be populated with socalled engrams, memory traces that were localized in specific parts of the brain. To locate one such engram—for the memory of a maze—psychologist Karl Lashley taught rats to run through a labyrinth. He then cut out various parts of their brain tissue and put them right back into the maze. Though the rats’ motor function declined and some had to hobble or crawl their way woozily through the twists and turns, the ...