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More like they have a bizarre mix of numbers which are way too large and those which are way too small. Technological civilization lasting 100M years per planet

by jaspax 5y ago

More like they have a bizarre mix of numbers which are way too large and those which are way too small. Technological civilization lasting 100M years per planet? But those civilizations only try to colonize once per 100K years? And, at the same time, their colony ships take tens of thousands of years to reach their destinations? I have a hard time imagining ways in which all of those are true at once.

foerbert 5y ago
I'm not sure why you see this as so bizarre. This seems like a fairly conservative estimate across the board, intended to be used to produce some kind of lower bound, rather than be an expected case. This is a pretty common and normal idea. Is it that you think the technological civilization duration is not conservative? Remember we're talking about a civilization that can cross the galaxy here. They can show up in a star system and throw habitats across any planets, moons, or asteroids they find appealing. They can also set up whatever number of space structures they want. What exactly do you think is so likely to utterly extinguish this species in every star system within 100M years? The long duration between colonization events is not only highly conservative, it also functions here to allow any particular civilization to be pretty irrelevant. Even if some crazy war breaks out within a star system, a single surviving habitat is enough to allow the next colonization to still occur. So, yeah? It all strikes me as a pretty normal conservative estimate intended to let them figure out some kind of reasonable lower bound here. All pretty normal stuff.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  What is "conservative" about a civilisation lasting 100 million years? That is literally astronomical. That about twice as long as grass has existed.
  - foerbert 5y ago
    Again, we're talking about a civilization that is colonizing the galaxy here. They would presumably have habitats and people strewn all over the star systems they colonized. What do you see wiping them all out entirely so regularly that 100M years as an average is so optimistic? And it doesn't even need to be a single civilization. You only need a civilization to exist capable of launching a new colonization venture every 100k years, or whatever the average rate they assumed was.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > Remember we're talking about a civilization that can cross the galaxy here. That would be earth at the current point in time. Given 100k years I’m sure we could fabricate a huge colony ship, and accelerate it to 10km/s. What we won’t be able to do is throw up habitats all over the solar system. By that point all your tech is thousands of years old. It seems unlikely it’d be capable of doing more than drop you off on whatever planet you were aiming for (or keep floating around, if it’s a lifeless husk).

by jaspax 5y ago

foerbert 5y ago

I'm not sure why you see this as so bizarre. This seems like a fairly conservative estimate across the board, intended to be used to produce some kind of lower bound, rather than be an expected case. This is a pretty common and normal idea. Is it that you think the technological civilization duration is not conservative? Remember we're talking about a civilization that can cross the galaxy here. They can show up in a star system and throw habitats across any planets, moons, or asteroids they find appealing. They can also set up whatever number of space structures they want. What exactly do you think is so likely to utterly extinguish this species in every star system within 100M years? The long duration between colonization events is not only highly conservative, it also functions here to allow any particular civilization to be pretty irrelevant. Even if some crazy war breaks out within a star system, a single surviving habitat is enough to allow the next colonization to still occur. So, yeah? It all strikes me as a pretty normal conservative estimate intended to let them figure out some kind of reasonable lower bound here. All pretty normal stuff.

user-the-name 5y ago
What is "conservative" about a civilisation lasting 100 million years? That is literally astronomical. That about twice as long as grass has existed.
- foerbert 5y ago
  Again, we're talking about a civilization that is colonizing the galaxy here. They would presumably have habitats and people strewn all over the star systems they colonized. What do you see wiping them all out entirely so regularly that 100M years as an average is so optimistic? And it doesn't even need to be a single civilization. You only need a civilization to exist capable of launching a new colonization venture every 100k years, or whatever the average rate they assumed was.
Aeolun 5y ago
> Remember we're talking about a civilization that can cross the galaxy here. That would be earth at the current point in time. Given 100k years I’m sure we could fabricate a huge colony ship, and accelerate it to 10km/s. What we won’t be able to do is throw up habitats all over the solar system. By that point all your tech is thousands of years old. It seems unlikely it’d be capable of doing more than drop you off on whatever planet you were aiming for (or keep floating around, if it’s a lifeless husk).