4 ms·

One interesting thought: "... there are many civilizations in the universe, they all want to survive, and there is only so much space out there. Follow the log

by Gys 11y ago

One interesting thought: "... there are many civilizations in the universe, they all want to survive, and there is only so much space out there. Follow the logic through, and it’s clear that every civilization must regard every other civilization as an existential threat, leaving attack on sight as the only safe strategy. All that keeps technologically inferior civilizations safe is the ignorance of others about their existence." "And here is humanity firing messages into space, building bonfires and standing beside them screaming, “Here I am! Here I am!”

nsns 11y ago
"...and there is only so much space out there" How so?
- T-A 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe#Coalescence_of_Local_Group_and_galaxies_outside_the_Local_Group_are_no_longer_accessible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_univers...
a_bonobo 11y ago
I like the perspective of Stanislaw Lem on this, especially in His Master's Voice - there may be others shouting out there, but we have not the ability to understand their shouts, we may even have problems understanding that a shout is a shout and not just random noise. Later pretentious edit: To quote Wittgenstein, "If a lion could speak, we could not understand him."
- thret 11y ago
  I disagree with this view. If a species is intelligent enough to shout and desires to be heard, not sounding like random noise is the first criteria they will address.
  - radicalbyte 11y ago
    We couldn't even understand the language of one of the great empires (Egypt) until we found a rock containing translations into other known languages.
    - cmsj 11y ago
      But we could distinguish it as a language from the background noise of the sand/Rock. Finding a message would be hugely significant, even if we're too dumb to decode it.
      - a_bonobo 11y ago
        >Finding a message would be hugely significant, even if we're too dumb to decode it. That is actually what the majority of my above mentioned His Master's Voice is about - is this relatively regularly appearing signal a message? Or is it just regularly looking noise from some physical object we haven't discovered yet?
        fit2rule 11y ago
        All the white noise of the sun could indeed just be part of the galactic network, of which we have not yet discovered the keys .. so it may look like white-noise until we find the key. I'm happier with that position than that, so far, we just don't know the message because there has not been a 'good one we can understand easily', i.e. ufo on the whitehouse lawn ..
        adrianN 11y ago
        If that regular noise produces prime numbers, it is very unlikely to be natural. Species that have the ability to send signals into space also have the ability to show their intelligence. Whether actual communication is possible is a different question.
      - tiatia 11y ago
        Old Egyptian developed and was never meant to be "decrypted" from scratch. Some thing will have to be the same for the aliens. Some things like mathematics (Pi, Pythagoras, Primes). If you send a message that needs to be understood, send mathematical information.
adnzzzzZ 11y ago
This assumes every other civilization thinks like humanity does. While there may be many that do, there may be many that don't. And it seems that humanity's progress points towards a direction where people are much more peaceful than they are now, simply because the resource allocation problem might be solved with technology. And it also makes sense to assume that civilizations that don't move towards more peaceful existences would end up killing themselves given that technological progress usually gives individuals more power to be destructive. So another interesting thought is that if there are civilizations out there who are more advanced than us, it's likely that they are by default peaceful and not aggressive, because if they were aggressive they would have stopped existing due to escalating internal conflicts aided by advanced technology.
- louithethrid 11y ago
  The one whoe gets c on the rocks and those into your blocks, wins this argument. A strange game where not to participate, is not a option, but a embraced necessity. One can imagine a conquering civilisation though, that has peace enforced on the inside.
- abrookewood 11y ago
  Agreed. It also ignores the practical issue of actually getting to another planet in order to conquer it.
  - est 11y ago
    This is the exact plot of Liu CiXin's fiction. Suppose you wanna conquer a civilization 1M lightyears away, but by the time you get there, the technology of the civilization will out grow yours. What's your strategy?
- V-2 11y ago
  @adnzzzzZ obviously we have no way of knowing, but for argument's sake, I believe for every assumption you make there's an equally compelling rebuttal. "This assumes every other civilization thinks like humanity does" Survival of the fittest is a fact of life, and whatever mindset one has about it may be irrelevant. As game theory proves, the majority, or even all players may dislike the game, but they have to play it all the same. "the resource allocation problem might be solved with technology" Perhaps there are resource allocation problems that can't, eg. the scarcity of habitable planets. "it's likely that they are by default peaceful and not aggressive, because if they were aggressive they would have stopped existing due to escalating internal conflicts aided by advanced technology" Or it could be a bell curve with a self-destructing "war of all against all" on one side, "peaceful but defenseless monks" on another, and the middle-of-the-road compromise of "disciplined legions where backstabbing is forbidden" being best fitted for survival, preying on less efficient civilizations from both ends of the spectrum alike.
benihana 11y ago
https://xkcd.com/1377/ https://xkcd.com/1377/
elorant 11y ago
If a scenario like that was true we shouldn’t be here in the first place. Assuming that there is an advanced civilization out there in a killing spree all they’d have to do is launch a legion of probes in the outskirts of the galaxy and once they find sentient life unleash a biological weapon and eradicate it once and for all. They don’t have to find us by listening to radio waves. They could just look for planets that could support life, same as we do with our Kepler mission. Only they could have spotted Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago, so no chance for humanity to evolve in our current state at all.
- yclept 11y ago
  Maybe they spotted earth millions of years ago and wiped out the dominant dinosaur population mammals being unaffected? :]
- V-2 11y ago
  Unless Earth life as we know it (unicellars, dinosaurs, humans - everything) WAS this biological weapon that eradicated whatever else would normally have evolved here ; )
chuckup 11y ago
> every civilization must regard every other civilization as an existential threat I've wondered about this! If "the singularity" is something that really can happen, then perhaps it IS wise to fear any civilization that has developed basic computing, as it could quickly spawn an incredibly advanced, immortal being in a very short amount of time. And if it can happen, then I'm sure at some point in history, an AI did take hold somewhere. Realizing how dangerous this whole singularity thing can be, it sought out the destruction of any biological life that could someday create their own singularity. I've wondered if the Fermi paradox is simply that a few AI's developed long ago, and decided not to take any chances.
wging 11y ago
I like Peter Watts on this. WARNING--this will be a spoiler of sorts for Blindsight. So... go read it. It's online for free, as is a fair amount of his back catalog, and it is a CLASSIC of harder-than-hard SF. http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm > Imagine that you encounter a signal. It is structured, and dense with information. It meets all the criteria of an intelligent transmission. Evolution and experience offer a variety of paths to follow, branch-points in the flowcharts that handle such input. Sometimes these signals come from conspecifics who have useful information to share, whose lives you'll defend according to the rules of kin selection. Sometimes they come from competitors or predators or other inimical entities that must be avoided or destroyed; in those cases, the information may prove of significant tactical value. Some signals may even arise from entities which, while not kin, can still serve as allies or symbionts in mutually beneficial pursuits. You can derive appropriate responses for any of these eventualities, and many others. > You decode the signals, and stumble: > I had a great time. I really enjoyed him. > Even if he cost twice as much as any other hooker in the dome— > To fully appreciate Kesey's Quartet— > They hate us for our freedom— > Pay attention, now— > Understand. > There are no meaningful translations for these terms. They are needlessly recursive. They contain no usable intelligence, yet they are structured intelligently; there is no chance they could have arisen by chance. > The only explanation is that something has coded nonsense in a way that poses as a useful message; only after wasting time and effort does the deception becomes apparent. The signal functions to consume the resources of a recipient for zero payoff and reduced fitness. The signal is a virus. > Viruses do not arise from kin, symbionts, or other allies. > The signal is an attack. > And it's coming from right about there.
- hackuser 11y ago
  >> The only explanation is that something has coded nonsense in a way that poses as a useful message; only after wasting time and effort does the deception becomes apparent. The signal functions to consume the resources of a recipient for zero payoff and reduced fitness. The signal is a virus. Hmmm ... this makes me think of how much time I spend reading information on the Internet, reducing my fitness with little payoff. A virus indeed.
wangii 11y ago
It's exactly what the 2nd instalment about: a `scientific` definition of good/evil in the scale of universe, and its consequence, the Femi Paradox.

by Gys 11y ago

nsns 11y ago

"...and there is only so much space out there" How so?

T-A 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe#Coalescence_of_Local_Group_and_galaxies_outside_the_Local_Group_are_no_longer_accessible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_univers...

a_bonobo 11y ago

I like the perspective of Stanislaw Lem on this, especially in His Master's Voice - there may be others shouting out there, but we have not the ability to understand their shouts, we may even have problems understanding that a shout is a shout and not just random noise. Later pretentious edit: To quote Wittgenstein, "If a lion could speak, we could not understand him."

thret 11y ago
I disagree with this view. If a species is intelligent enough to shout and desires to be heard, not sounding like random noise is the first criteria they will address.
- radicalbyte 11y ago
  We couldn't even understand the language of one of the great empires (Egypt) until we found a rock containing translations into other known languages.
  - cmsj 11y ago
    But we could distinguish it as a language from the background noise of the sand/Rock. Finding a message would be hugely significant, even if we're too dumb to decode it.
    - a_bonobo 11y ago
      >Finding a message would be hugely significant, even if we're too dumb to decode it. That is actually what the majority of my above mentioned His Master's Voice is about - is this relatively regularly appearing signal a message? Or is it just regularly looking noise from some physical object we haven't discovered yet?
      - fit2rule 11y ago
        All the white noise of the sun could indeed just be part of the galactic network, of which we have not yet discovered the keys .. so it may look like white-noise until we find the key. I'm happier with that position than that, so far, we just don't know the message because there has not been a 'good one we can understand easily', i.e. ufo on the whitehouse lawn ..
      - adrianN 11y ago
        If that regular noise produces prime numbers, it is very unlikely to be natural. Species that have the ability to send signals into space also have the ability to show their intelligence. Whether actual communication is possible is a different question.
    - tiatia 11y ago
      Old Egyptian developed and was never meant to be "decrypted" from scratch. Some thing will have to be the same for the aliens. Some things like mathematics (Pi, Pythagoras, Primes). If you send a message that needs to be understood, send mathematical information.

adnzzzzZ 11y ago

This assumes every other civilization thinks like humanity does. While there may be many that do, there may be many that don't. And it seems that humanity's progress points towards a direction where people are much more peaceful than they are now, simply because the resource allocation problem might be solved with technology. And it also makes sense to assume that civilizations that don't move towards more peaceful existences would end up killing themselves given that technological progress usually gives individuals more power to be destructive. So another interesting thought is that if there are civilizations out there who are more advanced than us, it's likely that they are by default peaceful and not aggressive, because if they were aggressive they would have stopped existing due to escalating internal conflicts aided by advanced technology.

louithethrid 11y ago
The one whoe gets c on the rocks and those into your blocks, wins this argument. A strange game where not to participate, is not a option, but a embraced necessity. One can imagine a conquering civilisation though, that has peace enforced on the inside.
abrookewood 11y ago
Agreed. It also ignores the practical issue of actually getting to another planet in order to conquer it.
- est 11y ago
  This is the exact plot of Liu CiXin's fiction. Suppose you wanna conquer a civilization 1M lightyears away, but by the time you get there, the technology of the civilization will out grow yours. What's your strategy?
V-2 11y ago
@adnzzzzZ obviously we have no way of knowing, but for argument's sake, I believe for every assumption you make there's an equally compelling rebuttal. "This assumes every other civilization thinks like humanity does" Survival of the fittest is a fact of life, and whatever mindset one has about it may be irrelevant. As game theory proves, the majority, or even all players may dislike the game, but they have to play it all the same. "the resource allocation problem might be solved with technology" Perhaps there are resource allocation problems that can't, eg. the scarcity of habitable planets. "it's likely that they are by default peaceful and not aggressive, because if they were aggressive they would have stopped existing due to escalating internal conflicts aided by advanced technology" Or it could be a bell curve with a self-destructing "war of all against all" on one side, "peaceful but defenseless monks" on another, and the middle-of-the-road compromise of "disciplined legions where backstabbing is forbidden" being best fitted for survival, preying on less efficient civilizations from both ends of the spectrum alike.

benihana 11y ago

https://xkcd.com/1377/ https://xkcd.com/1377/

elorant 11y ago

If a scenario like that was true we shouldn’t be here in the first place. Assuming that there is an advanced civilization out there in a killing spree all they’d have to do is launch a legion of probes in the outskirts of the galaxy and once they find sentient life unleash a biological weapon and eradicate it once and for all. They don’t have to find us by listening to radio waves. They could just look for planets that could support life, same as we do with our Kepler mission. Only they could have spotted Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago, so no chance for humanity to evolve in our current state at all.

yclept 11y ago
Maybe they spotted earth millions of years ago and wiped out the dominant dinosaur population mammals being unaffected? :]
V-2 11y ago
Unless Earth life as we know it (unicellars, dinosaurs, humans - everything) WAS this biological weapon that eradicated whatever else would normally have evolved here ; )

chuckup 11y ago

> every civilization must regard every other civilization as an existential threat I've wondered about this! If "the singularity" is something that really can happen, then perhaps it IS wise to fear any civilization that has developed basic computing, as it could quickly spawn an incredibly advanced, immortal being in a very short amount of time. And if it can happen, then I'm sure at some point in history, an AI did take hold somewhere. Realizing how dangerous this whole singularity thing can be, it sought out the destruction of any biological life that could someday create their own singularity. I've wondered if the Fermi paradox is simply that a few AI's developed long ago, and decided not to take any chances.

wging 11y ago

I like Peter Watts on this. WARNING--this will be a spoiler of sorts for Blindsight. So... go read it. It's online for free, as is a fair amount of his back catalog, and it is a CLASSIC of harder-than-hard SF. http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm > Imagine that you encounter a signal. It is structured, and dense with information. It meets all the criteria of an intelligent transmission. Evolution and experience offer a variety of paths to follow, branch-points in the flowcharts that handle such input. Sometimes these signals come from conspecifics who have useful information to share, whose lives you'll defend according to the rules of kin selection. Sometimes they come from competitors or predators or other inimical entities that must be avoided or destroyed; in those cases, the information may prove of significant tactical value. Some signals may even arise from entities which, while not kin, can still serve as allies or symbionts in mutually beneficial pursuits. You can derive appropriate responses for any of these eventualities, and many others. > You decode the signals, and stumble: > I had a great time. I really enjoyed him. > Even if he cost twice as much as any other hooker in the dome— > To fully appreciate Kesey's Quartet— > They hate us for our freedom— > Pay attention, now— > Understand. > There are no meaningful translations for these terms. They are needlessly recursive. They contain no usable intelligence, yet they are structured intelligently; there is no chance they could have arisen by chance. > The only explanation is that something has coded nonsense in a way that poses as a useful message; only after wasting time and effort does the deception becomes apparent. The signal functions to consume the resources of a recipient for zero payoff and reduced fitness. The signal is a virus. > Viruses do not arise from kin, symbionts, or other allies. > The signal is an attack. > And it's coming from right about there.

hackuser 11y ago
>> The only explanation is that something has coded nonsense in a way that poses as a useful message; only after wasting time and effort does the deception becomes apparent. The signal functions to consume the resources of a recipient for zero payoff and reduced fitness. The signal is a virus. Hmmm ... this makes me think of how much time I spend reading information on the Internet, reducing my fitness with little payoff. A virus indeed.

wangii 11y ago

It's exactly what the 2nd instalment about: a `scientific` definition of good/evil in the scale of universe, and its consequence, the Femi Paradox.