8 ms·

This is a classic story and fun in its own way, but thinking about humanity future reach for the stars (provided it happens) will most likely require us to move

This is a classic story and fun in its own way, but thinking about humanity future reach for the stars (provided it happens) will most likely require us to move to some trans human form. Think transformers or sentient ships. The human life is too short and body is too fragile for cosmic voyages. If we are going to be advanced enough to build interstellar ships, we should be advanced enough to travel in a different vessel.

LatteLazy 6y ago
10mil human eggs or embryos or just genetic material but with bio substrates to print from seems likely to survive a 500 year long deep space journey and far more achieve-able based on current tech. Send a probe to seed a planet with bacteria etc. Send another to arrive a few 100 years later to seed it with plant life. Work your way up. The last probe arrives and starts printing\gestating humans and offering them educational videos and a safe-ish environment...
- dirtnugget 6y ago
  Two things which came to my mind: This still seems really inefficient. And: This sounds exactly like what a virus works like.
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    Not sure what you mean by inefficient? You're definately right about the virus part! :)
    - dirtnugget 6y ago
      The part about gestating and tutoring. An efficient species wouldn’t need both of these.
      - LatteLazy 6y ago
        Ah! Yes, definately inefficient. But that's humans for you!
  - jrootabega 6y ago
    Epidemiology is written by the winners
- powersnail 6y ago
  Like an endospore of human!
- sdenton4 6y ago
  "so there are these assholes over near beatlgeuse who haven't figured out ansible communication and therefore think they're alone in the universe. So they send these packets of super aggressive proto organics at every exoplanet their crappy telescopes pick up in hopes of seeding life in the universe, but, in reality, just making life hell for their neighbors. That probe which showed up here twenty years ago? We all have NOSES now, Bob. Do you have any idea how humiliating that is?"
  - t20201001 6y ago
    Where would I be able to read more of this?
    - ColanR 6y ago
      It's a reference to the Enter Chronicles, but the parent wrote that themselves. Edit; Ender Chronicles...spallig is hard. :)
      - sdenton4 6y ago
        Ha, actually I've never heard of the Enter Chronicles; I just made it up in response to the previous comment advocating for sending bio-trash (or bio-treasure?) all over the place.
        ColanR 6y ago
        Lol. I figured that's the only series that deals with ansible communication. Guess not.
        samatman 6y ago
        The term ansible was invented by Ursula K. LeGuin. Card included it in the Ender books as a tribute.
bengale 6y ago
Sign me up for the Heaven 1 ship.
- buzzwordninja 6y ago
  That one's full. But good news, we can fit you in on Ark Ship B!
netcan 6y ago
My first thought is "sign me up." My second thought is "Is we actually we?" Transcending humanity doesn't necessarily mean humanity continues. It just means something does. Sentient ships don't need passengers, either in their hulls or in their heads. Anyway, this is both a great example of science fiction and a great example of short story writing... These are exactly the intended thoughts.
- colordrops 6y ago
  Even if "we" don't transcend to some other form, the current "we" will never be "we" going forward. No one that is alive now will likely be alive in 150 years. Does it matter that the next torch bearers are based on carbon or silicon, as long as they continue the legacy?
  - netcan 6y ago
    You know... All these conversations of transcending, torch passing and such always make me think of all the gods that killed and usurped their gods. Cronus and the Olympians or whatnot. Anyway, to me, a decent working definition of god is immortality (long life or evitable mortality are good nuff), great wisdom and the powerful creative abilities. Those seem at least possible these days. Maybe we only become true gods once you pass the torch. It sort of proves the point, especially the "creator" point... to make a worthy torch bearer. Sure, I guess I'm in with silicon. I'd prefer it was me in the silicon, but I guess one descendant is as good as another. Hopefully they won't be this bigoted against meat though. At least have respect for your ancestors.
    - bbarnett 6y ago
      Do you respect monkeys? What about mice? The best meat can hope for, is not living in territory needed by silicon.
      - Teever 6y ago
        Humanity has tamed and domesticated animals that would otherwise be an existential threat to us. We can by all means tame silicon based life and have it serve our bidding. Won't taste as good as a hamburger though.
webmaven 6y ago
> This is a classic story and fun in its own way, but thinking about humanity future reach for the stars (provided it happens) will most likely require us to move to some trans human form. Think transformers or sentient ships. The human life is too short and body is too fragile for cosmic voyages. If we are going to be advanced enough to build interstellar ships, we should be advanced enough to travel in a different vessel. That's a bit pessimistic on the one hand, and overly optimistic on the other. While I would not suggest that classic "generation ships" would be possible given current technology or any possible technology that can be extrapolated from our current knowledge (the ecological complexities alone seem insurmountable), what pops out at the other end could very possibly be a mostly biological human with a consciousness downloaded from cold storage. My intuition is that while AGIs may be possible, and uploading, storing, and downloading a human mind may be possible, actually running a complete copy of a human mind in-silico in realtime may prove to be quite difficult, in any fashion that preserves a sense of continuity of experience and identity[0]. But a bioprinted copy of an uploaded brain (especially with integrated connections to ancillary hardware) transplanted into a meat-puppet could very well be prodded into running a more-or-less faithful approximation of the original mind, sufficiently well to fool itself that it was the same person. It's a rather roundabout way of doing things, but it would let us, as humans, explore "strange new worlds" personally. [0] That is, after you were done recompiling and optimizing the uploaded copy to be able to run semi-efficiently on a hardware substrate, I doubt that such an intellect would subjectively feel like it was still the same person it remembered being previously, which might be problematic if you're expecting it to make any important decisions.
BurningFrog 6y ago
Most of what gives meaning and joy to our lives are tied to our physical bodies. Sure, you could upload a faithful simulation of my brain to a computer. But what do I do for fun once there?
- MinusGix 6y ago
  A faithful simulation of your brain would still find fun whatever you find fun. If I enjoy reading tech articles and programming, then I'd still enjoy that if it was a faithful simulation. For social behaviors, presumably you'd be able to interact outside and/or with other simulated people. For physical activity, you would lose that, which would be unpleasant. Though, hopefully you'd be able to make some form of physical simulation that is controlled by the brain even if it can't match reality perfectly. For sensations like taste, air temperature, and smell, well.. while those can be enjoyable/unpleasant it is not that enjoyable. So, you'd do just as you always have? If we don't have any form of physical simulation within it then you do lose some activities, which is unfortunate. I'm curious why you think what gives our life meaning and joy is tied to our physical bodies? Like, the most enjoyable aspects in life for me are things that I could do from a ''mental'' textbox. There are certainly things I would miss, but hopefully simulation-esque aspects of that would also pop-up as time goes on.
  - peteradio 6y ago
    Suppose you created a faithful simulation of yourself, surely that's not you and any pleasure or pain it experiences has no effect on you. So what exactly is the point?
    - landryraccoon 6y ago
      If you have children, surely they aren’t you and any pleasure or pain they experience has no effect on you. So what exactly is the point?
    - sosborn 6y ago
      > surely that's not you What difference would that make to the simulation?
peteradio 6y ago
Are you talking about a digital consciousness?
29athrowaway 6y ago
The first things we've sent to space have been probes and robots. I think our first alien encounter will be with one of those.
nzealand 6y ago
We Are Legion (https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/d...) is a fun sci fi series that takes this to a place I had never seen before.
- tectonic 6y ago
  I’m such a fan of this series: fun, smart, playful, humanist. 100% recommend. Edit: The audiobooks are exceptionally well narrated too.
- btschaegg 6y ago
  Oooh, yes! I love the Bobiverse series. And especially how the narrator in the audio version got the voices just right :) Space station!!!
  - burnte 6y ago
    Book 4 just came out on Audible, it's great!
- shawncampbell 6y ago
  Listening to Heaven's River right now.
- hitekker 6y ago
  What a gem, thank you for sharing.
6510 6y ago
So, you mean rocks? Sentient rocks basically?
madaxe_again 6y ago
Maybe we already did, and this waves hands generally at everything is the in-flight entertainment to stop us from going insane, and to both remind us why we’re on our journey, and train us for our destination.
fsflover 6y ago
> The human life is too short and body is too fragile for cosmic voyages. Maybe you are right about the fragile part (though we can fly to the Moon and back already, so I’m not sure), but we can theoretically survive any cosmic voyage thanks to the relativistic time dilation. We just need to fly fast enough.
- brandonhorst 6y ago
  That's not how that works. Traveling 100 light years will take >100 years for the folks on the ship no matter how fast it's going.
  - arrow7000 6y ago
    That's not true. If you travel close enough to the speed of light time dilation becomes so extreme that it may only take a few subjective years for the travelers to travel 100ly.
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    It is amazing to find pockets where General Relativity has not penetrated at all. It will certainly take >100 years for the people left behind. On board it could take time anywhere between infinity and zero. Too long, though, and they wouldn't go.
  - matt-attack 6y ago
    As your ship approaches c the distance to your destination gets physically shorter due to length contraction.
- mrfox321 6y ago
  Curious how much time would pass on acceleration upon leaving and deacceleration upon arriving. We may not be able to survive long enough in spite of length contraction.
goblin89 6y ago
I’m surprised to see no mention of Diaspora by Greg Egan. Just finished it. (Possible spoiler ahead.) I’m not sure it’s not just wishful thinking that consciousness can be cloned and exist in a “software” form at all, but that general idea (and the subsequent question of whether such existence would be satisfactory to us accustomed to physical human bodies) is very much along the lines of what’s being discussed in the thread.

LatteLazy 6y ago

10mil human eggs or embryos or just genetic material but with bio substrates to print from seems likely to survive a 500 year long deep space journey and far more achieve-able based on current tech. Send a probe to seed a planet with bacteria etc. Send another to arrive a few 100 years later to seed it with plant life. Work your way up. The last probe arrives and starts printing\gestating humans and offering them educational videos and a safe-ish environment...

dirtnugget 6y ago
Two things which came to my mind: This still seems really inefficient. And: This sounds exactly like what a virus works like.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  Not sure what you mean by inefficient? You're definately right about the virus part! :)
  - dirtnugget 6y ago
    The part about gestating and tutoring. An efficient species wouldn’t need both of these.
    - LatteLazy 6y ago
      Ah! Yes, definately inefficient. But that's humans for you!
- jrootabega 6y ago
  Epidemiology is written by the winners
powersnail 6y ago
Like an endospore of human!
sdenton4 6y ago
"so there are these assholes over near beatlgeuse who haven't figured out ansible communication and therefore think they're alone in the universe. So they send these packets of super aggressive proto organics at every exoplanet their crappy telescopes pick up in hopes of seeding life in the universe, but, in reality, just making life hell for their neighbors. That probe which showed up here twenty years ago? We all have NOSES now, Bob. Do you have any idea how humiliating that is?"
- t20201001 6y ago
  Where would I be able to read more of this?
  - ColanR 6y ago
    It's a reference to the Enter Chronicles, but the parent wrote that themselves. Edit; Ender Chronicles...spallig is hard. :)
    - sdenton4 6y ago
      Ha, actually I've never heard of the Enter Chronicles; I just made it up in response to the previous comment advocating for sending bio-trash (or bio-treasure?) all over the place.
      - ColanR 6y ago
        Lol. I figured that's the only series that deals with ansible communication. Guess not.
        samatman 6y ago
        The term ansible was invented by Ursula K. LeGuin. Card included it in the Ender books as a tribute.

bengale 6y ago

Sign me up for the Heaven 1 ship.

buzzwordninja 6y ago
That one's full. But good news, we can fit you in on Ark Ship B!

netcan 6y ago

My first thought is "sign me up." My second thought is "Is we actually we?" Transcending humanity doesn't necessarily mean humanity continues. It just means something does. Sentient ships don't need passengers, either in their hulls or in their heads. Anyway, this is both a great example of science fiction and a great example of short story writing... These are exactly the intended thoughts.

colordrops 6y ago
Even if "we" don't transcend to some other form, the current "we" will never be "we" going forward. No one that is alive now will likely be alive in 150 years. Does it matter that the next torch bearers are based on carbon or silicon, as long as they continue the legacy?
- netcan 6y ago
  You know... All these conversations of transcending, torch passing and such always make me think of all the gods that killed and usurped their gods. Cronus and the Olympians or whatnot. Anyway, to me, a decent working definition of god is immortality (long life or evitable mortality are good nuff), great wisdom and the powerful creative abilities. Those seem at least possible these days. Maybe we only become true gods once you pass the torch. It sort of proves the point, especially the "creator" point... to make a worthy torch bearer. Sure, I guess I'm in with silicon. I'd prefer it was me in the silicon, but I guess one descendant is as good as another. Hopefully they won't be this bigoted against meat though. At least have respect for your ancestors.
  - bbarnett 6y ago
    Do you respect monkeys? What about mice? The best meat can hope for, is not living in territory needed by silicon.
    - Teever 6y ago
      Humanity has tamed and domesticated animals that would otherwise be an existential threat to us. We can by all means tame silicon based life and have it serve our bidding. Won't taste as good as a hamburger though.

webmaven 6y ago

> This is a classic story and fun in its own way, but thinking about humanity future reach for the stars (provided it happens) will most likely require us to move to some trans human form. Think transformers or sentient ships. The human life is too short and body is too fragile for cosmic voyages. If we are going to be advanced enough to build interstellar ships, we should be advanced enough to travel in a different vessel. That's a bit pessimistic on the one hand, and overly optimistic on the other. While I would not suggest that classic "generation ships" would be possible given current technology or any possible technology that can be extrapolated from our current knowledge (the ecological complexities alone seem insurmountable), what pops out at the other end could very possibly be a mostly biological human with a consciousness downloaded from cold storage. My intuition is that while AGIs may be possible, and uploading, storing, and downloading a human mind may be possible, actually running a complete copy of a human mind in-silico in realtime may prove to be quite difficult, in any fashion that preserves a sense of continuity of experience and identity[0]. But a bioprinted copy of an uploaded brain (especially with integrated connections to ancillary hardware) transplanted into a meat-puppet could very well be prodded into running a more-or-less faithful approximation of the original mind, sufficiently well to fool itself that it was the same person. It's a rather roundabout way of doing things, but it would let us, as humans, explore "strange new worlds" personally. [0] That is, after you were done recompiling and optimizing the uploaded copy to be able to run semi-efficiently on a hardware substrate, I doubt that such an intellect would subjectively feel like it was still the same person it remembered being previously, which might be problematic if you're expecting it to make any important decisions.

BurningFrog 6y ago

Most of what gives meaning and joy to our lives are tied to our physical bodies. Sure, you could upload a faithful simulation of my brain to a computer. But what do I do for fun once there?

MinusGix 6y ago
A faithful simulation of your brain would still find fun whatever you find fun. If I enjoy reading tech articles and programming, then I'd still enjoy that if it was a faithful simulation. For social behaviors, presumably you'd be able to interact outside and/or with other simulated people. For physical activity, you would lose that, which would be unpleasant. Though, hopefully you'd be able to make some form of physical simulation that is controlled by the brain even if it can't match reality perfectly. For sensations like taste, air temperature, and smell, well.. while those can be enjoyable/unpleasant it is not that enjoyable. So, you'd do just as you always have? If we don't have any form of physical simulation within it then you do lose some activities, which is unfortunate. I'm curious why you think what gives our life meaning and joy is tied to our physical bodies? Like, the most enjoyable aspects in life for me are things that I could do from a ''mental'' textbox. There are certainly things I would miss, but hopefully simulation-esque aspects of that would also pop-up as time goes on.
- peteradio 6y ago
  Suppose you created a faithful simulation of yourself, surely that's not you and any pleasure or pain it experiences has no effect on you. So what exactly is the point?
  - landryraccoon 6y ago
    If you have children, surely they aren’t you and any pleasure or pain they experience has no effect on you. So what exactly is the point?
  - sosborn 6y ago
    > surely that's not you What difference would that make to the simulation?

peteradio 6y ago

Are you talking about a digital consciousness?

29athrowaway 6y ago

The first things we've sent to space have been probes and robots. I think our first alien encounter will be with one of those.

nzealand 6y ago

We Are Legion (https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/dp/B01LWAESYQ https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/d...) is a fun sci fi series that takes this to a place I had never seen before.

tectonic 6y ago
I’m such a fan of this series: fun, smart, playful, humanist. 100% recommend. Edit: The audiobooks are exceptionally well narrated too.
btschaegg 6y ago
Oooh, yes! I love the Bobiverse series. And especially how the narrator in the audio version got the voices just right :) Space station!!!
- burnte 6y ago
  Book 4 just came out on Audible, it's great!
shawncampbell 6y ago
Listening to Heaven's River right now.
hitekker 6y ago
What a gem, thank you for sharing.

6510 6y ago

So, you mean rocks? Sentient rocks basically?

madaxe_again 6y ago

Maybe we already did, and this waves hands generally at everything is the in-flight entertainment to stop us from going insane, and to both remind us why we’re on our journey, and train us for our destination.

fsflover 6y ago

> The human life is too short and body is too fragile for cosmic voyages. Maybe you are right about the fragile part (though we can fly to the Moon and back already, so I’m not sure), but we can theoretically survive any cosmic voyage thanks to the relativistic time dilation. We just need to fly fast enough.

brandonhorst 6y ago
That's not how that works. Traveling 100 light years will take >100 years for the folks on the ship no matter how fast it's going.
- arrow7000 6y ago
  That's not true. If you travel close enough to the speed of light time dilation becomes so extreme that it may only take a few subjective years for the travelers to travel 100ly.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  It is amazing to find pockets where General Relativity has not penetrated at all. It will certainly take >100 years for the people left behind. On board it could take time anywhere between infinity and zero. Too long, though, and they wouldn't go.
- matt-attack 6y ago
  As your ship approaches c the distance to your destination gets physically shorter due to length contraction.
mrfox321 6y ago
Curious how much time would pass on acceleration upon leaving and deacceleration upon arriving. We may not be able to survive long enough in spite of length contraction.

goblin89 6y ago

I’m surprised to see no mention of Diaspora by Greg Egan. Just finished it. (Possible spoiler ahead.) I’m not sure it’s not just wishful thinking that consciousness can be cloned and exist in a “software” form at all, but that general idea (and the subsequent question of whether such existence would be satisfactory to us accustomed to physical human bodies) is very much along the lines of what’s being discussed in the thread.