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While it's entirely possible they'd have a good reason to be stealthy, I don't think it's likely to be anything we've thought of. The Prime Directive is a mush

While it's entirely possible they'd have a good reason to be stealthy, I don't think it's likely to be anything we've thought of. The Prime Directive is a mushy human emotional idea, not something that makes any logical sense for a space-faring civilization to follow. If there's any competition out there among space-faring civilizations, none of them are going to tie their hands behind their backs by refusing to touch planets that have native life on them. And under the Dark Forest, the best way to survive would be to replicate as fast as possible, consuming all available resources. They would want to hide from external, more-powerful civilizations, but they'd have no reason at all to hide from us. Hiding from us would be a strict loss for them, as it means they can't mine Earth for resources.

throwaway316943 6y ago
I’m not sure that reasoning holds up. There’s no reason to believe that “mushy human emotional ideas” are not the norm. There’s no data to support that claim since humanity is the only example we have of intelligence. So for the sake of the argument I’m going to define alien intelligence as similar to human intelligence. I’d also inquire what the point of having a Von Neumann probe consume all of a system would be? It’s not practical to ship the resources anywhere at sub light speed. There’s a limit on the number of probes it would be rational to make in any one system even if you were going for high redundancy. Even use as a weapon would be foolish since there’s a good chance something could go wrong and you’d wind up killing your own systems. Maybe if you were paving the way for a colony but even then you’d only build what you needed to avoid having to constantly maintain the structures until they were useful. The only way I see an exploitive strategy working is if you have FTL travel and if you have that then Von Neumann probes are useless old technology since you would just send a fleet of ships with what you need to get started rather than trying to bootstrap from a single self replicating probe.
- kentonv 6y ago
  Once a civilization is capable of building Von Neumann probes, it would be silly for them not to do so. They are basically free, since they are self-replicating. Of course a civilization is going to want to control and harness as many resources as it possibly can. We may not be able to imagine what they'd want to build out of whole star systems, but I absolutely don't believe that civilization will ever run out of things to build. If there's any competition between civilizations, then it's even more obvious that each one will be racing to claim any star system that isn't already claimed. But even with no competition, it makes sense to spread rapidly. If you don't find that intuitively obvious, consider this: In 4.5 billion years, the Milky Way will collide with Andromeda. This presents us with a literal galactic-scale single-turn prisoner's dilemma: If intelligent life exists in Andromeda, they may already be preparing to conquer the Milky Way. If they are, and we don't prepare to fight back, they will obviously win. We won't have any ability to communicate with Andromeda to find out their intentions until it's too late. The earlier we start preparing, the more likely we are to survive. So if I were a spacefaring civilization in the Milky Way today, I'd be doing everything I could to mobilize every star system in the galaxy in preparation to beat Andromeda. There's just no reason not to...
  - landryraccoon 6y ago
    That's self destructive behavior on a planetary scale. No species that has an instinct or culture to consume all available resources will survive long enough to do it on a galactic scale. Also, the math doesn't work out in the sense that if a species that had this instinct reached interstellar travel a million years ago the Milky Way galaxy would already have entirely been consumed. That's the Fermi Paradox in a nutshell. If the species you are describing exists, they must have just started eating the galaxy, because the galaxy would already be eaten in an blink of an eye on the cosmic timeline. Lets suppose that it takes a ten thousand years to reach a star system and consume it, and the swarm needs the resources of an entire star system just to build 2 more probes. That means that the number of star systems consumed doubles every ten thousand years. At that rate it takes no more than 50 generations, or half a million years, to consume the entire galaxy. Note that if the number of probes the Von Neumann swarm builds is more than 2 per star system consumed, this process happens even faster.
    - kentonv 6y ago
      Right, this is why I don't actually think the object is a probe: if there is no competition, then a million years from now, we can expect Earth-originating technology will have spread across the galaxy. To imagine that another civilization exists but is no more than a million years ahead of us seems like too much of a coincidence.
    - knome 6y ago
      >That's self destructive behavior on a planetary scale. No species that has an instinct or culture to consume all available resources will survive long enough to do it on a galactic scale. Have you ever read Issac Asimov's story "The Gentle Vultures"?
  - ithkuil 6y ago
    Andromeda has 3-4 more stars than the milky way; we already lost, should we flee instead?
    - kentonv 6y ago
- landryraccoon 6y ago
  Consuming all available resources and destroying all competing life doesn’t make sense even for us as the dominant species of a single planet. What’s the evidence that wholesale environmental destruction is a good idea on a galactic scale if it’s already known to be a terrible idea on a planetary scale?
  - kentonv 6y ago
    It's a terrible idea for humans on our planet because we are squishy biological beings whose life is intrinsically dependent on the biosphere around us. Self-replicating hyper-intelligent artificial beings presumably will be able to redesign themselves to match any target environment. Note: This is not a moral judgment. I obviously think it would be awful if some AI gray goo consumed the universe and wiped out all the unique forms of life. But I think that's a rather human value and I don't see why the AI would share it.
    - landryraccoon 6y ago
      Here's the problem. It would be astoundingly unlikely that we would still exist if such a civilization existed. For this to have happened, it must have happened much less than a million years ago, otherwise your hypothetical civilization would already have easily consumed the entire galaxy. Since we are still here, if that civilization exists, it must have arrived on the interstellar scene less than one quarter of one tenth of one percent (< 0.025%) of the age of the solar system ago. That seems like a crazy unlikely chance. This is the fundamental problem with Von Neumann probes / AI grey goo in general : They eat the galaxy way, way faster than anyone can imagine. If they exist, why are we still here?
  - natmaka 6y ago
    We commonly consume most available resources and try hard to destroy much competing life... in a given part of what we consider as our territory (our planet), for example when establishing then maintaining/growing a city. Earth may be part of what an alien species consider as their territory.
KozmoNau7 6y ago
No, they're currently terraforming Earth¹ to have a CO2 level that is better for their metabolisms. ¹ through influencing politicians and the rich and powerful to keep poisoning the Earth with extreme pollution.
- wffurr 6y ago
  The politicians and rich and powerful are the aliens. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indiewire.com/2014/10/john-carpenters-they-live-as-a-subversive-masterpiece-125566/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indiewire.com/2014/10/john-...
  - selimthegrim 6y ago
    I so thought that was going to be a link to The Arrival.
akamoonknight 6y ago
Regarding the prime directive as a mushy human emotional idea. I don't think it's unreasonable for some advanced society to see preservation of newly encountered life as a worthy goal even as a selfish motive. How many new ideas and ways that nature solves problems are we still learning just from the life on earth?
nafey 6y ago
What you are missing is that technological advancement can accelerate exponentially. Couple this fact nothing can move faster than light. This means if you don't stamp out alien life as soon as you encounter it then the next time you come back they might already have achieved technological parity with you. And they might not be as forgiving as you are. This means you have to hide and you have to exterminate any alien life that knowns about your existence. I do think if oumuamua was an alien probe then we should be gravely concerned.
- kentonv 6y ago
  > the next time you come back This is imagining that space exploration is done by human-like entities that have discrete physical bodies and slow reproduction rates. They come to a place, check it out, and move on. AI-driven Von Neumann probes would operate very differently. They arrive, and they settle and replicate. Eventually they send out new probes. But they don't leave once they have arrived. There's never any reason to leave.
  - nafey 6y ago
    Okay the point is you won't wait to mobilize against alien life. Assuming that technology increases exponentially it will be prudent to launch as soon as you detect the alien life even if it takes you a hundred years to reach the destination.
coredog64 6y ago
What resources does Earth have that wouldn’t be more plentiful elsewhere? Minerals are cheaper to extract from asteroids (no gravity well). If I have the ability to cross interstellar space, then I can’t imagine that water is even worth that much.
- senectus1 6y ago
  Sweet sweet human flesh...

throwaway316943 6y ago

I’m not sure that reasoning holds up. There’s no reason to believe that “mushy human emotional ideas” are not the norm. There’s no data to support that claim since humanity is the only example we have of intelligence. So for the sake of the argument I’m going to define alien intelligence as similar to human intelligence. I’d also inquire what the point of having a Von Neumann probe consume all of a system would be? It’s not practical to ship the resources anywhere at sub light speed. There’s a limit on the number of probes it would be rational to make in any one system even if you were going for high redundancy. Even use as a weapon would be foolish since there’s a good chance something could go wrong and you’d wind up killing your own systems. Maybe if you were paving the way for a colony but even then you’d only build what you needed to avoid having to constantly maintain the structures until they were useful. The only way I see an exploitive strategy working is if you have FTL travel and if you have that then Von Neumann probes are useless old technology since you would just send a fleet of ships with what you need to get started rather than trying to bootstrap from a single self replicating probe.

kentonv 6y ago
Once a civilization is capable of building Von Neumann probes, it would be silly for them not to do so. They are basically free, since they are self-replicating. Of course a civilization is going to want to control and harness as many resources as it possibly can. We may not be able to imagine what they'd want to build out of whole star systems, but I absolutely don't believe that civilization will ever run out of things to build. If there's any competition between civilizations, then it's even more obvious that each one will be racing to claim any star system that isn't already claimed. But even with no competition, it makes sense to spread rapidly. If you don't find that intuitively obvious, consider this: In 4.5 billion years, the Milky Way will collide with Andromeda. This presents us with a literal galactic-scale single-turn prisoner's dilemma: If intelligent life exists in Andromeda, they may already be preparing to conquer the Milky Way. If they are, and we don't prepare to fight back, they will obviously win. We won't have any ability to communicate with Andromeda to find out their intentions until it's too late. The earlier we start preparing, the more likely we are to survive. So if I were a spacefaring civilization in the Milky Way today, I'd be doing everything I could to mobilize every star system in the galaxy in preparation to beat Andromeda. There's just no reason not to...
- landryraccoon 6y ago
  That's self destructive behavior on a planetary scale. No species that has an instinct or culture to consume all available resources will survive long enough to do it on a galactic scale. Also, the math doesn't work out in the sense that if a species that had this instinct reached interstellar travel a million years ago the Milky Way galaxy would already have entirely been consumed. That's the Fermi Paradox in a nutshell. If the species you are describing exists, they must have just started eating the galaxy, because the galaxy would already be eaten in an blink of an eye on the cosmic timeline. Lets suppose that it takes a ten thousand years to reach a star system and consume it, and the swarm needs the resources of an entire star system just to build 2 more probes. That means that the number of star systems consumed doubles every ten thousand years. At that rate it takes no more than 50 generations, or half a million years, to consume the entire galaxy. Note that if the number of probes the Von Neumann swarm builds is more than 2 per star system consumed, this process happens even faster.
  - kentonv 6y ago
    Right, this is why I don't actually think the object is a probe: if there is no competition, then a million years from now, we can expect Earth-originating technology will have spread across the galaxy. To imagine that another civilization exists but is no more than a million years ahead of us seems like too much of a coincidence.
  - knome 6y ago
    >That's self destructive behavior on a planetary scale. No species that has an instinct or culture to consume all available resources will survive long enough to do it on a galactic scale. Have you ever read Issac Asimov's story "The Gentle Vultures"?
- ithkuil 6y ago
  Andromeda has 3-4 more stars than the milky way; we already lost, should we flee instead?
  - kentonv 6y ago
landryraccoon 6y ago
Consuming all available resources and destroying all competing life doesn’t make sense even for us as the dominant species of a single planet. What’s the evidence that wholesale environmental destruction is a good idea on a galactic scale if it’s already known to be a terrible idea on a planetary scale?
- kentonv 6y ago
  It's a terrible idea for humans on our planet because we are squishy biological beings whose life is intrinsically dependent on the biosphere around us. Self-replicating hyper-intelligent artificial beings presumably will be able to redesign themselves to match any target environment. Note: This is not a moral judgment. I obviously think it would be awful if some AI gray goo consumed the universe and wiped out all the unique forms of life. But I think that's a rather human value and I don't see why the AI would share it.
  - landryraccoon 6y ago
    Here's the problem. It would be astoundingly unlikely that we would still exist if such a civilization existed. For this to have happened, it must have happened much less than a million years ago, otherwise your hypothetical civilization would already have easily consumed the entire galaxy. Since we are still here, if that civilization exists, it must have arrived on the interstellar scene less than one quarter of one tenth of one percent (< 0.025%) of the age of the solar system ago. That seems like a crazy unlikely chance. This is the fundamental problem with Von Neumann probes / AI grey goo in general : They eat the galaxy way, way faster than anyone can imagine. If they exist, why are we still here?
- natmaka 6y ago
  We commonly consume most available resources and try hard to destroy much competing life... in a given part of what we consider as our territory (our planet), for example when establishing then maintaining/growing a city. Earth may be part of what an alien species consider as their territory.

KozmoNau7 6y ago

No, they're currently terraforming Earth¹ to have a CO2 level that is better for their metabolisms. ¹ through influencing politicians and the rich and powerful to keep poisoning the Earth with extreme pollution.

wffurr 6y ago
The politicians and rich and powerful are the aliens. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indiewire.com/2014/10/john-carpenters-they-live-as-a-subversive-masterpiece-125566/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indiewire.com/2014/10/john-...
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  I so thought that was going to be a link to The Arrival.

akamoonknight 6y ago

Regarding the prime directive as a mushy human emotional idea. I don't think it's unreasonable for some advanced society to see preservation of newly encountered life as a worthy goal even as a selfish motive. How many new ideas and ways that nature solves problems are we still learning just from the life on earth?

nafey 6y ago

What you are missing is that technological advancement can accelerate exponentially. Couple this fact nothing can move faster than light. This means if you don't stamp out alien life as soon as you encounter it then the next time you come back they might already have achieved technological parity with you. And they might not be as forgiving as you are. This means you have to hide and you have to exterminate any alien life that knowns about your existence. I do think if oumuamua was an alien probe then we should be gravely concerned.

kentonv 6y ago
> the next time you come back This is imagining that space exploration is done by human-like entities that have discrete physical bodies and slow reproduction rates. They come to a place, check it out, and move on. AI-driven Von Neumann probes would operate very differently. They arrive, and they settle and replicate. Eventually they send out new probes. But they don't leave once they have arrived. There's never any reason to leave.
- nafey 6y ago
  Okay the point is you won't wait to mobilize against alien life. Assuming that technology increases exponentially it will be prudent to launch as soon as you detect the alien life even if it takes you a hundred years to reach the destination.

coredog64 6y ago

What resources does Earth have that wouldn’t be more plentiful elsewhere? Minerals are cheaper to extract from asteroids (no gravity well). If I have the ability to cross interstellar space, then I can’t imagine that water is even worth that much.

senectus1 6y ago
Sweet sweet human flesh...