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>Expanding menace civilizations will run up against overwhelmingly more advanced stable cultures before long and be contained or destroyed, so odds are none cou

>Expanding menace civilizations will run up against overwhelmingly more advanced stable cultures before long and be contained or destroyed, so odds are none could get here before that happens. This seems like an interesting thought experiment care to expand on that?

ncmncm 6y ago
An expanding menace culture will also be young, just because anything growing fast can't have been doing it for long. By comparison, a stable culture can stay that way indefinitely, spending its resources accumulating knowledge and skills instead of on expanding, and so can accumulate a very great deal of both over a vast stretch of time. It has perhaps less access to materials, but a solar system has a great deal of material to start with, and it is not stretched thin. When an expanding menace tries to absorb the ancient stable culture, it has key disadvantages. Its attention is spread over activities on a large periphery, and its stores of knowledge and weaponry are limited. The ancient culture has been found by many menaces before, and survived them all. It knows of other old, stable societies, and they may even have evolved a common plan for dealing with menaces. It is conceivable that the expanding menace would try to flow around the old stable societies, like a river around rocks, without threatening them enough to provoke a backlash, but that runs against the logic of expansion. So, odds are any expanding menace will encounter one of them, or more than one, if needed, before it gets to us. Each such encounter will be an existential challenge at bad odds, which multiply out increasingly close to zero. Thus, the stable condition of a galaxy is a sparsely occupied archipelago of deeply ancient, unassailable cultures not interested in expansion, so not visiting, e.g., us, with the occasional rash of menace, dealt with firmly.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  Are you arguing that the expanding menace culture must be young because such cultures wouldn't last long because of conflict? I think a lot depends on how densely populated the universe is. At a limit imagine one long lived intelligence per galaxy. You could have a poisonous disease the size of a galaxy 10 million years old sending out spores to poison adjacent galaxies. Maybe we are even the present genesis of this. As you adjust down you could trivially and likely have tens of light years between cultures or even hundreds on average if intelligent cultures are short lived or particularly rare. Expanding menaces could be automated and self replicating and designed to create an expanding zone of safety for an old stable society in a way that isn't easily traceable to the old stable society.
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    > "Are you arguing that the expanding menace culture must be young because such cultures wouldn't last long because of conflict?" It's young because it's expanding. To first order, divide the radius by the rate of expansion and you get when it started. The society that bides its time for millions of years and then turns menace does not pass the smell test. Every year they go without menacing, the less likely they ever will. Anyway, whoever's (1) inside the perimeter, (2) is a bad trading partner, and (3) not burnt is a pretty good bet for who's responsible. If there are two plausible candidates, they are better both dealt with. It's also true that they don't last long because of conflict, but that's secondary. A sorcerer's apprentice scenario is conceivable only in the short term. To maintain expansion demands adaptation to an increasing variety of new challenges, whose variety and strength increase as the fourth power of expansion radius. (Three dimensions for space, one for age of opponent.) One can invent myriad obscure scenarios, of decreasing likelihood. It's a big universe, rashes happen, but it's a big universe, so they mostly happen somewhere else.
- serf 6y ago
  this is an interesting observation, and it plays out exactly like this many times over in the 'Stellaris' RTS game. Stable societies that stick to their own region while prioritizing research ('growing tall' is the name for the strategy) tend to win out in battles against those that 'grow wide', grabbing all resources and expanding into them with little regard to research and personal affairs. Those that 'grow wide' tend to win the games through simple attrition on a long time-span at the end-game phase. Simple resource volume tends to be able to win against vastly superior forces, much like a StarCraft 'zerg-rush', and the superior force usually loses in a 'death by a thousand cuts' fashion -- but individual battles before this phase of the end-game are almost exclusively won by small civilizations that 'grow tall', much like the 'stable culture' of your example. The 'Growing Tall' strategy tends to be the one chosen by players who like to end games early and play aggressively against the other players -- contrary to the sedentary and passive method of play that the strategy facilitates.
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    In Stellaris, everybody starts at the same time, right? And, close enough together that they are sure to encounter one another pretty early? And, material resources actually matter? It seems like being equipped to, say, cause a solar flare to sterilize an offending planet would tend to discourage an aggressor before their ships got used up. Probably a flare wiping out a neighboring planet (e.g. one like Venus) first would convey the message adequately.

ncmncm 6y ago

An expanding menace culture will also be young, just because anything growing fast can't have been doing it for long. By comparison, a stable culture can stay that way indefinitely, spending its resources accumulating knowledge and skills instead of on expanding, and so can accumulate a very great deal of both over a vast stretch of time. It has perhaps less access to materials, but a solar system has a great deal of material to start with, and it is not stretched thin. When an expanding menace tries to absorb the ancient stable culture, it has key disadvantages. Its attention is spread over activities on a large periphery, and its stores of knowledge and weaponry are limited. The ancient culture has been found by many menaces before, and survived them all. It knows of other old, stable societies, and they may even have evolved a common plan for dealing with menaces. It is conceivable that the expanding menace would try to flow around the old stable societies, like a river around rocks, without threatening them enough to provoke a backlash, but that runs against the logic of expansion. So, odds are any expanding menace will encounter one of them, or more than one, if needed, before it gets to us. Each such encounter will be an existential challenge at bad odds, which multiply out increasingly close to zero. Thus, the stable condition of a galaxy is a sparsely occupied archipelago of deeply ancient, unassailable cultures not interested in expansion, so not visiting, e.g., us, with the occasional rash of menace, dealt with firmly.

michaelmrose 6y ago
Are you arguing that the expanding menace culture must be young because such cultures wouldn't last long because of conflict? I think a lot depends on how densely populated the universe is. At a limit imagine one long lived intelligence per galaxy. You could have a poisonous disease the size of a galaxy 10 million years old sending out spores to poison adjacent galaxies. Maybe we are even the present genesis of this. As you adjust down you could trivially and likely have tens of light years between cultures or even hundreds on average if intelligent cultures are short lived or particularly rare. Expanding menaces could be automated and self replicating and designed to create an expanding zone of safety for an old stable society in a way that isn't easily traceable to the old stable society.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  > "Are you arguing that the expanding menace culture must be young because such cultures wouldn't last long because of conflict?" It's young because it's expanding. To first order, divide the radius by the rate of expansion and you get when it started. The society that bides its time for millions of years and then turns menace does not pass the smell test. Every year they go without menacing, the less likely they ever will. Anyway, whoever's (1) inside the perimeter, (2) is a bad trading partner, and (3) not burnt is a pretty good bet for who's responsible. If there are two plausible candidates, they are better both dealt with. It's also true that they don't last long because of conflict, but that's secondary. A sorcerer's apprentice scenario is conceivable only in the short term. To maintain expansion demands adaptation to an increasing variety of new challenges, whose variety and strength increase as the fourth power of expansion radius. (Three dimensions for space, one for age of opponent.) One can invent myriad obscure scenarios, of decreasing likelihood. It's a big universe, rashes happen, but it's a big universe, so they mostly happen somewhere else.
serf 6y ago
this is an interesting observation, and it plays out exactly like this many times over in the 'Stellaris' RTS game. Stable societies that stick to their own region while prioritizing research ('growing tall' is the name for the strategy) tend to win out in battles against those that 'grow wide', grabbing all resources and expanding into them with little regard to research and personal affairs. Those that 'grow wide' tend to win the games through simple attrition on a long time-span at the end-game phase. Simple resource volume tends to be able to win against vastly superior forces, much like a StarCraft 'zerg-rush', and the superior force usually loses in a 'death by a thousand cuts' fashion -- but individual battles before this phase of the end-game are almost exclusively won by small civilizations that 'grow tall', much like the 'stable culture' of your example. The 'Growing Tall' strategy tends to be the one chosen by players who like to end games early and play aggressively against the other players -- contrary to the sedentary and passive method of play that the strategy facilitates.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  In Stellaris, everybody starts at the same time, right? And, close enough together that they are sure to encounter one another pretty early? And, material resources actually matter? It seems like being equipped to, say, cause a solar flare to sterilize an offending planet would tend to discourage an aggressor before their ships got used up. Probably a flare wiping out a neighboring planet (e.g. one like Venus) first would convey the message adequately.