4 ms·

> and they prevent other beings like themselves from emerging within their volume What so they go to war with other species who are unlike them? Doesn't sound

> and they prevent other beings like themselves from emerging within their volume What so they go to war with other species who are unlike them? Doesn't sound very clever, and it's a losing strategy. 'War is a losing strategy' [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-win_situation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-win_situation

jerf 6y ago
I think you're underestimating the orders of magnitude in development that is possible. Even if an "enlightened" species was light-speed expanding at us right now, and they decided to leave us our entire solar system out of the goodness of their hearts, that would still prevent us from ever matching their expansion, because once we grew to the point that we'd like to light-speed expand into our neighborhood, there'd be no neighborhood to expand into.
olooney 6y ago
Absolutely trivial for an interstellar space-faring civilization to wipe out an up-and-coming species. Grab a medium size asteroid[1] from their solar system, adjust its trajectory slightly, bam! An extinction event level weapon. This works because your basically rolling the rocks downhill, and there is a tremendous potential energy difference[2] between Earth and say, the Kuiper belt[3]. Or a bit of biological warfare - can't be too hard for a super-advanced civilization to tweak a virus to be a little more dangerous. Or maybe a bit of radioactive dust, or just poking a whole in the planets ozone layer; there are probably lots of subtle techniques that an advanced AI could pull off too. the point is, is you command the technology and energy reserves needed for interstellar travel, you don't really need to fight a prolonged war against a species on a lower technology level. Just check in every few thousand years and if it seems like they're starting to expand just wipe them out. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_capture [2]: https://xkcd.com/681/ https://xkcd.com/681/ [3]: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/kuiper-belt/overview/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/kuiper-belt/overvi...
- andredz 6y ago
  Your comment brought the prologue of this novel https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/32411/bens-damn-adventure-the-prince-has-no-pants https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/32411/bens-damn-adventure-... to my mind.
borepop 6y ago
>'War is a losing strategy' Except in virtually all of human history, which is written by the powers that win wars.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- V-2 6y ago
  Humans wage wars against other humans, because we compete for the same resources. But fruit flies and giraffes pretty much ignore eachother.

jerf 6y ago

I think you're underestimating the orders of magnitude in development that is possible. Even if an "enlightened" species was light-speed expanding at us right now, and they decided to leave us our entire solar system out of the goodness of their hearts, that would still prevent us from ever matching their expansion, because once we grew to the point that we'd like to light-speed expand into our neighborhood, there'd be no neighborhood to expand into.

olooney 6y ago

Absolutely trivial for an interstellar space-faring civilization to wipe out an up-and-coming species. Grab a medium size asteroid[1] from their solar system, adjust its trajectory slightly, bam! An extinction event level weapon. This works because your basically rolling the rocks downhill, and there is a tremendous potential energy difference[2] between Earth and say, the Kuiper belt[3]. Or a bit of biological warfare - can't be too hard for a super-advanced civilization to tweak a virus to be a little more dangerous. Or maybe a bit of radioactive dust, or just poking a whole in the planets ozone layer; there are probably lots of subtle techniques that an advanced AI could pull off too. the point is, is you command the technology and energy reserves needed for interstellar travel, you don't really need to fight a prolonged war against a species on a lower technology level. Just check in every few thousand years and if it seems like they're starting to expand just wipe them out. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_capture [2]: https://xkcd.com/681/ https://xkcd.com/681/ [3]: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/kuiper-belt/overview/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/kuiper-belt/overvi...

andredz 6y ago
Your comment brought the prologue of this novel https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/32411/bens-damn-adventure-the-prince-has-no-pants https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/32411/bens-damn-adventure-... to my mind.

borepop 6y ago

>'War is a losing strategy' Except in virtually all of human history, which is written by the powers that win wars.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
V-2 6y ago
Humans wage wars against other humans, because we compete for the same resources. But fruit flies and giraffes pretty much ignore eachother.