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I'm still not very convinced any civilization will actually expand significantly beyond one solar system. It's not just really hard, you'd need really good rea

I'm still not very convinced any civilization will actually expand significantly beyond one solar system. It's not just really hard, you'd need really good reasons for expanding that long (as opposed to just exploring). As Humanity, we're not even sure about increasing our own population size forever.

jdmichal 6y ago
> I'm still not very convinced any civilization will actually expand significantly beyond one solar system. I'm fine with the idea of a species -- or whatever definition you want to use here -- expanding beyond one solar system. But without at least faster-than-light communication, I don't think it would be possible to maintain a cohesive civilization at that scale. And without faster-than-light travel, you're also going to have things like species rings developing.
- deepstack 6y ago
  > I'm still not very convinced any civilization will actually expand significantly beyond one solar system. Whether a civilization expand beyond their solar system is entirely depending on if they develop the technology to do so in a relatively short time compare to their life span. One good reason could be habitable planets. There may not be enough habitable planets left in the solar system. Extra: some sci-fi look at Kardashev scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
  - bayesian_horse 6y ago
    They wouldn't need habitable planets at all Escaping one solar system with some amount of colonists is probably harder than developing the technology to not need whatever counts as "habitable planet" at the other end. They'd use the new system's ressources for all sorts of things, least of which would be biological survival.
    - lupire 6y ago
      Escaping a solar system just requires fuel and a freezer.
jjbinx007 6y ago
Any exploration would most likely be done remotely (at least initially) as it's much simpler and easier than sending living creatures.
- bayesian_horse 6y ago
  Because of the distances, there is almost no point to even sending anything like a simple probe there. Any serious exploration would be a life-like colonization attempt already, because of the challenges.
mynegation 6y ago
It is really hard but the relative hardness of it may be very different 100, 10000, 100K years from now. As for the reasons: _if nothing else_ the expanding Sun outta do it.
- Taylor_OD 6y ago
  Exactly. Right now colonizing Mars is really hard. Will it continue to be in 100 years?
  - bayesian_horse 6y ago
    Yes. And with Mars, on a smaller scale, there is just about the same problem: Of course it is interesting and fascinating to explore it. Or go there once for the funsies. Much harder to establish something that brings back more value than it took to bring it there. Even just keeping Humans alive there will probably be a very expensive proposition for at least a century or more, before there is a solution to the apparent economic futility of colonizing Mars. Bringing back stuff from another star? Forget it. The only reason to go there is to be there. Or even more precisely, you send your children/creations there for their children/creations to be there.
jerf 6y ago
Simple evolution. The fraction of the species that decides "yeah, this is enough" stays behind. The fraction that does not keeps developing and exploring and eventually just straight-up outpopulates the fraction that didn't even if they never actively have a conflict with the "satisfied" group... which is a pretty big "if".
- bayesian_horse 6y ago
  You assume that birth rate differences between cultures are stable, which they have never been. But for sure it's a racist trope to somehow assume "certain cultures" reproduce like bunnies just because whatever, and "replace us within 3-5 generations". Neither the data nor the math makes sense on this. It's not even genetic variation. Of course there could be genetic variation to reproductive success, but this variation hasn't magically and neatly assorted itself into nationalities or religions in the past few centuries for our convenience. Fact is that the absence of Human suffering, side effects of wealth and freedom, seem to decrease birth rates overall. No religious fanaticism will overcome this mechanism long enough to matter.
  - jerf 6y ago
    The "cultures" need have nothing to do with race or religion or anything else. They simply need to reproduce incrementally more. That can be the distinction, all on its own. Remember, evolution is not generally a game of "One day, this horse was born with a mutation that enabled it to use oxygen seven times more efficiently than its brothers." It's often a game of very small incremental differences slowly outcompeting the competition slowly over many generations. A 2.1 birth rate will outcompete a 1.9 birth rate really quite quickly. It doesn't take much difference. This is just standard evolutionary math, not some crazy conspiracy theory. It may help everyone involved to remember we aren't really talking about humans. It is a a bit of a crazy idea to assume that every species in the universe will all 100% experience the same effects humanity happens to where as they become prosperous, they tend to have fewer children. In fact, I've seriously floated that as one of the possible reasons why humanity may actually survive where many of our competition can't. If you consider something like an insect-like species, they may not even be able to get this far without choking out their planet because they may be quite unsuited to "reproducing less in the face of more resources". Human babies are very expensive; it is not at all clear that this will be a universal among intelligent species. I stripped out the comments about humans since it is distracting people from my main point.
mkl95 6y ago
> we're not even sure about increasing our own population size forever World population is expected to peak at 10 billion at some point during this century, then decrease quite a bit. The most similar planets we know about are hundreds of light years away, and if we somehow were able to reach them, we would have to overcome issues such as receiving massive amounts of radiation, having no water, etc., so it's reasonable to expect human population to stay below 10 billion for a long time.
- jkaptur 6y ago
  Where can I read more about the "decrease quite a bit"? People have been predicting that for centuries (Malthus, etc.) and they've all been spectacularly wrong so far.
  - mkl95 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow... The UN expect Asia, Europe and Latin America to start declining in the 2090s, and for zero population growth to be reached around that time. * They estimate that population will eventually decrease by about 1bn. Edit: the study that estimates a decline of 1 billion was published by The Lancet, not the UN. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_population_growth
  - rendang 6y ago
    Some countries' populations are already decreasing, like Japan, and more are following close on the same path.
    - lupire 6y ago
      And USA is decreasing internally, but increasing overall due to immigration.
- Symmetry 6y ago
  If the factors that led to our current population slowdown are maintained over the coming centuries then eventually there'll be a time when population starts to go up again. Some personality traits like Agreeableness are both heritable and tend to cause people to have more kids. So the trend should reverse itself eventually. http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/05/falling-fertility-rates-shouldnt-be.html http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/05/falling-fert...
Geee 6y ago
I think we have two options: to expand to outer space, or to expand to virtual reality and eventually become digital beings. I'm not sure if these options are mutually exclusive, but for the curious mind the digital option would probably be more rewarding with less effort. We even might gradually lose our capability to interact with physical reality, which might be the great filter. In digital form, it's much easier to travel to outer space though. We just need to send transceiver probes in advance. If we want to manifest physically, we just have to print robotic bodies in the destination. Edit: I just realized that even if we're in digital form, we have to fight for physical energy and resources, assuming that we want to keep expanding the digital realm and the capacity of our consciousness. So, in some form we have to expand physically.
- flir 6y ago
  Even if you're spending all your time in Infinite Fun Space, someone needs to stay home in base reality to make sure the lights stay on.
  - praptak 6y ago
    Maybe your tech allows self repairing Infinite Fun Space simulators which are also impossible to destroy, as they are inside stars, inside black holes or made of matter that doesn't interact with anything else.
    - arethuza 6y ago
      I will say that I found the end to the Baroque Cycle in Fall; or, Dodge in Hell to be really satisfying. I won't explain how it relates to your comment though - go read all of them!
      - e40 6y ago
        This one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle I don't see a Fall there.
BurningFrog 6y ago
We've expanded to every remotely habitable region on Earth. It's what we do! Not because a big majority are ever gung ho about emigrating. You only need a few misfits or outcasts who want to try something different to start it.
- trgn 6y ago
  I think "remotely habitable" is key. Humans can barely colonize Antartica. There's zero self sufficiency there, and there seems to be zero appetite for anybody actually settling there. At most, you get adventurers who'll spent a few years there, living off the teat of some research institution, only for them to return with some good stories. Moon or Mars are much more hostile to our physicality and sensibilities than Antartica. Mars will attract some adventurers, maybe initially some utopians. After an initial period of excitement, there will be zero appetite to actually colonize something as unlivable, boring or ugly as Mars.
  - zentiggr 6y ago
    Boring and ugly are opinions, personally I would love to roam around and just enjoy the variety. Unlivable is the outstanding question, currently open.
    - frenchy 6y ago
      You can say it's an opinion, but I think you'll find it's almost universally held. Most people would enjoy romming Mars for a few days, some would enjoy it for a few months. I think only a select few would enjoy being there for longer than that unless it dramatically changed.
      - BurningFrog 6y ago
        If a billion Earthlings want to roam around Mars once in their life, that's the basis for several permanent tourist settlements there. I also bet many would enjoy the low gravity on Mars and the Moon. It might even be very health beneficial for some. Again, that's the basis for permanent medical facilities there.
tlb 6y ago
In a galaxy with millions of civilizations, it only takes one grabby species to result in colonization. So you don't have to be convinced that any given species will expand, just accept that some might. Expansion is selected for in biological evolution, so it's fair to assume that most pre-civilization species are expanding on their planet. Perhaps some will have an epiphany and stop expanding as their society progresses, but you'd have to argue that that will almost surely happen to every species to refute grabbiness theory.
- qayxc 6y ago
  > So you don't have to be convinced that any given species will expand, just accept that some might. You'd have to accept the other assumptions that the authors make as well. One is that the grabby species is capable of travelling at a significant fraction of lightspeed. Another factor is unlimited lifetime of civilisations. > Expansion is selected for in biological evolution, so it's fair to assume that most pre-civilization species are expanding on their planet. Hm. I'm not sure that biology is the right angle to approach this. There are plenty of examples in human history (and even today) where expansion was not at all favoured by civilisations and human communities. Isolated tribes on islands and in rain forests are a counter-example, as well as isolationist phases of civilisations such as feudal Japan in the Edo period. To me the model is basically just another hypothesis based on the Spherical Cow.
  - CryptoPunk 6y ago
    Expansion being selected for a basic truism of evolution, and not disproven by your examples.
    - qayxc 6y ago
      That still has nothing to do with Biology probably not being the right approach to use here. Evolution doesn't know or care about space travel. It's separate concerns entirely. One is a function of the environment and adapting to it, the other requires a sapient species to create and apply technology, which - judging from current observation - is neither a common, nor obvious result of evolution.
ASalazarMX 6y ago
I think FTL travel can't be useful unless FTL communication exists first. Otherwise you're just spending a lot of resources to seed competing civilizations.
- frenchy 6y ago
  FTL travel actually implies FTL communication, since you can send a traveller with a message. What I think you mean is that communication needs to be either really fast, or at least a lot faster than the travelling. I don't think that's relevant. All you really need is a segment of the population that wants to go somewhere else, and trade and whatnot can still work well without a communication system that's faster than travelling. That's how the trans-atlantic trade system worked from about 1500-1700.
  - ASalazarMX 6y ago
    > What I think you mean is that communication needs to be either really fast, or at least a lot faster than the travelling. Precisely. Messengers wouldn't cut it. Ancient empires always struggled to maintain control of their edge territories, because communication was too slow, even with messengers on horse.
    - frenchy 6y ago
      Ancient empires also regularly spawned friendly or unfriendly colonies on their periphery, and regularly lost control of them. Space colonization doesn't have to be useful for earthlings for somone to bother attempting it. All of that said, we're probably less equiped to colonize space than the chimpanzees in Africa are to build boats and sail to Brazil.
      - ASalazarMX 6y ago
        > we're probably less equiped to colonize space than the chimpanzees in Africa are to build boats and sail to Brazil Surprisingly less prepared, if you count accidental "boats" http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160126-the-monkeys-that-sailed-across-the-atlantic-to-south-america http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160126-the-monkeys-that-sai...
vidarh 6y ago
We don't know if it's really hard. If it is really hard, I'm tempted to agree with you. That is, if we don't find a mechanism for FTL there's very little to be gained.

jdmichal 6y ago

> I'm still not very convinced any civilization will actually expand significantly beyond one solar system. I'm fine with the idea of a species -- or whatever definition you want to use here -- expanding beyond one solar system. But without at least faster-than-light communication, I don't think it would be possible to maintain a cohesive civilization at that scale. And without faster-than-light travel, you're also going to have things like species rings developing.

deepstack 6y ago
> I'm still not very convinced any civilization will actually expand significantly beyond one solar system. Whether a civilization expand beyond their solar system is entirely depending on if they develop the technology to do so in a relatively short time compare to their life span. One good reason could be habitable planets. There may not be enough habitable planets left in the solar system. Extra: some sci-fi look at Kardashev scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
- bayesian_horse 6y ago
  They wouldn't need habitable planets at all Escaping one solar system with some amount of colonists is probably harder than developing the technology to not need whatever counts as "habitable planet" at the other end. They'd use the new system's ressources for all sorts of things, least of which would be biological survival.
  - lupire 6y ago
    Escaping a solar system just requires fuel and a freezer.

jjbinx007 6y ago

Any exploration would most likely be done remotely (at least initially) as it's much simpler and easier than sending living creatures.

bayesian_horse 6y ago
Because of the distances, there is almost no point to even sending anything like a simple probe there. Any serious exploration would be a life-like colonization attempt already, because of the challenges.

mynegation 6y ago

It is really hard but the relative hardness of it may be very different 100, 10000, 100K years from now. As for the reasons: _if nothing else_ the expanding Sun outta do it.

Taylor_OD 6y ago
Exactly. Right now colonizing Mars is really hard. Will it continue to be in 100 years?
- bayesian_horse 6y ago
  Yes. And with Mars, on a smaller scale, there is just about the same problem: Of course it is interesting and fascinating to explore it. Or go there once for the funsies. Much harder to establish something that brings back more value than it took to bring it there. Even just keeping Humans alive there will probably be a very expensive proposition for at least a century or more, before there is a solution to the apparent economic futility of colonizing Mars. Bringing back stuff from another star? Forget it. The only reason to go there is to be there. Or even more precisely, you send your children/creations there for their children/creations to be there.

jerf 6y ago

Simple evolution. The fraction of the species that decides "yeah, this is enough" stays behind. The fraction that does not keeps developing and exploring and eventually just straight-up outpopulates the fraction that didn't even if they never actively have a conflict with the "satisfied" group... which is a pretty big "if".

bayesian_horse 6y ago
You assume that birth rate differences between cultures are stable, which they have never been. But for sure it's a racist trope to somehow assume "certain cultures" reproduce like bunnies just because whatever, and "replace us within 3-5 generations". Neither the data nor the math makes sense on this. It's not even genetic variation. Of course there could be genetic variation to reproductive success, but this variation hasn't magically and neatly assorted itself into nationalities or religions in the past few centuries for our convenience. Fact is that the absence of Human suffering, side effects of wealth and freedom, seem to decrease birth rates overall. No religious fanaticism will overcome this mechanism long enough to matter.
- jerf 6y ago
  The "cultures" need have nothing to do with race or religion or anything else. They simply need to reproduce incrementally more. That can be the distinction, all on its own. Remember, evolution is not generally a game of "One day, this horse was born with a mutation that enabled it to use oxygen seven times more efficiently than its brothers." It's often a game of very small incremental differences slowly outcompeting the competition slowly over many generations. A 2.1 birth rate will outcompete a 1.9 birth rate really quite quickly. It doesn't take much difference. This is just standard evolutionary math, not some crazy conspiracy theory. It may help everyone involved to remember we aren't really talking about humans. It is a a bit of a crazy idea to assume that every species in the universe will all 100% experience the same effects humanity happens to where as they become prosperous, they tend to have fewer children. In fact, I've seriously floated that as one of the possible reasons why humanity may actually survive where many of our competition can't. If you consider something like an insect-like species, they may not even be able to get this far without choking out their planet because they may be quite unsuited to "reproducing less in the face of more resources". Human babies are very expensive; it is not at all clear that this will be a universal among intelligent species. I stripped out the comments about humans since it is distracting people from my main point.

mkl95 6y ago

> we're not even sure about increasing our own population size forever World population is expected to peak at 10 billion at some point during this century, then decrease quite a bit. The most similar planets we know about are hundreds of light years away, and if we somehow were able to reach them, we would have to overcome issues such as receiving massive amounts of radiation, having no water, etc., so it's reasonable to expect human population to stay below 10 billion for a long time.

jkaptur 6y ago
Where can I read more about the "decrease quite a bit"? People have been predicting that for centuries (Malthus, etc.) and they've all been spectacularly wrong so far.
- mkl95 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow... The UN expect Asia, Europe and Latin America to start declining in the 2090s, and for zero population growth to be reached around that time. * They estimate that population will eventually decrease by about 1bn. Edit: the study that estimates a decline of 1 billion was published by The Lancet, not the UN. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_population_growth
- rendang 6y ago
  Some countries' populations are already decreasing, like Japan, and more are following close on the same path.
  - lupire 6y ago
    And USA is decreasing internally, but increasing overall due to immigration.
Symmetry 6y ago
If the factors that led to our current population slowdown are maintained over the coming centuries then eventually there'll be a time when population starts to go up again. Some personality traits like Agreeableness are both heritable and tend to cause people to have more kids. So the trend should reverse itself eventually. http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/05/falling-fertility-rates-shouldnt-be.html http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/05/falling-fert...

Geee 6y ago

I think we have two options: to expand to outer space, or to expand to virtual reality and eventually become digital beings. I'm not sure if these options are mutually exclusive, but for the curious mind the digital option would probably be more rewarding with less effort. We even might gradually lose our capability to interact with physical reality, which might be the great filter. In digital form, it's much easier to travel to outer space though. We just need to send transceiver probes in advance. If we want to manifest physically, we just have to print robotic bodies in the destination. Edit: I just realized that even if we're in digital form, we have to fight for physical energy and resources, assuming that we want to keep expanding the digital realm and the capacity of our consciousness. So, in some form we have to expand physically.

flir 6y ago
Even if you're spending all your time in Infinite Fun Space, someone needs to stay home in base reality to make sure the lights stay on.
- praptak 6y ago
  Maybe your tech allows self repairing Infinite Fun Space simulators which are also impossible to destroy, as they are inside stars, inside black holes or made of matter that doesn't interact with anything else.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    I will say that I found the end to the Baroque Cycle in Fall; or, Dodge in Hell to be really satisfying. I won't explain how it relates to your comment though - go read all of them!
    - e40 6y ago
      This one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle I don't see a Fall there.

BurningFrog 6y ago

We've expanded to every remotely habitable region on Earth. It's what we do! Not because a big majority are ever gung ho about emigrating. You only need a few misfits or outcasts who want to try something different to start it.

trgn 6y ago
I think "remotely habitable" is key. Humans can barely colonize Antartica. There's zero self sufficiency there, and there seems to be zero appetite for anybody actually settling there. At most, you get adventurers who'll spent a few years there, living off the teat of some research institution, only for them to return with some good stories. Moon or Mars are much more hostile to our physicality and sensibilities than Antartica. Mars will attract some adventurers, maybe initially some utopians. After an initial period of excitement, there will be zero appetite to actually colonize something as unlivable, boring or ugly as Mars.
- zentiggr 6y ago
  Boring and ugly are opinions, personally I would love to roam around and just enjoy the variety. Unlivable is the outstanding question, currently open.
  - frenchy 6y ago
    You can say it's an opinion, but I think you'll find it's almost universally held. Most people would enjoy romming Mars for a few days, some would enjoy it for a few months. I think only a select few would enjoy being there for longer than that unless it dramatically changed.
    - BurningFrog 6y ago
      If a billion Earthlings want to roam around Mars once in their life, that's the basis for several permanent tourist settlements there. I also bet many would enjoy the low gravity on Mars and the Moon. It might even be very health beneficial for some. Again, that's the basis for permanent medical facilities there.

tlb 6y ago

In a galaxy with millions of civilizations, it only takes one grabby species to result in colonization. So you don't have to be convinced that any given species will expand, just accept that some might. Expansion is selected for in biological evolution, so it's fair to assume that most pre-civilization species are expanding on their planet. Perhaps some will have an epiphany and stop expanding as their society progresses, but you'd have to argue that that will almost surely happen to every species to refute grabbiness theory.

qayxc 6y ago
> So you don't have to be convinced that any given species will expand, just accept that some might. You'd have to accept the other assumptions that the authors make as well. One is that the grabby species is capable of travelling at a significant fraction of lightspeed. Another factor is unlimited lifetime of civilisations. > Expansion is selected for in biological evolution, so it's fair to assume that most pre-civilization species are expanding on their planet. Hm. I'm not sure that biology is the right angle to approach this. There are plenty of examples in human history (and even today) where expansion was not at all favoured by civilisations and human communities. Isolated tribes on islands and in rain forests are a counter-example, as well as isolationist phases of civilisations such as feudal Japan in the Edo period. To me the model is basically just another hypothesis based on the Spherical Cow.
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  Expansion being selected for a basic truism of evolution, and not disproven by your examples.
  - qayxc 6y ago
    That still has nothing to do with Biology probably not being the right approach to use here. Evolution doesn't know or care about space travel. It's separate concerns entirely. One is a function of the environment and adapting to it, the other requires a sapient species to create and apply technology, which - judging from current observation - is neither a common, nor obvious result of evolution.

ASalazarMX 6y ago

I think FTL travel can't be useful unless FTL communication exists first. Otherwise you're just spending a lot of resources to seed competing civilizations.

frenchy 6y ago
FTL travel actually implies FTL communication, since you can send a traveller with a message. What I think you mean is that communication needs to be either really fast, or at least a lot faster than the travelling. I don't think that's relevant. All you really need is a segment of the population that wants to go somewhere else, and trade and whatnot can still work well without a communication system that's faster than travelling. That's how the trans-atlantic trade system worked from about 1500-1700.
- ASalazarMX 6y ago
  > What I think you mean is that communication needs to be either really fast, or at least a lot faster than the travelling. Precisely. Messengers wouldn't cut it. Ancient empires always struggled to maintain control of their edge territories, because communication was too slow, even with messengers on horse.
  - frenchy 6y ago
    Ancient empires also regularly spawned friendly or unfriendly colonies on their periphery, and regularly lost control of them. Space colonization doesn't have to be useful for earthlings for somone to bother attempting it. All of that said, we're probably less equiped to colonize space than the chimpanzees in Africa are to build boats and sail to Brazil.
    - ASalazarMX 6y ago
      > we're probably less equiped to colonize space than the chimpanzees in Africa are to build boats and sail to Brazil Surprisingly less prepared, if you count accidental "boats" http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160126-the-monkeys-that-sailed-across-the-atlantic-to-south-america http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160126-the-monkeys-that-sai...

vidarh 6y ago

We don't know if it's really hard. If it is really hard, I'm tempted to agree with you. That is, if we don't find a mechanism for FTL there's very little to be gained.