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> A technological civilization will, eventually, encase their sun in an energy extracting Dyson swarm. I always wonder, when I read this and similar claims, ho

> A technological civilization will, eventually, encase their sun in an energy extracting Dyson swarm. I always wonder, when I read this and similar claims, how on earth the tone of 100% certainty is justified. It seems pure bluff.

mekkkkkk 6y ago
I have wondered about this too. I suppose the reasoning is that every solar system has a massive source of energy in the middle of it, and that mega civilizations would be stupid to not utilize it. Sounds probable, but I can see many possible reasons not to bother. Not to mention it is speculating about technology so far ahead of our own that it seems silly. 50's predictions of rocket belts and nuclear powered cars come to mind.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > 50's predictions of rocket belts and nuclear powered cars come to mind. These are different kind of predictions. Rocket belts could work, but they don't make economic sense and there's a strong safety argument against it. It's the same reason we don't have flying cars either. Nuclear-powered cars could have worked; the failure wasn't predicting technology or its feasibility, but that nobody figured out humanity will collectively go insane and irrationally refuse to develop use of nuclear energy. Dyson spheres are a pretty obvious thing to do - every star is a free, self-maintaining fusion generator that just wastes almost 100% of its output. So the argument is really that when a civilization's need for energy gets larger than what can be supplied by burning whatever stuff they have on their planet, the next obvious step is their star. Barring some magic tech breakthroughs like pulling energy from "subspace" or whatever, you have a rather solid argument that's essentially: "as long as life is not limited from growing, it will eventually start blotting out the sun it orbits".
  - mekkkkkk 6y ago
    The 50s analogy is only to point out how we like to extrapolate contemporary technical understanding into the future. The envisioned dyson spheres I've seen look like our current understanding and use of photovoltaics extrapolated in the same way. I don't disagree that the core idea of harnessing the suns energy seems likely. As the parent poster said, it's just the absolute confidence that people seem to have on the subject that's a bit curious. Maybe breakthroughs in energy generation will make it not worth the effort? Maybe becoming interstellar makes it obsolete since the energy requirements for a given civilization are spread thinner? Maybe there are other ways to harness the solar energy that would not show the same signs as we predict? Maybe civilizations trend to energy efficiency instead of just increased usage? Maybe not.
garmaine 6y ago
It’s quite rooted in game theory: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Basic_AI_drives https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Basic_AI_drives The above link is about AI, but it could apply to any alien species just as well. Any organism living in a thermodynamic universe and subject to competition and evolutionary pressures will develop instinctual drives that align with resource acquisition, replication, and survival. As the above link details this surprisingly holds true even when you remove evolution and consider designed minds. Even if a hypothetical civilization didn’t care about resource acquisition, replication and survival, they’d be out-competed by one which did. So where is that civilization’s ever expanding sphere of Dyson clouds?
- jacobush 6y ago
  Unless the super advanced aliens fear they live in a dark forest and decide not to paint huge Dyson Sphere bullseyes on their backs.
  - garmaine 6y ago
    There are a lot of problems with the dark forest hypothesis, the most critical for this purpose being that it is not a stable outcome. A civilization with the capability to create a Dyson sphere and harness the power of an entire star could easily defeat any invader attracted to their presence. E.g. with gamma-ray lasers that fry anything and everything that might be hostile. Even with the most advanced technology we can imagine, you can't expect to be able to detect a neighboring civilization, cross the gap between stars with an invading fleet, and arrive with enough power to overwhelm defenses every single time. Local development of solar system resources is inherently an exponential process, whereas mustering of interstellar resources is quadratic. A potential dark forest / wolf entity (I much prefer Alastair Reynolds over Liu Cixin) would have to arrive right within the (cosmically brief) window of opportunity in which a developing civilization announces its presence but before it achieves Type II status on the Kardashev scale. Statistically, someone will eventually be lucky enough to avoid the wolves long enough to get that far, and then they'd have the capability to defend themselves from any plausible enemy. Where are the Dyson spheres of those civilizations?
- 6y ago
Aeronwen 6y ago
Especially when the Earth is getting effectively zero of the sun's energy now, and humanity is so incapable of harnessing even that minuscule amount, that killing off their entire planet is still a much talked about possibility.

mekkkkkk 6y ago

I have wondered about this too. I suppose the reasoning is that every solar system has a massive source of energy in the middle of it, and that mega civilizations would be stupid to not utilize it. Sounds probable, but I can see many possible reasons not to bother. Not to mention it is speculating about technology so far ahead of our own that it seems silly. 50's predictions of rocket belts and nuclear powered cars come to mind.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
> 50's predictions of rocket belts and nuclear powered cars come to mind. These are different kind of predictions. Rocket belts could work, but they don't make economic sense and there's a strong safety argument against it. It's the same reason we don't have flying cars either. Nuclear-powered cars could have worked; the failure wasn't predicting technology or its feasibility, but that nobody figured out humanity will collectively go insane and irrationally refuse to develop use of nuclear energy. Dyson spheres are a pretty obvious thing to do - every star is a free, self-maintaining fusion generator that just wastes almost 100% of its output. So the argument is really that when a civilization's need for energy gets larger than what can be supplied by burning whatever stuff they have on their planet, the next obvious step is their star. Barring some magic tech breakthroughs like pulling energy from "subspace" or whatever, you have a rather solid argument that's essentially: "as long as life is not limited from growing, it will eventually start blotting out the sun it orbits".
- mekkkkkk 6y ago
  The 50s analogy is only to point out how we like to extrapolate contemporary technical understanding into the future. The envisioned dyson spheres I've seen look like our current understanding and use of photovoltaics extrapolated in the same way. I don't disagree that the core idea of harnessing the suns energy seems likely. As the parent poster said, it's just the absolute confidence that people seem to have on the subject that's a bit curious. Maybe breakthroughs in energy generation will make it not worth the effort? Maybe becoming interstellar makes it obsolete since the energy requirements for a given civilization are spread thinner? Maybe there are other ways to harness the solar energy that would not show the same signs as we predict? Maybe civilizations trend to energy efficiency instead of just increased usage? Maybe not.

garmaine 6y ago

It’s quite rooted in game theory: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Basic_AI_drives https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Basic_AI_drives The above link is about AI, but it could apply to any alien species just as well. Any organism living in a thermodynamic universe and subject to competition and evolutionary pressures will develop instinctual drives that align with resource acquisition, replication, and survival. As the above link details this surprisingly holds true even when you remove evolution and consider designed minds. Even if a hypothetical civilization didn’t care about resource acquisition, replication and survival, they’d be out-competed by one which did. So where is that civilization’s ever expanding sphere of Dyson clouds?

jacobush 6y ago
Unless the super advanced aliens fear they live in a dark forest and decide not to paint huge Dyson Sphere bullseyes on their backs.
- garmaine 6y ago
  There are a lot of problems with the dark forest hypothesis, the most critical for this purpose being that it is not a stable outcome. A civilization with the capability to create a Dyson sphere and harness the power of an entire star could easily defeat any invader attracted to their presence. E.g. with gamma-ray lasers that fry anything and everything that might be hostile. Even with the most advanced technology we can imagine, you can't expect to be able to detect a neighboring civilization, cross the gap between stars with an invading fleet, and arrive with enough power to overwhelm defenses every single time. Local development of solar system resources is inherently an exponential process, whereas mustering of interstellar resources is quadratic. A potential dark forest / wolf entity (I much prefer Alastair Reynolds over Liu Cixin) would have to arrive right within the (cosmically brief) window of opportunity in which a developing civilization announces its presence but before it achieves Type II status on the Kardashev scale. Statistically, someone will eventually be lucky enough to avoid the wolves long enough to get that far, and then they'd have the capability to defend themselves from any plausible enemy. Where are the Dyson spheres of those civilizations?
6y ago

Aeronwen 6y ago

Especially when the Earth is getting effectively zero of the sun's energy now, and humanity is so incapable of harnessing even that minuscule amount, that killing off their entire planet is still a much talked about possibility.