6 ms·

Are we though? Universe is huge. Wars on earth are waged over scares resources. If we are capable of reaching aliens would we really be incentivized to fight t

Are we though? Universe is huge. Wars on earth are waged over scares resources. If we are capable of reaching aliens would we really be incentivized to fight them while there are so many resources available elsewhere?

ThalesX 6y ago
What if wars were waged for ideological reasons also? Beliefs, cultures etc.
- sudhirj 6y ago
  Or just defensively. The US invaded Iraq because they might have had WMDs. Other planets might have WMDs too. And they might think we have WMDs. Doesn’t matter if any of the sides actually do.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    > The US invaded Iraq because they might have had WMDs. Be careful not to conflate public justifications with actual motivations.
    - sudhirj 6y ago
      The point is that public justifications are more important than actual motivations. Actual motivations can be enslaving other beings, ruling / mining an extra planet or just wanting to watch the universe burn. Motivations are already present because there are millions of motivations that map on to the same result - destruction of another group of living things. I'm pointing out that it's easy to find public justification as well. It's also possible to do this unilaterally. China or any other country could also unilaterally decide to destroy another planet. And same possibility on the other side.
      - ceejayoz 6y ago
        Motivations lead to the justifications. The problem with interstellar warfare is, outside the "Dark Forest" concept of "kill everyone just in case", there aren't all that many motivations that seem to make sense. Any interstellar species probably doesn't really need to steal planets, resources, etc.
        chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        If planets in the “goldilocks zone” are extremely rare and they want to “terraform” (xenoform?) those planets then thats a motivation.
        ceejayoz 6y ago
        1. That seems very unlikely, from what we've found so far. We'll know more as things like the JWST come online, but right now it seems like planets of all sorts are everywhere. 2. Any civilization capable of interstellar travel is likely not to care all that much about a narrow band of natural habitability. They've already solved harder problems.
        chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        I'm not sure its given that a civilization that has technology for interstellar travel is going to consider a planet that is suitable for life with little work to be roughly equivalent to a planet that is suitable for life with a lot of work. Its equally likely that they would be economical with their resources and consider a planet that is closer to the desired end state to be much more valuable than a planet that is much further from the end state.
  - elihu 6y ago
    This seems likely; both sides might see it as a prisoner's dilemma situation, where there isn't any basis for trust and it's safer to destroy the other civilization before they're destroyed themselves. (I don't think Iraq was actually such a situation, but at least on the American side some influential decision makers may have believed that it was.) On the other hand, you might have something more like a cold war situation, where both sides have the capacity to destroy the other completely or almost completely but not without an equivalent counterattack, and so both sides have much more to lose than to gain by striking first.
sudhirj 6y ago
Habitable planets are the ultimate scarce resource. Once the earth is full we’ll have to find a way to move and there’s less than 5 good options in this solar system. In time they’ll be full too.
- ls612 6y ago
  Who says habitable to us == habitable to hypothetical aliens?
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  If we've got the technology to travel between stars, we've probably also got the tech to leave planets behind entirely, or to terraform, or to adapt ourselves to conditions.
- Enginerrrd 6y ago
  The only logical path is to download our brains onto computers, which will happen before that point. Once that technology exists, that's the only form of life that will dominate. Robots, nano-machines and hyper-intelligences will blow easily damaged flesh with finite lifespans. Habitable regions would be massively expanded.
  - LocalH 6y ago
    When you can figure out how to physically attach consciousness to a machine, get back to me
    - jcelerier 6y ago
      the only thing that matters is for it to look like the consciousness has been attached.
      - jessaustin 6y ago
        I've never forgotten the scene in the OSC short story "Fat Farm", in which the protagonist's mind has been copied to his clone, which clone has left the facility to "continue" to enjoy his fine life, and the protagonist realizes he hasn't thought about what comes next. The answer is grim. A consciousness might awake in the machine, but it won't be my consciousness.
Enginerrrd 6y ago
I think it's a cold war situation. In the early years, sure, no problem. But conceivably the pace of resource utilization will increase as well. Eventually they will conflict. Worse, greedy civilizations would probably be selected for. And how long before random differences and exponential growth mean the other side gets an overwhelming power advantage? Historically in human societies, that is essentially never a good thing.
- chess_buster 6y ago
  Maybe civilisations will merge. I just had my double LOR'xin with extra pumpkin spice. Later I will resume work on my ansible station for the Y'norxa-Wallmart Corporation… hopefully I can push some lines of lox-lang to production today.
marcosdumay 6y ago
The amount of resources some society can gather increases with the square of time and linearly to its expansion speed. But life around here has an habit of expanding everything (including resource usage) exponentially with time. There is a mismatch here that you are implicitly claiming that is solved for every space-faring civilization. Many people explicitly make this claim, what is reasonable, but it's not good to keep it implicit.

ThalesX 6y ago

What if wars were waged for ideological reasons also? Beliefs, cultures etc.

sudhirj 6y ago
Or just defensively. The US invaded Iraq because they might have had WMDs. Other planets might have WMDs too. And they might think we have WMDs. Doesn’t matter if any of the sides actually do.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > The US invaded Iraq because they might have had WMDs. Be careful not to conflate public justifications with actual motivations.
  - sudhirj 6y ago
    The point is that public justifications are more important than actual motivations. Actual motivations can be enslaving other beings, ruling / mining an extra planet or just wanting to watch the universe burn. Motivations are already present because there are millions of motivations that map on to the same result - destruction of another group of living things. I'm pointing out that it's easy to find public justification as well. It's also possible to do this unilaterally. China or any other country could also unilaterally decide to destroy another planet. And same possibility on the other side.
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      Motivations lead to the justifications. The problem with interstellar warfare is, outside the "Dark Forest" concept of "kill everyone just in case", there aren't all that many motivations that seem to make sense. Any interstellar species probably doesn't really need to steal planets, resources, etc.
      - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        If planets in the “goldilocks zone” are extremely rare and they want to “terraform” (xenoform?) those planets then thats a motivation.
        ceejayoz 6y ago
        1. That seems very unlikely, from what we've found so far. We'll know more as things like the JWST come online, but right now it seems like planets of all sorts are everywhere. 2. Any civilization capable of interstellar travel is likely not to care all that much about a narrow band of natural habitability. They've already solved harder problems.
        chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        I'm not sure its given that a civilization that has technology for interstellar travel is going to consider a planet that is suitable for life with little work to be roughly equivalent to a planet that is suitable for life with a lot of work. Its equally likely that they would be economical with their resources and consider a planet that is closer to the desired end state to be much more valuable than a planet that is much further from the end state.
- elihu 6y ago
  This seems likely; both sides might see it as a prisoner's dilemma situation, where there isn't any basis for trust and it's safer to destroy the other civilization before they're destroyed themselves. (I don't think Iraq was actually such a situation, but at least on the American side some influential decision makers may have believed that it was.) On the other hand, you might have something more like a cold war situation, where both sides have the capacity to destroy the other completely or almost completely but not without an equivalent counterattack, and so both sides have much more to lose than to gain by striking first.

sudhirj 6y ago

Habitable planets are the ultimate scarce resource. Once the earth is full we’ll have to find a way to move and there’s less than 5 good options in this solar system. In time they’ll be full too.

ls612 6y ago
Who says habitable to us == habitable to hypothetical aliens?
ceejayoz 6y ago
If we've got the technology to travel between stars, we've probably also got the tech to leave planets behind entirely, or to terraform, or to adapt ourselves to conditions.
Enginerrrd 6y ago
The only logical path is to download our brains onto computers, which will happen before that point. Once that technology exists, that's the only form of life that will dominate. Robots, nano-machines and hyper-intelligences will blow easily damaged flesh with finite lifespans. Habitable regions would be massively expanded.
- LocalH 6y ago
  When you can figure out how to physically attach consciousness to a machine, get back to me
  - jcelerier 6y ago
    the only thing that matters is for it to look like the consciousness has been attached.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      I've never forgotten the scene in the OSC short story "Fat Farm", in which the protagonist's mind has been copied to his clone, which clone has left the facility to "continue" to enjoy his fine life, and the protagonist realizes he hasn't thought about what comes next. The answer is grim. A consciousness might awake in the machine, but it won't be my consciousness.

Enginerrrd 6y ago

I think it's a cold war situation. In the early years, sure, no problem. But conceivably the pace of resource utilization will increase as well. Eventually they will conflict. Worse, greedy civilizations would probably be selected for. And how long before random differences and exponential growth mean the other side gets an overwhelming power advantage? Historically in human societies, that is essentially never a good thing.

chess_buster 6y ago
Maybe civilisations will merge. I just had my double LOR'xin with extra pumpkin spice. Later I will resume work on my ansible station for the Y'norxa-Wallmart Corporation… hopefully I can push some lines of lox-lang to production today.

marcosdumay 6y ago

The amount of resources some society can gather increases with the square of time and linearly to its expansion speed. But life around here has an habit of expanding everything (including resource usage) exponentially with time. There is a mismatch here that you are implicitly claiming that is solved for every space-faring civilization. Many people explicitly make this claim, what is reasonable, but it's not good to keep it implicit.