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Once we can see them, it’s too late

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Re: Once we can see them, it’s too late

#101

Post by Frypa »

lebuffon wrote: post #74

Or... is it possible that we are not supposed to meet the "others? Consider: If you wanted to build a "terrarium" for sentient evolving life forms how would you keep them from escaping? 1. Make the distances really really big 2. Put a speed limit in the environment Rolled up with the Fermi paradox this simulation has "smelled fishy" to me for some time. :)

> 1. Make the distances really really big 2. Put a speed limit in the environment

Or 3. Don't give humans capabilities to see them. Hell, I'd go even further, what if the "others" are already living on our planet, but we can't see them?

Re: Once we can see them, it’s too late

#102

Post by kurthr »

ivalm wrote: post #88
kurthr wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can seed enough intelligence with self replicating "nano-machines", which seems reasonable, then you can accelerate clouds of that material at quite close to the speed of light with high power lasers, much like diffuse solar sails. No need to carry large payloads, reaction mass, or energy... those are at the endpoint where you find them (and convert them into grey-goo?). It's more of a viral mode of expansion…

They still need to decelerate. Even nanomachines will not survive if they hit planets at close to c.

That's a good point, although I don't think you could target a planet in any case. You're looking at solar systems, and properly designed a single surviving nano-machine skipping off the atmosphere of a gas giant would be sufficient to start exponential replication.

Re: Once we can see them, it’s too late

#103

Post by bserge »

We're just not looking hard enough. It might seem like a ton of money has been poured into it, but space tech and especially monitoring is so underfunded that it could be a joke when compared against anything else.

Any entertainment industry on its own has more funding than all of humanity's space pursuits. All the apps for tracking time, buying clothes, losing weight, scanning tomatoes, properly wiping, get more money than the ESA or JAXA (at least NASA has more than them heh).

All the speculation and dreams of a great space colonization are nice, but the reality is that most of us will die on this planet, and likely take half of the life on it with us.

Re: Once we can see them, it’s too late

#104

Post by kcartlidge »

codeulike wrote: post #61
ndjtjgkglf wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory you can manipulate atoms and molecules at a distance with light. So you can use a laser beam to construct a 3D printer at a distance. Rinse and repeat, and this is asymptotically expanding at c.

The first few pages of Glory by Greg Egan describe something a bit like that. https://bobson.ludost.net/hugoawardnominees/2008/GregEganGlo...

I hadn't read that before; thanks :)

Re: Once we can see them, it’s too late

#105

Post by saberdancer »

ncmncm wrote: post #91
chronolitus wrote: post #53

I like to imagine that this is how things would look if we entered a Karadashev type III civilization's light cone: One day, in a small quadrant of the galaxy, we'd notice starts "shutting off", simply going dark. After a few months, our astonomers would confirm their new model: the amount of stars going dark is increasing. Days later: the rate of increase itself, is increasing. One day we'd wake up, and a small port…

Doesn't it seem kind of stupid that a K-III civilization would depend on collecting starlight for energy? Even the most extreme-primitive cultures, barely off their home planet, will have mastered controlled fusion. Almost immediately, they have no more use for small rocky gravity-well planets, or even for stars. They live in Oort clouds where thermal noise is low and cold is plentiful.

I agree. It seems very shortsighted to assume a highly advanced civilization would act in this way. Not only would creating Dyson Spheres be extremely visible (Dark Forest comes to mind), but I doubt that these type of civilizations would be energy constrained. Simple fusion reactor solves most of the energy issues.

Re: Once we can see them, it’s too late

#106

Post by AnimalMuppet »

bob33212 wrote: post #98
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine, but you seem to regard it as at least virtually certain. Why? What is your basis for regarding it as close to certain?

https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revol...

I've seen that article. I don't find it convincing. Start with the first screen: An exponential graph does not have a sharp kink in it just past where you are standing. The rest of the point is valid (an exponential curve means that the next bit if change will be faster than the last bit, and that's going to surprise you), but he's cheating to try to make the point more visually dramatic. It implies "there's a discontinuous first derivative coming almost immediately", when the argument is actually that there's a continuous increase in the first derivative.

So, yeah. Overselling the case, in the graph on the first screen.

Re: Once we can see them, it’s too late

#107

Post by schwartzworld »

saberdancer wrote: post #105
ncmncm wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't it seem kind of stupid that a K-III civilization would depend on collecting starlight for energy? Even the most extreme-primitive cultures, barely off their home planet, will have mastered controlled fusion. Almost immediately, they have no more use for small rocky gravity-well planets, or even for stars. They live in Oort clouds where thermal noise is low and cold is plentiful.

I agree. It seems very shortsighted to assume a highly advanced civilization would act in this way. Not only would creating Dyson Spheres be extremely visible (Dark Forest comes to mind), but I doubt that these type of civilizations would be energy constrained. Simple fusion reactor solves most of the energy issues.

Maybe Dyson spheres as farms? Fusion wouldn't produce food.

Re: Once we can see them, it’s too late

#108

Post by sangnoir »

nostrademons wrote: post #64

Another interesting idea I've been playing with is that there's no guarantee that the lifeform that replaces us will be the same level of complexity . What does it feel like to be a molecule? A mitochondria? A cell? All of these are or were once self-contained "things", but now they exist as part of larger systems. Our image of the beings that replace us tends to look like us and be roughly the same size - robots or…

The is an interesting take on a superorganism in Venor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep

Re: Once we can see them, it’s too late

#109

Post by sangnoir »

uxcolumbo wrote: post #70
bob33212 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are within 500 years of creating millions of self sustaining spaceports. We are within 500 years of AGI. We are within 500 years of understanding quantum gravity. We are within 500 years of fixing biological death. The order we get to those and how they interplay and change the world matters so much that it doesn't make sense to worry about making predictions.

What about the climate crisis halting or slowing down technological progress?

Or if we find out that micro-plastics lead to a marked increased cancer rates, resulting in a precipitous drop in life expectancy.

Re: Once we can see them, it’s too late

#110

Post by saberdancer »

schwartzworld wrote: post #107
saberdancer wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It seems very shortsighted to assume a highly advanced civilization would act in this way. Not only would creating Dyson Spheres be extremely visible (Dark Forest comes to mind), but I doubt that these type of civilizations would be energy constrained. Simple fusion reactor solves most of the energy issues.

Maybe Dyson spheres as farms? Fusion wouldn't produce food.

Sure, but if you have abundant energy you can use hydroponics to achieve the same. Dyson spheres provide vast amount of space but if you have practically infinite power you can create habitats that provide the same functionality with added benefits of gravity (O'Neill cylinder) and not being visible at star distances.
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