[HN Gopher] Grabby Aliens
___________________________________________________________________
Grabby Aliens
Author : yosoyubik
Score : 55 points
Date : 2021-03-18 13:05 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (grabbyaliens.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (grabbyaliens.com)
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| I'm still not very convinced any civilization will actually
| expand significantly beyond one solar system.
|
| It's not just really hard, you'd need really good reasons for
| expanding that long (as opposed to just exploring). As Humanity,
| we're not even sure about increasing our own population size
| forever.
| mkl95 wrote:
| > we're not even sure about increasing our own population size
| forever
|
| World population is expected to peak at 10 billion at some
| point during this century, then decrease quite a bit.
|
| The most similar planets we know about are hundreds of light
| years away, and if we somehow were able to reach them, we would
| have to overcome issues such as receiving massive amounts of
| radiation, having no water, etc., so it's reasonable to expect
| human population to stay below 10 billion for a long time.
| Symmetry wrote:
| If the factors that led to our current population slowdown
| are maintained over the coming centuries then eventually
| there'll be a time when population starts to go up again.
| Some personality traits like Agreeableness are both heritable
| and tend to cause people to have more kids. So the trend
| should reverse itself eventually.
|
| http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/05/falling-
| fert...
| jkaptur wrote:
| Where can I read more about the "decrease quite a bit"?
| People have been predicting that for centuries (Malthus,
| etc.) and they've all been spectacularly wrong so far.
| mkl95 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_gro
| w...
|
| The UN expect Asia, Europe and Latin America to start
| declining in the 2090s, and for zero population growth to
| be reached around that time. *
|
| They estimate that population will eventually decrease by
| about 1bn.
|
| Edit: the study that estimates a decline of 1 billion was
| published by The Lancet, not the UN.
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_population_growth
| rendang wrote:
| Some countries' populations are already decreasing, like
| Japan, and more are following close on the same path.
| lupire wrote:
| And USA is decreasing internally, but increasing overall
| due to immigration.
| Geee wrote:
| I think we have two options: to expand to outer space, or to
| expand to virtual reality and eventually become digital beings.
| I'm not sure if these options are mutually exclusive, but for
| the curious mind the digital option would probably be more
| rewarding with less effort. We even might gradually lose our
| capability to interact with physical reality, which might be
| the great filter.
|
| In digital form, it's much easier to travel to outer space
| though. We just need to send transceiver probes in advance. If
| we want to manifest physically, we just have to print robotic
| bodies in the destination.
|
| Edit: I just realized that even if we're in digital form, we
| have to fight for physical energy and resources, assuming that
| we want to keep expanding the digital realm and the capacity of
| our consciousness. So, in some form we have to expand
| physically.
| sonofhans wrote:
| There's no reason to believe that humans living as "digital
| beings" will ever be possible. We don't even know what
| consciousness is yet, never mind how to replicate it in a
| non-human substrate.
|
| Most living humans will still argue that consciousness
| roughly equates to a soul. Leave that nonsense aside, and
| you're still left with the mind-body problem: are those two
| things the same or different? If mind and body are the same
| -- that is, if the experience of being a conscious human is
| emergent and/or dependent upon a human body -- digital
| uploads are just copies of ephemeral state. Imagine a hell
| full of James T Kirk replicas, each regretting the time he
| stepped into a transporter and died, allowing a copy of him
| to be made elsewhere.
|
| If mind and body are different, you're picking up the
| Cartesian problem -- how do they influence each other at all?
| What is the mind made of that it can simultaneously affect
| the body, yet somehow exist separately from it?
|
| Neal Stephenson published "Fall" last year which treats this
| as a purely technical problem. Once our scanning resolution
| is good enough, he supposes, we'll be able to create perfect
| digital replicas of brains. That's tripe, of course. Human
| consciousness is dependent on much more than our brains. In
| fact, we have special words for how consciousness presents
| when disconnected from bodily sensation, words like "sleep"
| and "coma." Sensory deprivation chambers isolate us from some
| of the sensations outside our bodies, but leave all internal
| sensations intact.
|
| These external and internal sensations make us who we are.
| For instance, we cannot emulate consciousness without first
| emulating the billions of gut bacteria, across thousands of
| distinct species, that affect the physical rhythms of our
| bodies. Even quadriplegic's moods and consciousnesses are
| influenced by their gut bacteria.
|
| How much of the universe do you need to simulate in order to
| accurately simulate one human being? All of it, it turns out.
| And even then, there's no reason to believe that human will
| be or feel the same as the meat substrate from which it was
| copied. The whole affair is nonsense.
|
| edit: typo
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Neal Stephenson published "Fall" last year which treats
| this as a purely technical problem. Once our scanning
| resolution is good enough, he supposes, we'll be able to
| create perfect digital replicas of brains
|
| That's...not at all accurate.
|
| > How much of the universe do you need to simulate in order
| to accurately simulate one human being? All of it, it turns
| out. And even then, there's no reason to believe that human
| will be or feel the same as the meat substrate from which
| it was copied.
|
| That's actually much closer to the premise of _Fall_ than
| your summary was.
| sonofhans wrote:
| > That's...not at all accurate.
|
| Tell me how. My recollection is that Dodge was scanned
| from a frozen brain. Later in the book, folks were full-
| body-scanned.
|
| And conceding that we need to simulate a full digital
| universe in order to simulate one person gives away the
| argument entirely -- there's still no coherent way to say
| that it's the same person, a digital afterlife of the
| same soul. Stephenson blithely writes as if this is true.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| You claim: "Once our scanning resolution is good enough,
| he supposes, we'll be able to create perfect digital
| replicas of brains"
|
| None of the scanned replicas in _Fall_ is perfect. They
| are functional in that they have consciousness, and
| connected to the original by some fuzzy, vague, and very
| much incomplete transference of memory and personality,
| but that 's notably imperfect even for the focal
| information where people most knowledgeable about the
| process are deliberately trying to carry key information
| and plans across the transition. That is implicitly
| (though it is hard to tell how much since neither is a
| viewpoint character, and the original was progressively
| becoming insane _before_ the transition) somewhat less
| the case for Elmo Shepherd /El--the former of which spent
| enormous time and astronomical resources to achieve that
| --than anyone else, sure, but there is no indication of
| anything even vaguely approximating a "perfect digital
| replica".
|
| > there's still no coherent way to say that it's the same
| person, a digital afterlife of the same soul. Stephenson
| blithely writes as if this is true.
|
| No, he writes as though the society of the not-yet-
| uploaded in the book comes to accept it as tru-ish and
| those of the imperfect-replicas-who-come-to-understand-
| their-nature view it as also (but, at least in my
| reading, somewhat _less_ than the preceding) somewhat
| tru-ish.
|
| But even the characters in the book, on either side,
| don't seem to accept it as unqualifiedly true in general
| with the possible, again, exception of Elmo Shepherd/El.
| Who is a, or both of whom are (depending on your
| perspective on continuity of identity) unbalanced
| megalomaniac(s).
|
| (Even before things get dominated by the afterlife
| simulation, the book already has a strong focus on the
| socially-constructed nature of perceived identity and
| perceived nature of reality.)
| ben_w wrote:
| > Stephenson blithely writes as if this is true.
|
| Forgive me, but this sounds like a _criticism_ -- is it?
| Because last I checked that novel was fiction, and that
| is what good authors do. It's not like I'd criticise
| Diane Duane for writing Trek books as if Vulcans were
| real; if anything its kinda weird when shows like Trek
| break the fourth wall, which they avoided even in the two
| episodes which used the "the show is a fiction invented
| by one of the characters" trope.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| I'm not sure it's so far fetched.
|
| Scanning sure, that's a separate consciousness or a copy,
| but what if you replaced one neuron at a time with a
| digital/electrical component? Wouldn't there be a point,
| around halfway, that you would be more robot than human?
| And so you can become totally digital if you accept that
| losing one neuron wouldn't be enough to end your current
| stream of consciousness?
| staticman2 wrote:
| The electronic neuron would have to behave just like a
| legit neuron, and would have to be installable without
| damaging the legit neurons.
|
| Even if this is philosophically possible, that doesn't
| suggest it is inventible. How do you model and replace a
| neuron without tearing up and killing the host organism?
| sonofhans wrote:
| Personal identity philosophy is full of examples like
| this: swapping brains, swapping half brains, swapping
| cells one at a time. It's an interesting thought
| exercise.
|
| I don't have a complete answer, but a few thoughts:
|
| First, there's no reason to believe we'll ever be able to
| replicate a neuron with non-meat technology. Nanomachines
| may be able to do this. Are they going to age and die as
| well, like real neurons?
|
| Second, replacing one neuron at a time looks hard as
| well. Best case is perhaps a self-replicating nanomachine
| that chugs through the brain, effectively eating neurons
| and building new ones. This process is going to change
| the brain, since it has to be carried out in constant
| time. How will it change the brain? Who knows?
|
| Third, it's not just neurons. You'd need to replicate
| every cell in, and on, a human body. Including, again,
| the different species of fungus that live exclusively in
| our toenails.
|
| Fourth, how will this new 100%-technical human interact
| with its environment? Current thinking is that some auto-
| immune diseases are triggered by a insufficient challenge
| to young immune systems, effectively by an environment
| that's too clean. Should we emulate this as well?
|
| So pretty quickly I think it's turns out that we're not
| emulating humans, we're creating new things that are
| somewhat human and somewhat digital. How will this entity
| act over the long term?
|
| Ian McDonald wrote, "there are infinite ways of being
| human." Perhaps we need to expand our definitions.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Third, it's not just neurons. You'd need to replicate
| every cell in, and on, a human body. Including, again,
| the different species of fungus that live exclusively in
| our toenails.
|
| Do you?
|
| Don't get me wrong, the chemical environment of the
| brain, and the wider body, can alter states of
| consciousness -- I recall stories about people whose gut
| bacteria produces alcohol and permanently fail any blood
| alcohol tests as a consequence -- but if you know what
| those chemicals are, do you really need to replicate the
| fungi making them?
| lupire wrote:
| Consciousness isn't important for "digital" expansion. AI
| is. If people build self-sustaining/replicating robots and
| send them to stars, off they go.
| arethuza wrote:
| Wasn't one of the points in _Fall; or, Dodge in Hell_ that
| an isolated mind was pretty much impossible and that he had
| to build an environment at the same time that has mind was
| awakening?
| sonofhans wrote:
| Yes, I actually love that awakening story. It's been done
| in fiction before (e.g., "Cybernetic Samurai," by Victor
| Milan) but Stephenson rendered it vividly.
|
| Even if we accept this on its face as possible, we still
| have no reason to believe that the digital Dodge will act
| the same way as the formerly-meat Dodge. Developmental
| trauma is a real thing. How did that experience of
| awakening change Dodge? If it changed him at all he's no
| longer the same Dodge; if it didn't change him, then he's
| just an immutable copy.
|
| And then if we figure out some convoluted way to claim
| that Didi-Dodge will act/present the same as formerly-
| meat-Dodge, they're not in any way the same person. Meat-
| Dodge is still dead, he just has a very lifelike digital
| replica.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| I think this argument is based on the false dichotomy of
| "The mind & body are either different or the same!".
|
| This denies things being similar, or multi-dimensional.
| Apply this same reasoning to hardware/software for example:
|
| "What is software code made of that it can simultaneously
| affect the physical hardware, yet somehow exist separately
| from it?"
|
| the mind, and software, are data, or information - and data
| can be replicated on multiple mediums. This data / medium
| distinction is no more or less perplexing. The "OK" hand-
| gesture can represent something in physical form, while the
| physical hand is distinct from the symbolic message it
| represents - if you want to get philosophical about
| symbology and representation I don't think there is a
| special case to be made for the mind.
|
| > Human consciousness is dependent on much more than our
| brains
|
| How can you support this statement when you first lead with
| "We don't even know what consciousness is [yet]"?
|
| We have words for "god", "magic" and "spirits" too, and
| don't know what those are either; isn't it possible none of
| them exist?
|
| > we cannot emulate consciousness without first emulating
| the billions of gut bacteria
|
| Only is consciousness specifically depends on this aspect.
|
| It's like saying "The setting sun also affect our mood, so
| that must be emulated too!". That's not true though - It's
| be possible to emulate a human mind, without exactly
| reproducing the same personality and emotional profile of a
| modern human being. Simulating human environments and/or
| experience to feed a simulation data is a bigger project
| than replicating a mind. If you are simulating every detail
| of human existence the question is what you are trying to
| achieve; post-human AI being don't need to be anything like
| modern humans phycological; and I doubt the contributions
| to mood of gut bacteria are considered fundamental in that
| - and I've yet to hear a modern human consider the diet in
| questions of consciousness.
|
| For example, We live, and eat, very differently to our
| ancestors - Does that make us any less human, or conscious?
|
| I don't think so, and as such don't agree that: "All of it,
| it turns out".
| flir wrote:
| Even if you're spending all your time in Infinite Fun Space,
| someone needs to stay home in base reality to make sure the
| lights stay on.
| praptak wrote:
| Maybe your tech allows self repairing Infinite Fun Space
| simulators which are also impossible to destroy, as they
| are inside stars, inside black holes or made of matter that
| doesn't interact with anything else.
| arethuza wrote:
| I will say that I found the end to the _Baroque Cycle_ in
| _Fall; or, Dodge in Hell_ to be really satisfying.
|
| I won't explain how it relates to your comment though -
| go read all of them!
| e40 wrote:
| This one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle
| I don't see a _Fall_ there.
| darepublic wrote:
| the 'digital form' computers could be on a spaceship that is
| programmed to try to guarantee it always has enough power,
| acquired via stars, to power the computers in which the non
| stop orgasm universe is running
| arethuza wrote:
| Have you read _Diaspora_ by Greg Egan?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(novel)
| lazyweb wrote:
| Read it a few years ago. The chapter describing an emerging
| consciousness through a feedback loop is something I think
| about every once in a while.
|
| On a related note, currently working through 'Godel,
| Escher, Bach'.
| vcxy wrote:
| Check out "I Am a Strange Loop" if you haven't. It's like
| GEB, but he had a few more decades to refine the ideas.
| Both great books though!
| Geee wrote:
| No, I haven't. Seems really interesting, thanks.
| teekert wrote:
| Came here to suggest this novel... as it answers OP with:
| Why not both?
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Running at 4GHz, you're going to get tired of existence a lot
| faster than you would in the physical world.
| flir wrote:
| As long as you're not interacting with the outside world,
| what does the computational speed of your substrate matter?
| Your in-universe clock runs at the same speed you do.
| lupire wrote:
| You can create new virtual worlds to enjoy.
| ben_w wrote:
| May or may not be enough, we'll only find out by doing
| it. The speed difference between synapses firing vs
| transistors firing is about the same as speed difference
| between a wolf and the hill the wolf is standing on.
| Coincidentally this is also the size difference.
| speeder wrote:
| About your edit: That is the plot of the excellent early
| access game "Dyson Sphere Project".
|
| In the game backstory humanity became entirely digital, but
| found out AFTER that, the energy requeriments are staggering,
| so they send the player in a robot body to fix the energy
| issue. (you start building solar panels and thermoelectric
| powerplants and whatnot until you can build a dyson swarm and
| finally a dyson sphere).
| tlb wrote:
| In a galaxy with millions of civilizations, it only takes one
| grabby species to result in colonization. So you don't have to
| be convinced that any given species will expand, just accept
| that some might.
|
| Expansion is selected for in biological evolution, so it's fair
| to assume that most pre-civilization species are expanding on
| their planet. Perhaps some will have an epiphany and stop
| expanding as their society progresses, but you'd have to argue
| that that will almost surely happen to every species to refute
| grabbiness theory.
| qayxc wrote:
| > So you don't have to be convinced that any given species
| will expand, just accept that some might.
|
| You'd have to accept the other assumptions that the authors
| make as well. One is that the grabby species is capable of
| travelling at a significant fraction of lightspeed. Another
| factor is unlimited lifetime of civilisations.
|
| > Expansion is selected for in biological evolution, so it's
| fair to assume that most pre-civilization species are
| expanding on their planet.
|
| Hm. I'm not sure that biology is the right angle to approach
| this. There are plenty of examples in human history (and even
| today) where expansion was not at all favoured by
| civilisations and human communities.
|
| Isolated tribes on islands and in rain forests are a counter-
| example, as well as isolationist phases of civilisations such
| as feudal Japan in the Edo period.
|
| To me the model is basically just another hypothesis based on
| the Spherical Cow.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Expansion is only selected for in the evolutionary
| environment.
|
| In layman's anthropomorphic terms, your genes can want to
| expand on your home planet and say "hell no" when you find
| yourself in orbit.
|
| Your genes can want you to expand and express this as playing
| Star Trek explorer video games all day.
|
| In short, it's complicated.
| tlb wrote:
| Genes can change behavior when you get into space. But you
| have to bet that, with millions of species getting to that
| point, not a single one will get any further. I don't know
| how anyone can have that level of certainty about such
| speculative things.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I think FTL travel can't be useful unless FTL communication
| exists first. Otherwise you're just spending a lot of resources
| to seed competing civilizations.
| frenchy wrote:
| FTL travel actually implies FTL communication, since you can
| send a traveller with a message. What I think you mean is
| that communication needs to be either really fast, or at
| least a lot faster than the travelling.
|
| I don't think that's relevant. All you really need is a
| segment of the population that wants to go somewhere else,
| and trade and whatnot can still work well without a
| communication system that's faster than travelling. That's
| how the trans-atlantic trade system worked from about
| 1500-1700.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > What I think you mean is that communication needs to be
| either really fast, or at least a lot faster than the
| travelling.
|
| Precisely. Messengers wouldn't cut it. Ancient empires
| always struggled to maintain control of their edge
| territories, because communication was too slow, even with
| messengers on horse.
| frenchy wrote:
| Ancient empires also regularly spawned friendly or
| unfriendly colonies on their periphery, and regularly
| lost control of them. Space colonization doesn't have to
| be useful for earthlings for somone to bother attempting
| it.
|
| All of that said, we're probably less equiped to colonize
| space than the chimpanzees in Africa are to build boats
| and sail to Brazil.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > we're probably less equiped to colonize space than the
| chimpanzees in Africa are to build boats and sail to
| Brazil
|
| Surprisingly less prepared, if you count accidental
| "boats" http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160126-the-
| monkeys-that-sai...
| vidarh wrote:
| We don't know if it's really hard. _If_ it is really hard, I 'm
| tempted to agree with you. That is, if we don't find a
| mechanism for FTL there's very little to be gained.
| jdmichal wrote:
| > I'm still not very convinced any civilization will actually
| expand significantly beyond one solar system.
|
| I'm fine with the idea of a species -- or whatever definition
| you want to use here -- expanding beyond one solar system. But
| without at least faster-than-light communication, I don't think
| it would be possible to maintain a cohesive _civilization_ at
| that scale. And without faster-than-light travel, you 're also
| going to have things like species rings developing.
| deepstack wrote:
| > I'm still not very convinced any civilization will actually
| expand significantly beyond one solar system.
|
| Whether a civilization expand beyond their solar system is
| entirely depending on if they develop the technology to do so
| in a relatively short time compare to their life span.
|
| One good reason could be habitable planets. There may not be
| enough habitable planets left in the solar system.
|
| Extra: some sci-fi look at Kardashev scale
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| They wouldn't need habitable planets at all
|
| Escaping one solar system with some amount of colonists is
| probably harder than developing the technology to not need
| whatever counts as "habitable planet" at the other end.
|
| They'd use the new system's ressources for all sorts of
| things, least of which would be biological survival.
| lupire wrote:
| Escaping a solar system just requires fuel and a freezer.
| jjbinx007 wrote:
| Any exploration would most likely be done remotely (at least
| initially) as it's much simpler and easier than sending living
| creatures.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Because of the distances, there is almost no point to even
| sending anything like a simple probe there.
|
| Any serious exploration would be a life-like colonization
| attempt already, because of the challenges.
| mynegation wrote:
| It is really hard but the relative hardness of it may be very
| different 100, 10000, 100K years from now.
|
| As for the reasons: _if nothing else_ the expanding Sun outta
| do it.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Exactly. Right now colonizing Mars is really hard. Will it
| continue to be in 100 years?
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Yes. And with Mars, on a smaller scale, there is just about
| the same problem: Of course it is interesting and
| fascinating to explore it. Or go there once for the
| funsies.
|
| Much harder to establish something that brings back more
| value than it took to bring it there.
|
| Even just keeping Humans alive there will probably be a
| very expensive proposition for at least a century or more,
| before there is a solution to the apparent economic
| futility of colonizing Mars.
|
| Bringing back stuff from another star? Forget it. The only
| reason to go there is to be there. Or even more precisely,
| you send your children/creations there for their
| children/creations to be there.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| We've expanded to every remotely habitable region on Earth.
| It's what we do!
|
| Not because a big majority are ever gung ho about emigrating.
| You only need a few misfits or outcasts who want to try
| something different to start it.
| trgn wrote:
| I think "remotely habitable" is key. Humans can barely
| colonize Antartica. There's zero self sufficiency there, and
| there seems to be zero appetite for anybody actually settling
| there. At most, you get adventurers who'll spent a few years
| there, living off the teat of some research institution, only
| for them to return with some good stories. Moon or Mars are
| much more hostile to our physicality and sensibilities than
| Antartica. Mars will attract some adventurers, maybe
| initially some utopians. After an initial period of
| excitement, there will be zero appetite to actually colonize
| something as unlivable, boring or ugly as Mars.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Humans colonized the Arctic before the modern era. We could
| probably have done it in Antarctica too, if there was a
| pre-modern way to get there gradually.
|
| > _there will be zero appetite..._
|
| I almost completely agree. There will be _very close_ to
| zero appetite. Which, over time, results in a colony :)
| zentiggr wrote:
| Boring and ugly are opinions, personally I would love to
| roam around and just enjoy the variety.
|
| Unlivable is the outstanding question, currently open.
| frenchy wrote:
| You can say it's an opinion, but I think you'll find it's
| almost universally held.
|
| Most people would enjoy romming Mars for a few days, some
| would enjoy it for a few months. I think only a select
| few would enjoy being there for longer than that unless
| it dramatically changed.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| If a billion Earthlings want to roam around Mars once in
| their life, that's the basis for several permanent
| tourist settlements there.
|
| I also bet many would enjoy the low gravity on Mars and
| the Moon. It might even be very health beneficial for
| some.
|
| Again, that's the basis for permanent medical facilities
| there.
| jerf wrote:
| Simple evolution. The fraction of the species that decides
| "yeah, this is enough" stays behind. The fraction that does not
| keeps developing and exploring and eventually just straight-up
| outpopulates the fraction that didn't even if they never
| actively have a conflict with the "satisfied" group... which is
| a pretty big "if".
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| You assume that birth rate differences between cultures are
| stable, which they have never been. But for sure it's a
| racist trope to somehow assume "certain cultures" reproduce
| like bunnies just because whatever, and "replace us within
| 3-5 generations". Neither the data nor the math makes sense
| on this.
|
| It's not even genetic variation. Of course there could be
| genetic variation to reproductive success, but this variation
| hasn't magically and neatly assorted itself into
| nationalities or religions in the past few centuries for our
| convenience.
|
| Fact is that the absence of Human suffering, side effects of
| wealth and freedom, seem to decrease birth rates overall. No
| religious fanaticism will overcome this mechanism long enough
| to matter.
| jerf wrote:
| The "cultures" need have nothing to do with race or
| religion or anything else. They simply need to reproduce
| incrementally more. That can _be_ the distinction, all on
| its own.
|
| Remember, evolution is not generally a game of "One day,
| this horse was born with a mutation that enabled it to use
| oxygen seven times more efficiently than its brothers."
| It's often a game of very small incremental differences
| slowly outcompeting the competition slowly over many
| generations.
|
| A 2.1 birth rate will outcompete a 1.9 birth rate really
| quite quickly. It doesn't take much difference.
|
| This is just standard evolutionary math, not some crazy
| conspiracy theory.
|
| It may help everyone involved to remember we aren't really
| talking about humans. It is a a bit of a crazy idea to
| assume that _every species in the universe_ will all 100%
| experience the same effects humanity happens to where as
| they become prosperous, they tend to have fewer children.
|
| In fact, I've seriously floated that as one of the possible
| reasons why humanity may actually survive where many of our
| competition can't. If you consider something like an
| insect-like species, they may not even be able to get
| _this_ far without choking out their planet because they
| may be quite unsuited to "reproducing less in the face of
| more resources". Human babies are very expensive; it is not
| at all clear that this will be a universal among
| intelligent species.
|
| I stripped out the comments about humans since it is
| distracting people from my main point.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Your "standard evolutionary math" still assumes relative
| birth rate differences as they are right now will stay
| the same into the future. They aren't stable right now
| and haven't ever been. A foolish assumption, but useful
| for certain world views.
|
| And as those relative differences change and even invert
| in some cases, there really is no case to make for the
| idea that this supposed evolutionary effect could reverse
| what we are actually seeing in the real data.
| jerf wrote:
| 'Your "standard evolutionary math" still assumes relative
| birth rate differences as they are right now will stay
| the same into the future.'
|
| I have no idea what you are talking about. No such
| stability is required. No such stability exists in
| nature, yet evolution persists, right? The completely
| standard predator-prey recursive relationship
| intrinsically involves highly variable (successful)
| reproductive rates in a constantly oscillating
| relationship, but I don't hear anyone suggest that
| disproves evolution.
|
| To be honest, if either of us are assuming constant
| situations that never change forever into the future, it
| really seems to be you. My entire point is based on
| variances. I'm arguing against the proposition that no
| intelligent species will ever spread across the universe
| because early 21st century humanity in the first world
| seems to not particularly be interested in it today.
|
| Again, the discussion here is integrated across _all
| possible intelligent species_ , not "humanity". It only
| takes one species to uncontrollably reproduce to spread
| across the cosmos. Science fiction is replete with
| possible such species. Does the HN gestalt not frequently
| remind people that aliens can be actually, you know,
| _alien_? Not just humans with funny foreheads?
|
| Even Elon Musk might quibble with the idea that nobody in
| the first world in the 21st century wants to spread
| across the stars. If Mars were to build a self-sustaining
| habitat (which I define as a habitat able to build
| another equally-self-sustaining habitat), it doesn't
| matter whether there's 12 billion people on Earth
| uninterested in spreading out into the solar system, if
| Mars starts building and growing and spreading further.
| It only takes a few. It would then not further matter if
| they build a self-sustaining asteroid-based civilization
| if all the people on Mars decide they've got it made, and
| nobody ever again leaves Mars. I say the argument that
| 0.0000000000000000000000% of a species ever wants to
| spread out into the stars once they have the capacity,
| just because we happen to live in a couple of decades
| where most people (not even all, just most) wouldn't be
| interested in it is not a sensible one. It's parochial
| even on human terms; it's beyond parochial across the set
| of all possible intelligent beings.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| tl;dr; you don't make sense.
|
| Of course a difference in relative reproductive rates
| needs to be stable for the underlying causes to dominate
| and in turn affect reproductive rates. That's how
| evolution works. However, that's not how Human birth
| rates in different countries and communities work, today.
| adwn wrote:
| > _But for sure it 's a racist trope [...] but useful for
| certain world views_
|
| Please stop. HN is not the place for baseless accusations
| of racism. Please assume good faith in discussions.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Well, you are repeating racist tropes, that why I said
| that. It is not important to me that you know or believe
| it yourself. That's up to you.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It may help everyone involved to remember we aren't
| really talking about humans. It is a a bit of a crazy
| idea to assume that every species in the universe will
| all 100% experience the same effects humanity happens to
| where as they become prosperous, they tend to have fewer
| children.
|
| It's really not much of a stretch; K strategists
| generally beat out r strategists in relatively stable
| conditions, and both intelligence and, with intelligence,
| increasing technology and prosperity make a wider array
| of unstable natural conditions more like stable
| conditions from an evolutionary standpoint through
| adaptability.
|
| Having more offspring is a trade-off against investing
| more in each offspring.
|
| A lot of entertaining fiction springs up around premises
| where things which are fundamentally related are instead
| treated as orthogonal, so you have spacefaring aliens
| that want to compete with us for for earthlike planets
| but are structured like insects despite being human-
| sized, intelligent, technology advanced, r strategists,
| but...there's very good reasons that many parts of that
| are implausible.
| dahfizz wrote:
| This is actually exactly what happened with modern humans and
| neanderthals. Neanderthals never ventured outside their
| native region in Europe. Modern humans spread to every corner
| of the globe, going so far as paddling a boat to Australia.
|
| Its in our genes to be curios explorers, and that has helped
| the species survive.
| titzer wrote:
| You can slice that even finer. There are plenty of people
| who are not interested in moving away from their hometown.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| That's because they live comfortably. Unexpected famine
| and drought would motivate migration.
| jdmichal wrote:
| _Expected_ famine and drought would likely work equally
| well. There 's a lot of small communities that continue
| to exist purely because the government keeps the famine
| and drought part from happening. I'm thinking old mining
| and factory towns build around a single employer, which
| since has closed up shop.
| bildung wrote:
| _> In just 3-5 generations, the people who will own the Earth
| are those in cultures or subcultures that have lots of
| children even in the presence of birth control_
|
| Where have I seen that argumentation before... oh yeah: https
| ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics#/media/File:Bund...
|
| That _was_ 3-5 generations ago, yet somehow didn 't come
| true.
|
| For this to really work like you state,
|
| * the cultures have to be stagnant
|
| * income has to be stagnant
|
| * zero movement between cultures has to take place and so on.
|
| _> Because while a lot of cultures and subcultures are
| choosing not to have lots of children, it is not uniform by
| any means._
|
| It is when you control for income, though: The more wealthy
| nations become, the less children get born. Even inside the
| US, when you group by income brackets:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-
| fam...
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| To be fair, he wasn't talking about eugenics directly, but
| he's invoking a lot of assumptions and sentiments about
| "certain cultures" outproducing others.
|
| Certainly sounds similar...
| mcguire wrote:
| Independently reinvented eugenics is still eugenics.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > yet somehow didn't come true
|
| Isn't it? How would you prove/disprove this?
|
| > oh yeah: <Nazi_eugenics>
|
| The thing about pseudo-science is it often borrows (and
| distorts) real scientific concepts to masquerade as such;
| the existence of homeopathy doesn't discredit conventional
| medicine.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Counter argument: the evolutionary pressure that makes a
| species smart enough to colonize a planet (say, earth)
| doesn't make them smart enough to colonize space beyond their
| solar system.
|
| Since there is no evolutionary pressure to increase
| intelligence further, the species does not leave the planet.
| eigenhombre wrote:
| Which one of the colored blobs is the Culture?
| vnxli wrote:
| Are the Culture the good guys or the bad guys? I read Consider
| Phlebas first and felt such a whiplash moving into Player of
| Games or whatever the next one was. I want to like that series
| but I just can't figure out if I'm rooting for bad guys or not.
| ngvrnd wrote:
| neither/both
| Super_Jambo wrote:
| Banks likes twists. The Culture is his attempt at writing a
| viable techno utopia. Every other book has a more pro-culture
| viewpoint.
|
| But if you're after 'good guys' and 'bad guys' Banks might
| not really be for you.
| vnxli wrote:
| I think that's my answer. I like good guys/bad guys.
| There's enough grey areas and anti heroes in real life. I
| want simpler fiction
| arethuza wrote:
| Wasn't banks pretty clear that the Culture was his attempt
| to come up with a society that is as "good" as possible -
| if nothing else to provide a suitable employer for his
| supreme military genius (who I shall avoid naming).
|
| Edit:
|
| CNN: Would you like to live in the Culture?
|
| Iain M. Banks: Good grief yes, heck, yeah, oh it's my
| secular heaven....Yes, I would, absolutely. Again it comes
| down to wish fulfillment. I haven't done a study and taken
| lots of replies across a cross-section of humanity to find
| out what would be their personal utopia. It's mine, I
| thought of it, and I'm going home with it -- absolutely,
| it's great.
| wannadingo wrote:
| The books are meant to make you question your own assumptions
| of what is good or right. I think what many people like about
| Banks is that he did not write simple morality plays. Iain
| Banks also wrote mainstream novels so you could say that he
| wasn't coming from the normal genre writer's perspective.
| messe wrote:
| The Culture believe they are the good guys, and that they are
| mostly in the right.
| arethuza wrote:
| And they have the data to justify that position, even then
| they still run control experiments, which is where we fit
| in...
| simonh wrote:
| By and large they're the good guys, or the least-worst guys
| anyway. Consider Phlebas is the weakest of the series IMO
| which is a shame as it's dealing with some interesting
| issues.
| elihu wrote:
| I interpret it as that they're mostly the good guys, but
| Consider Phlebas is written from the point of view of someone
| who opposes the Culture.
|
| The main thing the Culture did that wasn't what I'd call a
| "good guy move" was destroying the orbital rather than
| allowing it to be used as a foothold by the Idirans.
| Basically, the Culture decided that winning was more
| important than holding the moral high ground.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Has anyone ever considered _we_ may be the grabby aliens?
| Jach wrote:
| The source material for this does, we have the potential to
| become a grabby species. In particular though one of the
| strange things we can observe about the universe is how early
| we are, relative to how long we expect the universe to last.
| The grabby idea explains this puzzle pretty nicely by a
| selection effect: if the universe is going to be grabbed in the
| future (by us or others), then being early is the only time at
| all that we could find ourselves with our seemingly natural
| development history.
| patwillson22 wrote:
| I think people underestimate the gains that new technology will
| have for aiding our ability to see neighboring galaxies and
| exoplanets. For instance, our interpretation of spectral data is
| limited by both technological limitations (lasers can only probe
| certain wavelengths) and also theoretical ones. We also cannot
| accurately determine what happens in light matter interactions.
| Thus, the signal to noise ratio is so high that our current
| instruments have little chance of finding definitive evidence for
| life. This could change rather quickly though, the james webb
| telescope is one example, it is equipped with CCD that can "see"
| light in the infrared spectrum.
| implying wrote:
| The paper (and code) describe a 3D voronoi diagram, and imagine
| what it would be like if each segment was an alien civilization.
| fogof wrote:
| Almost. In their model, civilizations can start at different
| times, so it possible for the boundary between civilizations to
| be a hyperboloid, rather than flat as is the case for voronoi
| diagrams.
| reason-mr wrote:
| There is no reason to believe this model - the premise is pure
| conjecture. If I were engaging in pure conjecture - I might think
| equally, on the positive side, that all Aliens converge to the
| belief that all life is to be encouraged and supported, and turn
| into "meta-gardeners", seeding and encouraging life wherever they
| go.
| lupire wrote:
| The point is that if grabby and gardener aliens exist, grabby
| aliens will dominate.
|
| It's similar to the idea in evolution that we species that like
| to reproduce more than species that don't.
| arbitrage wrote:
| It is no means a foregone conclusion that grabby v. gardener
| => grabby wins.
|
| Perhaps grabby aliens, a known menace to life in the
| universe, are systematically exterminated when they are
| identified by other aliens in the universe.
|
| There are really strong implicit assumptions at play here.
| This is a very interesting thought experiment, and it's nice
| to see novel thinking in this area. It's important to
| recognize however, that this is not "logical" or a "forgone
| conclusion" in any meaningful or systematic way.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| But in gardening, overinvasive species are weeds and they are
| removed by gardeners?
| Aeronwen wrote:
| The gardener merely holds the weeds at bay for a while.
| Without constant upkeep, the weeds take over again.
| FpUser wrote:
| Loved the audio track
| k__ wrote:
| I'm currently reading Guns, Germs, and Steel, a book about the
| rise of civilization explained by their ecological starting
| points.
|
| It's interesting how much luck people from Mediterranean had with
| all the crops and animals they could domesticate thousands of
| years before the humans in other places.
|
| In light of what I read, we can only hope that we will belong to
| the first who will colonize the galaxy.
| Herodotus38 wrote:
| I have wondered about one of the premises of that book, the
| lack of animals that could be domesticated in the Americas, it
| may have been that the opportunity to domesticate them was lost
| after a certain amount of time passed and they went extinct due
| to hunting or climate changes.
|
| Recently there has been found in Brazil huge amounts of rock
| art from prehistoric Ice age civilization, that showed that
| they drew pictures of ice age horses and a now extinct camelid
| species called a paleolama.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/nov/29/sistine-chap...
| k__ wrote:
| The book mentioned something about humans hunting potentially
| domesticatable animals too extinction around the time of the
| ice age.
|
| The climate wasn't good enough for agriculture yet, so people
| had to rely more on hunting and gathering.
| cyberlab wrote:
| > and they prevent other beings like themselves from emerging
| within their volume
|
| What so they go to war with other species who are unlike them?
| Doesn't sound very clever, and it's a losing strategy. 'War is a
| losing strategy' [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-win_situation
| olooney wrote:
| Absolutely trivial for an interstellar space-faring
| civilization to wipe out an up-and-coming species. Grab a
| medium size asteroid[1] from their solar system, adjust its
| trajectory slightly, bam! An extinction event level weapon.
| This works because your basically rolling the rocks downhill,
| and there is a tremendous potential energy difference[2]
| between Earth and say, the Kuiper belt[3].
|
| Or a bit of biological warfare - can't be too hard for a super-
| advanced civilization to tweak a virus to be a little more
| dangerous. Or maybe a bit of radioactive dust, or just poking a
| whole in the planets ozone layer; there are probably lots of
| subtle techniques that an advanced AI could pull off too. the
| point is, is you command the technology and energy reserves
| needed for interstellar travel, you don't really need to fight
| a prolonged war against a species on a lower technology level.
| Just check in every few thousand years and if it seems like
| they're starting to expand just wipe them out.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_capture
|
| [2]: https://xkcd.com/681/
|
| [3]: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/kuiper-
| belt/overvi...
| andredz wrote:
| Your comment brought the prologue of this novel
| https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/32411/bens-damn-
| adventure-... to my mind.
| borepop wrote:
| >'War is a losing strategy'
|
| Except in virtually all of human history, which is written by
| the powers that win wars.
| [deleted]
| V-2 wrote:
| Humans wage wars against other humans, because we compete for
| the same resources. But fruit flies and giraffes pretty much
| ignore eachother.
| jerf wrote:
| I think you're underestimating the orders of magnitude in
| development that is possible. Even if an "enlightened" species
| was light-speed expanding at us right now, and they decided to
| leave us our entire solar system out of the goodness of their
| hearts, that would still prevent us from ever matching their
| expansion, because once we grew to the point that _we 'd_ like
| to light-speed expand into our neighborhood, there'd be no
| neighborhood to expand into.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| The vast distances between solar systems means that in order for
| life to expand beyond our system, it must either be put dormant
| for decades of interstellar travel, or it must travel in a craft
| so fast that modern physics thinks it unlikely. Since there's
| little reason to suspect that c speed of light is not the speed
| limit, that leaves us with some sort of biological suspension of
| life forms until they reach their destination. This tech is still
| extremely nascent, but to me there is possibility in at least
| sending seeds, microbes, probes, and very small crafts to nearby
| stars.
|
| Nevertheless, it seems likely that we will expand heavily within
| our own solar system before we ever reach another star. Proxima
| centauri is light years away, but mars, venus, the asteroids, and
| various rocky moons are within our grabby reach.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| This is the modern version of 1700s common wisdom: "A vehicle
| would have to be much too light to travel through the air.
| Otherwise it would need an unfathomable amount of energy. And
| if it tried to go too far up, it would enter the ether!"
|
| Advancement seems to grow at exponential rates. Perhaps in a
| 1000 years we will not see c as an impediment.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| You're forgetting option 3, and IMHO the most likely option. We
| become a space native species that inhabit an armada of ships.
| Colonizing planets beyond mars will very much be a secondary,
| optional objective. I think in a millennia, the number of
| humans living in o'neil cylinders will _far_ outnumber the
| humans living on planets.
| vanviegen wrote:
| What if aliens live on a different timescale than us, such that
| blinking their (presumably proverbial) eyes takes centuries?
| The speed of light suddenly feels a lot faster!
|
| And why would these life forms need to be biological? Do they
| need to have a limited lifespan? Could they send their
| consciousness in a droid? There seem to be options!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Re: your last point, that's something I find the most
| realistic; Von Neumann probes
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft),
| self-replicating robots that spread across the universe,
| possibly carrying traces of the civilization that once built
| them.
| V-2 wrote:
| _" What if aliens live on a different timescale than us, such
| that blinking their (presumably proverbial) eyes takes
| centuries? The speed of light suddenly feels a lot faster!"_
|
| I think it's reasonable to assume that natural selection
| wouldn't favor that timescale.
|
| For one, cosmic catastrophies - and resulting extinction
| events - would be much more often from the perspective of a
| "slow motion" lifeform.
|
| On the other hand, from the perspective of "super fast
| living" creatures the universe would appear as a much more
| peaceful and friendly place.
| scientaster2 wrote:
| Remember though that as you approach the speed of light,
| relativity starts to kick in with your time "slowing down". In
| other words, the inverse relationship between speed and time
| could allow civilizations to expand faster than it would seem
| possible at "normal time" speeds. Complete conjecture on my
| part, just a fun thing to think about!
| umvi wrote:
| This is true but the amount of energy needed to reach speeds
| where time dilation makes your journey seem short are just
| unfathomable.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I don't think we're that many decades from being able to send
| frozen eggs, sperm, microbiome and food production capacity in
| a spaceship.
|
| When you're near the target, fertilize in an artificial womb,
| raise the kids with Khan Academy v999, and let them land the
| ship when they're ready.
| jerf wrote:
| I'm not sure that's true. While you don't end up with
| lightspeed expansion, if you get to the point that you have the
| tech to live on an "iceball" by extracting the hydrogen and
| fusing it for energy, and can make the rest of what you need
| from raw atoms and energy, you can just sort of... keep
| expanding out into the oort cloud indefinitely, until after a
| while, you're not in the solar system anymore, and even more
| eventually, you're in another one. The more we learn the less
| empty interstellar space looks.
|
| That's certainly _slow_ expansion, but it would be an expansion
| that in relatively short order would greatly exceed the biomass
| and biodiversity of Earth 's biosphere, until it would be quite
| absurd that the whole thing would simultaneously decide to just
| stop one day. It would be slow but as difficult to stop as the
| biosphere is today.
|
| This does depend on some sort of practical fusion tech, though.
| mchusma wrote:
| If interested in this kind of thing, I always recommend Issac
| Arthur. He describes the Fermi Paradox and related concepts 100x
| better than anyone else.
|
| Some relevant ones: The Fermi Paradox Compendium
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDPj5zI66LA
|
| Fermi Paradox: The Dyson Dilemma v2.0
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfuK8la0y6s
|
| I believe he would say that there is no really good explanation
| to why we don't see other intelligent civilizations except that
| we are effectively the first (at least in our galaxy), and
| intelligent space-faring life is exceedingly rare. This is a
| similar conclusion to Robin Hanson here, but I think I think
| Issac Arthur does a better job of deeply explaining it. I think
| both would agree though.
| olooney wrote:
| The big bang only produced light elements and heavier elements
| were produced by nuclear fusion in stars. In particular, carbon
| and oxygen[1] would not have been abundant until the first
| generation of very hot, very large stars went supernova. Our own
| star is a third-generation star[2]; it is only 4-5 billion years
| old, forming ~10 billion years after the big bang, so our own
| solar system is fairly rich. Earlier solar systems would have
| been less rich, and this means life would have been far less
| likely to arise.
|
| Also, 25% of lightspeed is fairly aggressive. Even 1% would
| require engineering and energy reserves way beyond anything we
| can realistically hope for, largely due to the tyranny of the
| relativistic rocket equation[1]. Note that if you want to stop,
| you have to carry your own fuel, which makes the problem
| quadratically worse. Proposals like Breakthrough Starshot[3] can
| hope for 10% largely because they will just do a flyby and don't
| have to carry fuel for braking at the destination. Similar
| projects[4] have used much more realistic velocities and
| discovered in doesn't really matter - it still takes less than
| 100 million years to completely colonize every star in the
| galaxy.
|
| But this model doesn't solve or address the Fermi Paradox - where
| is everybody? It actually makes it worse. We might overlook or
| not be able to see a single populated solar system halfway across
| the galaxy, but a civilization that has expanded to fill every
| nook and cranny of the galaxy should be fairly easy to spot, no?
| Obvious, even. Yet there is no sign - not in our solar system,
| not in radio signals, not in Dyson spheres, nothing. On the other
| hand, every time we still down and make reasonable assumptions
| about how long it would take a species to colonize the galaxy, we
| usually find that it should have happened hundreds of times over,
| billions of years ago. So where is everybody?
|
| [1]: https://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_life.html
|
| [2]: https://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae465.cfm
|
| [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot
|
| [4]: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/294051-scientists-
| simula...
| khafra wrote:
| Regarding your final paragraph, the Grabby Aliens model implies
| that we are within the Anthropic Shadow[1] of the event. E.g.,
| the humanity that lives in the possible universe where the
| galaxy has already been eaten does not exist.
|
| [1]
| https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~aldous/157/Papers/cirkovic.pd...
| m4rtink wrote:
| If the slightly insane Nuclear Salt Water rocket can be
| pertectec then couple percent light speed might be doable even
| without complex exotic tech:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket
| ngvrnd wrote:
| "slightly"???
| sliken wrote:
| You are right, but very large stars have very short lifetimes,
| on the order of 10M years. So there would be areas of high
| concentrations of things further up the periodic table even in
| the first billion years. Keep in mind that while earth is rich
| in things like iron and other elements higher up the periodic
| table, that's far from the average for the solar system.
|
| I think the colonization problem is mainly a human perspective,
| we can't get their in our lifetimes so it's impossible.
|
| So it seems realistic to send a small probe to Proxima Centauri
| at 5-10% of the speed of light to get sensors much closer. We'd
| learn quite a bit getting even today's sensors 1M times closer
| as it zips by. Communication might be tricky, but say a 100
| watt laser can beam to a decent portable telescope on a precise
| frequency even 0.01 light years apart. Just sent a new relay
| probe every year or so.
|
| So in 50-100 years we'd know much more about the planetary
| system. Number of planets, size, orbits, chemical composition,
| asteroid belts, even some idea of weather, clouds, magnetic
| fields, and some idea of the likelihood of life, and the
| potential for hosting life. Google earth would get it's first
| planet outside the solar system ;-).
|
| With that knowledge, and presumable some technology
| improvements we could send a large probe, even if it's slower
| say 0.5% of speed of light. While propulsion technology will
| likely improve (things like light sails, fission, fusion,
| antimatter, etc) maybe there's other ways to slow down, gas
| clouds, magnetic fields, chained gravitational assists,
| magnetic ram scoops, etc. Maybe it could allow for a few 100 kg
| in orbit around the most promising planet. Potentially
| autonomous manufacturing could turn some asteroids into
| mirrors, we could be used to help brake future probes. Said few
| 100 kg would also include improved sensors to tell us much more
| about the planets, increase our understanding of the presence
| of life, and the potential.
|
| Some 100s of years into the future it seems likely that bio-
| engineered bacteria, fungus, molds, and similar could be used
| to seed life, make the atmosphere friendlier, and extract
| useful minerals/fuels. Future deliveries would leverage
| braking/fuel/materials at the far side to get more mass there
| more easily. Instead of building mirrors (relatively easy) they
| start building solar cells. Mining kicks increases in scale,
| etc. Extracting methane, oxygen, and aluminum would be a good
| start.
|
| Bootstrapping the ecosystem (assuming there isn't one) starts
| with bacteria, mold, fungus, and similar on land and in the
| oceans.
|
| At some point the mirrors, communications, and energy available
| starts being an appreciable fraction of earth and non-trivial
| size ships can get up to 5-10% of light on this end, and
| decelerate down to zero on the far side and sending humans (or
| at least human DNA) starts becoming feasible.
|
| Say 1000 years from now, intelligence (human, semi-human, or
| artifical) on the far end starts communicating with earth at
| the speed of light. Does make one wonder what bandwidth you can
| get over 5 light years with say a small moon of mass to capture
| and redirect energy.
| nanna wrote:
| Grabby aliens = projecting human colonialism across the cosmos,
| featuring an especially dubious technological determinism. Am I
| missing something?
| Symmetry wrote:
| Not just human colonialism but also the colonialism that ants,
| rabbits, and kudzu exhibit.
| medicineman wrote:
| Not missing anything, you brought enough snark for the whole
| class.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Space is just so unimaginably huge that although I think aliens
| exist, I don't think it is likely that multi-solar system
| civilizations exist or there is a lot of organic life traveling
| between solar systems. The fastest man-made object is Helios 2
| which went a little over 250,000 km/h
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_(spacecraft) So if I did my
| math right, that's 0.02% of the speed of light. So we would have
| to go 50 times that fast to just be 1% of the speed of light. The
| nearest star is 4 light years away. So even at the speed of light
| it would take 4 years to get there.
|
| So a civilization would have to develop some way of going faster
| than light to realistically go to other solar systems which, even
| if possible, would likely take unimaginable amounts of power.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> So a civilization would have to develop some way of going
| faster than light to realistically go to other solar systems
|
| That is a very human mindset. "Civilization" would include
| machine civilizations. For a machine, a few thousand years of
| transit time would be irrelevant given the advantages a new
| star system might offer.
| wittyreference wrote:
| Are machines immune to entropy? If not, I suspect that a few
| thousand years of transit time still pose an obstacle, even
| for a machine civilization.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Humanity only ventured into space in the last few centuries,
| and Helios 2 is the best current effort, not a fundamental
| limit.
|
| Also, the _real_ obstacles are not physical speed limits, but
| the huge cost of getting materials into space. If we ever got
| enough material into space to provide a true, self-sustaining
| industry (i.e. non-terrestrial power and materials) then we 'd
| see a space-building boom that could rapidly improve on space
| exploration.
|
| The earth is relatively close to the sun, better use of solar
| wind: both the light _and_ the plasma might help accelerate
| without the high energy /fuel costs, see:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_sail
| causasui wrote:
| Just speculation (I am not a physicist or astrobiologist), but
| this is my thinking also. If anything is traveling between the
| stars, it's either inorganic (an AI), or it has a natural
| lifespan several orders of magnitudes longer than humans.
| Without FTL travel, to conquer space you also have to conquer
| time.
|
| Organic life is fragile and ill-suited for space travel, at
| least organic life as we know it. Perhaps the destiny of all
| sufficiently advanced organisms is either to die off or replace
| itself with AI.
|
| Anyway, while I find it impossible to believe there's nothing
| out there, I find it nearly equally impossible to believe
| anything that's ever visited our rock resembled little green
| men.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| They wouldn't need FTL. Sufficiently[0] powerful rockets with a
| sufficiently dense fuel source could reach relativistic speeds,
| allowing the travelers to _experience_ the journey in less time
| than the trip takes according to an outside observer.
|
| For instance, accelerating at 1G toward our nearest neighboring
| star for half the distance, then slowing down for the other
| half, a traveler could arrive in 3.5 years instead of the
| "minimum" 4.3. Of course, from Earth's perspective it took 5.9
| years, but that's not important. The effect is exponential,
| such that a trip to the center of the Milky Way, ~30kly, would
| only take 20yrs ship time (30,002yrs Earth time).
|
| [0] "Sufficiently" in this case meaning "pretty ludicrously".
| ben_w wrote:
| Space is big, but Helios isn't us trying to go as fast as
| possible, it's going the speed it is because that's a
| requirement of orbital dynamics.
|
| If we _really really_ wanted, nuclear options could get us to a
| few percent of c with current tech and no breakthroughs.
|
| On the other hand, if someone builds a von Neumann probe that
| eats sunlight and Mercury (the planet), it could make a Dyson
| swarm in a human lifetime, and that would enable us to colonise
| most of our causal future light cone directly from Sol:
| https://youtu.be/zQTfuI-9jIo
| CRUDite wrote:
| The 'dark forest model' is predicated on game theory. This same
| model controls nuclear conflict doctrine on earth and is
| responsible for megatons pointed at you right now. An old 50's
| methodology, absorb the Russians since we cant beat icbm's and
| dont trust they would disarm under a treaty. In a multiploar
| world arms races continue (this then is a mini analogue for
| grabby aliens but based on nation states). Worryingly usa now
| seeks asymetric dominance in this area increasing the likelyhood
| of conflict (or is it worrying?). I would say at this point that
| perhaps advanced intelligences, or even aumented humans of 50
| years hence! Or decentralised direct democracies of 5 - 10 years
| from now! Or me! May consider 'game theory' and its paranoid
| centralised power adherants as psychotic and a smaller filter in
| of itself ( to our kind of socially structured lifeform). The
| dark forest has as its conlusion relativistic first strike
| weapons ( the same as the missile 'shield' )
|
| I would think grabby aliens + uplift and absorption would answer
| the question of how they deal with new life. Dark forest is a fad
| imho, and if im wrong, well i dont think we'll be like that, and
| we will still succeed if we get out of this period
| Gunax wrote:
| The problem with 'unknown unknowns' is that you can come to
| whatever conclusion you want, and it's perfectly logical either
| way.
|
| The 'Dark Forest' model suggests that we should be as quiet and
| inconspicuous as possible.
|
| But I could also propose what I am calling the 'lumberjack
| model'. Suppose a lumberjack wishes to cut down all of trees in
| the forest--but being a sympathetic lumberjack, he avoids felling
| any trees with a birds nest in them. In that case, the birds
| should actively be as loud as possible and make their presence
| known to the lumberjack.
|
| Both models are perfectly logical, but come to opposite
| conclusions--we simply have no idea whether aliens are more like
| the predators of the dark forest or the lumberjack.
|
| As for Hanson's theory, it might be that the universe is one
| giant winner-takes-all system. But I suspect one could also come
| up with an equally valid theory that concludes something else--
| and we have no way to discern one over the other.
|
| It's fun to speculate, I am just encouraging extreme caution I'm
| thinking we have any clue about any of this stuff.
| lhorie wrote:
| But both of those models start from the assumption that it is
| possible for an alien civilization to expand beyond its home
| star in the first place. But if you try to draw parallels to
| known knowns, one could convincingly argue that such an
| assumption is not a given. For example, humans are undoubtedly
| a technologically dominant species on Earth, yet our growth
| model is not to expand to every corner of the planet in an
| indiscriminate fashion: throughout history, humans tended to
| settle (and re-settle) the same areas that were most conducive
| to civilization, while remote areas remain for the most part
| remote.
|
| It really isn't a stretch to posit that an alien form with
| liquid-methane-based chemistry (instead of water-based) would
| want to stay far far away from places like Earth, just like we
| wouldn't like to sunbathe in Mercury. And the boring but most
| likely occam's razor of alien civilizations is that it isn't
| actually physically possible for a civilization to leave their
| home star.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Given the long-term span of evolutionary biology, and the
| short-span of human civilisation, example based on humanity
| are short-sighted. Many would assume "post-human" existence
| that escape the trappings of biology, e.g. even now we have a
| non-biological presence on Mars, in the form of a robotic
| lander; perhaps in a couple 1000 more years humans can settle
| wherever we can build functioning machinery capable of
| supporting AI.
|
| In these "post-singularity" times it's hard to speculate.
| lhorie wrote:
| Robotics last far less than humans do though. Last year
| there were literal forest fires in CA because we can't
| figure out how to hang power cables without succumbing to
| corrosion from a measly 100 years span. If we want to make
| arguments about longevity, we could maybe look at
| microorganisms, but my understanding is they are similar to
| us in the sense that they thrive where it's conducive for
| any given strain to thrive, but die where it's not.
| anthony_romeo wrote:
| Who knows, maybe sufficiently advanced civilizations eventually
| discover some orthogonal means of existence far superior and
| "real" compared to our current universe, and we're just too
| stupid to see it.
|
| Edit: Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure that's close to
| the plot of a Neal Stephenson book I've read.
| lnanek2 wrote:
| Most theories like this are starting from the place of trying
| to solve the Fermi Paradox:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
|
| As time goes on, and we find no evidence of aliens, the dark
| forest model is more and more likely vs. the kindly lumberjack
| model. In the kindly lumberjack model, we're more likely to
| detect other civilizations.
| TTPrograms wrote:
| The Fermi Paradox is not real if you consider the massive
| uncertainty we have on the parameters of the Drake equation:
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404
| sfg wrote:
| What time periods are long enough to warrant significant
| changes to how likely we think it is that the Dark Forest
| Model corresponds to reality? I would have thought very long,
| given the scale of astronomical observations.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> I would have thought very long, given the scale of
| astronomical observations.
|
| Or not. The great thing about astronomical observations is
| that they can scan across millions of years in a few
| seconds. We look at thousands of other galaxies, some old
| and some ancient, but do not see massive extraterrestrial
| civilizations doing big things. That is pretty strong
| evidence that there aren't any lumberjacks chopping down
| stars for firewood.
| sfg wrote:
| So, alone or they're hiding?
| aaroninsf wrote:
| The contention is more nuanced and forceful. It's not
| just that we can do a survey, and are doing them;
|
| it's that our notions of what would be useful to look for
| are to significant extent conditioned on our own level of
| technology.
|
| There are axioms, for sure; but we are also axiomatically
| limited in our imagination to that which we have had
| insight into with so far.
|
| Our surveys to date have focused almost exclusively on
| the presumption that an advanced civilization would emit
| (intentionally or as a byproduct) RF in a manner we can
| detect in the bands it is convenient for us to examine,
| and focus on from reasonable first principles.
|
| But there are as many arbitrary assumptions or allowances
| for our convenience or technology in our surveys as there
| are motivated ones. Arguably more. (I would so argue.)
|
| Not long ago I read that fascinating blow by blow of the
| zero-day demonstration of using Apple device discovery
| exploits to own iPhones, so long as you could get close
| to them.
|
| As interesting to me as the actual exploit mechanics, was
| the patient walk through of the state of the art of
| frequency hopping band-sharing error-and-conflict-
| tolerant protocols matter of factly surrounding in my in
| my house.
|
| Were I a HAM operator patiently looking for CQ, I might
| well miss the massive Zoom party going on on the local
| Wifi. It would be "noise."
|
| I am not making a specific argument, just saying: our own
| technology continues to advance so quickly at our own
| time scale,
|
| that the presumption that the universe we can see is
| "dark" is IMO not just naive but willfully so.
|
| There is much in basic physics we still are struggling
| with and/or have no plausible model for yet.
|
| So long as that is the case, we don't even know if we're
| in a forest, let along a dark one.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> exclusively on the presumption that an advanced
| civilization would emit (intentionally or as a byproduct)
| RF in a manner we can detect
|
| No. That is radio SETI. The search for life also looks
| includes Dyson-SETI, the search for megastructures, or
| other technosignatures, which can have nothing to do with
| RF.
|
| (1) A galaxy without any supernovas, with all the
| dangerous stars pushed out of the galactic disk -> the
| lumberjack scenario. (2) A planet with gasses associated
| with industry -> technosignature. (3) Unexplained
| planetary phenomena, starlight doing things that suggest
| large orbiting megastructures (Dyson sphere territory).
| ... and the list goes on. Radio telescope SETI is one
| very small corner in the search for other civilizations.
| Lichtso wrote:
| > We simply have no idea whether aliens are more like the
| predators of the dark forest or the lumberjack.
|
| That is not entirely true, currently it is 1 to 0 for the dark
| forest theory, as we have at least one data point: Our selves
| (as to aliens, we are aliens), and you surely don't want to
| gain our attention.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Right?
|
| Oh, look, a new continent! Let's kill nearly everyone on it.
|
| Oh, look, a new planet! ...
| mdoms wrote:
| Except that much of the world has culturally outgrown this
| kind of rape and pillage mindset. It's reasonable to assume
| that trend will continue as we enter the interstellar age.
| speeder wrote:
| Sorry but I think people from Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen,
| Syria, South America until some 20 years ago and so on...
| disagree with you... at least for the pillaging part.
|
| For the rape part you have what the UN been doing in
| Africa or central america.
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| Let's not forget the ethnic cleansing in China, similar
| cleansing of the Rohyinga in Burma, open slave markets in
| Libya, etc. etc.
|
| Human nature hasn't hasn't changed, we just ran out of
| easy to settle real estate. And it's not cost effective
| to go after easily settled areas -- a couple of world
| wars showed how ugly that can get.
|
| Once climate change starts changing things I'm sure we'll
| see yet more "colonization" and unpleasant behavior.
| savanaly wrote:
| The bombing of innocents in those places, while tragic,
| is nowhere near the scale of the destruction of native
| populations that was happening a few centuries ago, and
| public outcry is also louder from the countries doing it.
| So the trend is in the right direction, wouldn't you
| agree?
| jpdaigle wrote:
| A counter-argument I've read to the dark forest theory is that:
|
| * spectroscopic analysis can show that our atmosphere is
| oxygen-rich, and this can be detected from a range of many
| light-years away * oxygen-rich atmospheres probably indicate
| life * we've had an oxygen-rich atmosphere for hundreds of
| millions of years
|
| So, yes, radio wave emissions have only been going on for 100
| years, but we've looked like a life-bearing planet for 100s of
| millions of years and nobody's taken a successful extinction
| shot at us that we know of.
| lucozade wrote:
| > nobody's taken a successful extinction shot at us that we
| know of.
|
| Are you sure? Someone's been chucking bloody big rocks at us
| for millions of years, on and off. Some of which appear to
| have caused some pretty spectacular extinctions.
|
| Maybe the issue is that we think the aliens fly around in
| saucers when, in fact, they are just playing a gigantic game
| of pinball.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > oxygen-rich atmospheres probably indicate life
|
| Is it though? We only have one example of "life" and that is
| an oxygen based form. Supposing all forms of life are similar
| is something I consider unproven.
|
| It might be more accurate to say an "unusual" planetary
| chemistry is indicative of an unusual process, which might
| include life. But then the question is: How many planets are
| there with unusual chemistry? I think we are far from
| observing this - the many planets we now suppose to exist are
| only just being discovered, starting with the largest, the
| hottest, and the nearest.
| ericb wrote:
| Wouldn't population growth rate need be massive in order to
| overcome the large difference in volume that a small increase to
| the diameter of the sphere causes?
|
| Given a quick scan, I don't see anywhere that takes into account
| population increases in the paper. The only way I think this
| works is if you count meeting the society's Von Neumann probes as
| meeting them.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Expanding Menaces explored here [0]. Tl;dr: Expanding menaces get
| nipped pretty early by inconceivably older non-menaces with
| limited patience.
|
| [0] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26440071>
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-18 23:02 UTC)