4 ms·

One problem with determining how a civilization could travel is we only know what we know now or can reasonably speculate. A hundred years ago we didn't really

One problem with determining how a civilization could travel is we only know what we know now or can reasonably speculate. A hundred years ago we didn't really have the ability to even get into orbit much less imaging visiting another star. Today we can imagine ways but they are insanely expensive and likely to take dozens of years or even centuries at best. Assuming constant progress in technology we might be able to get there faster by waiting decades than by leaving now. Even the absolute limit of light speed, while impossible to imagine today, might turn out to be less of on obstacle in some future understanding of physics. It's hard to predict the future since all you have is today's knowledge.

7373737373 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calcu... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260275150_Interstellar_Travel_-_The_Wait_Calculation_and_the_Incentive_Trap_of_Progress https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260275150_Interstel...
boraoztunc 6y ago
Thinking the same, for travel and all. After 30+ years of my humble existence in this universe, these are the times I want so badly to see a glimpse of the future, a scene from 10.000 years later. SO, SO curious. Thinking is leading me to nowhere with my limited capacity, dreaming with mostly unrelated fantasies and visions. A real one would be nice, even from the exact location I'm sitting now, the street, the sea nearby, everything around, how they evolved. Mind-blowing universe, amazing planet, very little time sadly.
- jdmoreira 6y ago
  10.000 years is a lot. In the past that’s roughly when agriculture was invented. In the future chances are humans will be either extinct or living in very though conditions. The future is not necessarily always better. It certainly wasn’t for the grandsons of hunter-gatherers that became farmers
  - adrianN 6y ago
    If it wasn't better for the farmers, how come farmers outcompeted hunter-gatherers and pastoralists almost everywhere?
    - jdmoreira 6y ago
      Farming allowed populations to grow but individuals were much more susceptible to abuse, violence, exploitation, disease and a life of chronic back pain
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      The argument that hunter-gathering is superior to farming is based on some quality-of-life comparisons, most notably the fact that modern hunter-gatherers spend a surprisingly little amount of their time actually acquiring food (something like 2-3 hours a day). Most anthropologists are extremely skeptical of comparing modern hunter-gatherers with Paleolithic hunter-gatherer cultures, particularly the ones that would develop into agricultural societies. The main reason that farmers outcompete hunter-gatherers is that agriculture allows building larger societies than hunter-gathering can, and this extra population gives a decisive advantage in being able to prosecute wars for as long as is necessary to exterminate hunter-gatherers.
      - pharke 6y ago
        > the fact that modern hunter-gatherers spend a surprisingly little amount of their time actually acquiring food (something like 2-3 hours a day) Thinking about this a bit deeper, this is only true if you have a small population with relatively plentiful resources. Hunter gatherers quickly bump into the limits of their environment if their population increases. The idealization of their lifestyle is misguided because it would necessitate drastic reduction of population levels to reach that balance. The goal should be to increase the abundance of resources in our modern environment so that we reach the same ratio of resources to population, which hopefully would mean a consequent reduction in the amount of effort we have to expend to obtain those resources.
johnchristopher 6y ago
Unfortunately that reasoning is based on the axiom that "we can't prove or disprove anything beyond doubts" or that "anything might be possible" and this doesn't help us making decisions about solving problems or making informed decisions. "Let's just stop doing anything regarding climate change because in 50 years we'll have the tech to solve it, we don't know it yet because we can't imagine it." At some point, as a specie, we certainly can't afford to gamble our survival and culture like that.
- soared 6y ago
  The logic of waiting to launch shuttles doesn’t apply to global warming and I’m not sure why you’d bring that up here? If I launch a rocket now, it’s will take 50 years to get to Pluto. If I wait 10 years, we’ll have faster rockets, so it will actually get there sooner. The progress of my original rocket cannot be improved. For global warming, progress we make now can be built on and improved over time. This is not the case with a rocket that’s already launched.
  - johnchristopher 6y ago
    > The logic of waiting to launch shuttles doesn’t apply to global warming and I’m not sure why you’d bring that up here? That's because my argument is not about rockets or climate change but about underlying assumptions. > If I launch a rocket now, it’s will take 50 years to get to Pluto. If I wait 10 years, we’ll have faster rockets, so it will actually get there sooner. The progress of my original rocket cannot be improved. Faster, maybe. Sooner ? Where is the proof ? And what if you can build a faster rocket only because you learned from mistakes from the slower first rocket ? If you never launch and experiment with that one in real conditions then you may very well never have a faster rocket. Let's put it another way: - before, we didn't know how much was feasible and we doubted we could do better (LEO, moon landing, etc.). - Now we know we could and did. - So we think in the future we'll be able to do things we can't do now. - But what if we are wrong again (like we were before) and that very belief is wrong. - You can still think/believe things like “Assuming constant progress in technology we might be able to get there faster by waiting decades than by leaving now. Even the absolute limit of light speed, while impossible to imagine today, might turn out to be less of on obstacle in some future understanding of physics.” but that belief may very well be our mistake, just like people 100 years ago didn't believe we could land on the moon. Now we just believe anything is possible.
BatteryMountain 6y ago
And then, even if we manage to travel at that speed, it's still waaay too slow, simply because of the distances involved. Can we skip ahead to teleportation please?
maxerickson 6y ago
It's likely that people would travel here from the future if FTL was physically possible.
- pharke 6y ago
  FTL is technically possible without time travel, all you need to do is bend space rather than accelerate.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    If you travel somewhere faster than light, it doesn't matter whether you accelerated or not, you can stand at the destination and watch yourself wave as you leave the origin.

7373737373 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calcu... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260275150_Interstellar_Travel_-_The_Wait_Calculation_and_the_Incentive_Trap_of_Progress https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260275150_Interstel...

boraoztunc 6y ago

Thinking the same, for travel and all. After 30+ years of my humble existence in this universe, these are the times I want so badly to see a glimpse of the future, a scene from 10.000 years later. SO, SO curious. Thinking is leading me to nowhere with my limited capacity, dreaming with mostly unrelated fantasies and visions. A real one would be nice, even from the exact location I'm sitting now, the street, the sea nearby, everything around, how they evolved. Mind-blowing universe, amazing planet, very little time sadly.

jdmoreira 6y ago
10.000 years is a lot. In the past that’s roughly when agriculture was invented. In the future chances are humans will be either extinct or living in very though conditions. The future is not necessarily always better. It certainly wasn’t for the grandsons of hunter-gatherers that became farmers
- adrianN 6y ago
  If it wasn't better for the farmers, how come farmers outcompeted hunter-gatherers and pastoralists almost everywhere?
  - jdmoreira 6y ago
    Farming allowed populations to grow but individuals were much more susceptible to abuse, violence, exploitation, disease and a life of chronic back pain
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    The argument that hunter-gathering is superior to farming is based on some quality-of-life comparisons, most notably the fact that modern hunter-gatherers spend a surprisingly little amount of their time actually acquiring food (something like 2-3 hours a day). Most anthropologists are extremely skeptical of comparing modern hunter-gatherers with Paleolithic hunter-gatherer cultures, particularly the ones that would develop into agricultural societies. The main reason that farmers outcompete hunter-gatherers is that agriculture allows building larger societies than hunter-gathering can, and this extra population gives a decisive advantage in being able to prosecute wars for as long as is necessary to exterminate hunter-gatherers.
    - pharke 6y ago
      > the fact that modern hunter-gatherers spend a surprisingly little amount of their time actually acquiring food (something like 2-3 hours a day) Thinking about this a bit deeper, this is only true if you have a small population with relatively plentiful resources. Hunter gatherers quickly bump into the limits of their environment if their population increases. The idealization of their lifestyle is misguided because it would necessitate drastic reduction of population levels to reach that balance. The goal should be to increase the abundance of resources in our modern environment so that we reach the same ratio of resources to population, which hopefully would mean a consequent reduction in the amount of effort we have to expend to obtain those resources.

johnchristopher 6y ago

Unfortunately that reasoning is based on the axiom that "we can't prove or disprove anything beyond doubts" or that "anything might be possible" and this doesn't help us making decisions about solving problems or making informed decisions. "Let's just stop doing anything regarding climate change because in 50 years we'll have the tech to solve it, we don't know it yet because we can't imagine it." At some point, as a specie, we certainly can't afford to gamble our survival and culture like that.

soared 6y ago
The logic of waiting to launch shuttles doesn’t apply to global warming and I’m not sure why you’d bring that up here? If I launch a rocket now, it’s will take 50 years to get to Pluto. If I wait 10 years, we’ll have faster rockets, so it will actually get there sooner. The progress of my original rocket cannot be improved. For global warming, progress we make now can be built on and improved over time. This is not the case with a rocket that’s already launched.
- johnchristopher 6y ago
  > The logic of waiting to launch shuttles doesn’t apply to global warming and I’m not sure why you’d bring that up here? That's because my argument is not about rockets or climate change but about underlying assumptions. > If I launch a rocket now, it’s will take 50 years to get to Pluto. If I wait 10 years, we’ll have faster rockets, so it will actually get there sooner. The progress of my original rocket cannot be improved. Faster, maybe. Sooner ? Where is the proof ? And what if you can build a faster rocket only because you learned from mistakes from the slower first rocket ? If you never launch and experiment with that one in real conditions then you may very well never have a faster rocket. Let's put it another way: - before, we didn't know how much was feasible and we doubted we could do better (LEO, moon landing, etc.). - Now we know we could and did. - So we think in the future we'll be able to do things we can't do now. - But what if we are wrong again (like we were before) and that very belief is wrong. - You can still think/believe things like “Assuming constant progress in technology we might be able to get there faster by waiting decades than by leaving now. Even the absolute limit of light speed, while impossible to imagine today, might turn out to be less of on obstacle in some future understanding of physics.” but that belief may very well be our mistake, just like people 100 years ago didn't believe we could land on the moon. Now we just believe anything is possible.

BatteryMountain 6y ago

And then, even if we manage to travel at that speed, it's still waaay too slow, simply because of the distances involved. Can we skip ahead to teleportation please?

maxerickson 6y ago

It's likely that people would travel here from the future if FTL was physically possible.

pharke 6y ago
FTL is technically possible without time travel, all you need to do is bend space rather than accelerate.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  If you travel somewhere faster than light, it doesn't matter whether you accelerated or not, you can stand at the destination and watch yourself wave as you leave the origin.