5 ms·

This does seem to be the logical conclusion of a game theory analysis. Since planet killers can show up without any warning, the only solution is make it imposs

This does seem to be the logical conclusion of a game theory analysis. Since planet killers can show up without any warning, the only solution is make it impossible to aim your unstoppable weapons, which means you have to be impossible to detect or locate. So as you said, maybe the solution to the Fermi Paradox is that every surviving civilization is hiding in cloaked habitats within the vastness of intergalactic space.

jerf 6y ago
By the time you can launch a planet-killer, you are no longer tied to your own planet anymore. It requires marshaling an amount of energy far beyond what you could afford to do in a biosphere, and a biosphere is all a planet really has to offer. Two of these civilizations might certainly take a swing at each other's planets, but it wouldn't end the war by any means; at this point the planet may not even account for single-digit percentages of what is going on in the system. I think if you look ahead at feasible technology, you get self-sustaining pure-space civilizations long before you get civilizations that can launch relativistic planet killers. (The other problem with the "planet killer" hypothesis, as we've discussed in other HN conversations, is that there's no reason to wait until there's a civilization on the other end to launch one, given how fast they can pop up. As soon as you see life, you should launch one. But Earth has been broadcasting fairly conclusive proof that a civilization with just a bit more tech than we have now is alive ever since the Great Oxygen Catastrophe, yet nobody has killed Earth.)
bcgraham 6y ago
When some civilization becomes apparent, wouldn’t game theorizing say there’s a free rider problem? Wait for someone else to poke their heads out to handle it, save us the trouble, and maybe learn how we rank in a battle royale?

jerf 6y ago

By the time you can launch a planet-killer, you are no longer tied to your own planet anymore. It requires marshaling an amount of energy far beyond what you could afford to do in a biosphere, and a biosphere is all a planet really has to offer. Two of these civilizations might certainly take a swing at each other's planets, but it wouldn't end the war by any means; at this point the planet may not even account for single-digit percentages of what is going on in the system. I think if you look ahead at feasible technology, you get self-sustaining pure-space civilizations long before you get civilizations that can launch relativistic planet killers. (The other problem with the "planet killer" hypothesis, as we've discussed in other HN conversations, is that there's no reason to wait until there's a civilization on the other end to launch one, given how fast they can pop up. As soon as you see life, you should launch one. But Earth has been broadcasting fairly conclusive proof that a civilization with just a bit more tech than we have now is alive ever since the Great Oxygen Catastrophe, yet nobody has killed Earth.)

bcgraham 6y ago

When some civilization becomes apparent, wouldn’t game theorizing say there’s a free rider problem? Wait for someone else to poke their heads out to handle it, save us the trouble, and maybe learn how we rank in a battle royale?