Because if you don't, someone who does is going to invade for energy and resources. Therefore, refusing to expand is a slow form of suicide, unless you can be somehow certain there's no entity like that in the potentially accessible space.
At some point growth in any star system is going to be finished - energy extraction near maximum, no free matter left to convert into computronium. After that, only two solutions remain: stagnation (death) or expansion. Assuming no instant communication (not just FTL - instant), the bandwidth argument only means it makes more sense to haul energy and computronium from the rest of the accessible space into one point.
We may very well already see it somewhere far away, thinking it's "natural" rather than a construct.
I think under current knowledge the most likely prediction is something resembling a sphere (minimizing distances between points) that utilizes black hole power plants, feeding them matter from stars and nebulae.
From the outside, it would look like a giant void with nothing in the center. Maybe there's something like that in the center of the Boötes void?
>but there's no reason to believe that equities are fundamentally untethered from their inherent value in perpetuity.
Yes, but human lives are finite. Of course the current market is mostly a ponzi, but what if it lasts yet another decade? That's a major fraction of anyone's lifespan.
Fundamentally the ponzi started to collapse in 2007/2008, but it was bailed out by the government. Increasingly it looks like the only way the ponzi can actually collapse is by dollar inflating, everyone getting poorer and ponzi games collapsing in real terms, but not nominal terms.
Unfortunately, probably the best thing to do in the meantime is to try to win at ponzi games and try to leave others with bags.
Because if you don't, someone who does is going to invade for energy and resources. Therefore, refusing to expand is a slow form of suicide, unless you can be somehow certain there's no entity like that in the potentially accessible space.
At some point growth in any star system is going to be finished - energy extraction near maximum, no free matter left to convert into computronium. After that, only two solutions remain: stagnation (death) or expansion. Assuming no instant communication (not just FTL - instant), the bandwidth argument only means it makes more sense to haul energy and computronium from the rest of the accessible space into one point.
We may very well already see it somewhere far away, thinking it's "natural" rather than a construct. I think under current knowledge the most likely prediction is something resembling a sphere (minimizing distances between points) that utilizes black hole power plants, feeding them matter from stars and nebulae.
From the outside, it would look like a giant void with nothing in the center. Maybe there's something like that in the center of the Boötes void?