4 ms·

I did not assume that "physics and engineering are 'done'". I assume instead that the known laws of physics which seem to prevent faster-than-light travel hold

by vecter 4y ago

I did not assume that "physics and engineering are 'done'". I assume instead that the known laws of physics which seem to prevent faster-than-light travel hold and are inviolable, despite how smart any species may be. The analogy with the the argument 500 years ago doesn't apply because 500 years ago we did not have the understanding of physics and chemistry that we have today. Of course we still have a lot of physics left to discover, but it's extremely unlikely that whatever new physics we discover will violate special relativity.

postalrat 4y ago
You don't need faster than light travel to cover the entire galaxy. Using it as a roadblock doesn't make sense.
- vecter 4y ago
  It does when traveling interstellar distances. Even traveling at 10% the speed of light, it would take a ship one million years to cross the galaxy. The energy required to accelerate to that speed (and then decelerate to rest) is absurdly high. Once you realize how large the costs become for interstellar travel, simple economics makes most of these arguments moot. The outcome is not worth the cost for almost anything you want to achieve.
  - postalrat 4y ago
    We are about 30k light years from the center and the milky way radius is about 50k light years. So if we sent out probes in every direction we could hit 100% of the galaxy in 800k years. A 100kg probe at 10% of the speed of light is about the energy of a 20 megaton nuke. Another 20 megatons to slow it down. It seems very likely that the technology necessary will be developed in the next 100-10,000 years.
    - vecter 4y ago
      Let's say we send 10,000 probes out, each weighing 1,000kg at 10% the speed of light out into the Milky Way. We would do this with the sole intention of destroying an entire planet once we find any hint of even bacterial life? There isn't enough time to phone home to decide what to do with this information, so the probe would have to decide for itself whether or not to commit immediate genocide. How could any government possibly convince their citizens that this is the best use of trillions of tax dollars (if not quadrillions of dollars), not to mention how can we create a 1,000kg device that can categorically annihilate an entire planet? If the Dark Forest theory is indeed true, why haven't we seen evidence of such galactic levels of destruction? The Milky Way has been around for over 10 billion years. Surely by then there must've been at least one civilization advanced enough to do this in that time. Yet we see no evidence for this whatsoever. The more you spell this out, the more absurd it becomes from any practical perspective.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - sophacles 4y ago
        I find it amusing that your assertions about what aliens may or may not do completely ignores the fact that the one intelligent species we can observe does all the things you claim no species would ever do. Really drives home the point you are making with your satirical take.
        vecter 4y ago
        I don't think that's true at all. Humans used to invade foreign lands and decimate the native population, but we did that in pursuit of resources, not as the primary goal (when Columbus sailed off from England, he wasn't sent out with the dictum of "go find other intelligent species and annihilate them"). Furthermore, that is clearly not the case anymore in modern times. As I've stated, we have the technology and military might to wipe many nations off the face of the Earth, yet we choose not to. Our destruction of the environment is different also. Cutting down the Amazon is a side-effect of our pursuit of natural resource. We do not go there with the intention of killing all of the species there. That is just an unfortunate consequence of our hunt for resources. The Dark Forest is entirely different. The entire thesis of that theory is an advanced civilization would have the singular goal of sterilizing all other life in the galaxy as the goal in and of itself. There is simply nothing analogous to that in human history.
asdff 4y ago
It could be as simple as a hedging your bet strategy. You might not even need faster than light travel. The weapon of our destruction in the distant future could have already been launched, making its way from its factory at 99% the speed of light as we speak, simply because the characteristics of our planets suggest a nonzero possibility of life arising. If the bet means your species has no potential predator in the future, then committing all the resources you can to such an effort would be a decent strategy. I hope I am wrong of course.
- vecter 4y ago
  Everyone seems to be overlooking that the costs for this are insanely high. This has to be funded by tax dollars. Why should we use taxpayer money to try to annihilate every other single living organism in the galaxy? The reasoning that "there's a non-zero chance that if we don't, someone else will do it to us" is practically useless reasoning, especially from a policy perspective. That's like saying that the laws of quantum mechanics prescribe a non-zero probability to a planet-sized nuclear bomb materializing next to Earth and instantly exploding, demolishing all life here, yet we don't make policies based on such vanishingly low probability events. Plus is every sentient species going to be this genocidal by nature? Humans do have a history genocide, but in civilized society today, we do everything we can to avoid war. The United States clearly has the military might to invade any number of nations in the world and easily conquer them, yet we don't for a whole host of totally valid and logical reasons. Heck, we pass laws (I assume for good and justifiable moral reasons) to protect indigenous people even though we have the might to completely obliterate them. Everything about the Dark Forest is completely impractical when thought through with the smallest amount of sensible reasoning.
  - asdff 4y ago
    I was framing it more like the aliens are the ones launching these weapons, not us, we can hardly get our act together for such farsighted planning. And sure, not every species are genocidal, but some certainly are by nature. We hesistate fighting other humans because they are humans, and we value ourselves more than any other lifeform. But people don't hesitate swatting a mosquito, or dumping bleach on a colony of mold in their shower. My cat doesn't care about slowly and painfully killing the insects it catches. The tree doesn't care if its shade blocks other plants from taking advantage of the sun. The invasive species doesn't care if it displaces the native ones. The virus doesn't care if it kills its host. Alien life might realize this, that the probability is very high that other life forms really don't care about the continued reproductive success of other life forms, unless there is some lopsided benefit involved. Maybe they aren't even consuming their own resources to act on this goal of wiping out the possibility, however low, of a danger to their species emerging. Maybe they've already sent out some AI controlled probes, that are on distant metal rich asteroids far from their homeworld, autonomously mining, building weaponry, identifying targets, and launching these weapons that will hit their targets millions or billions of years in the future. Such implementation could even outlast the species that initially created it.
Zurrrrr 4y ago
We don't even understand gravity entirely. It's entirely possible we will come up with a different theory which is largely consistent with much of what we do know, while still allowing for things that we currently think are impossible. We know so very, very little.

by vecter 4y ago

postalrat 4y ago

You don't need faster than light travel to cover the entire galaxy. Using it as a roadblock doesn't make sense.

vecter 4y ago
It does when traveling interstellar distances. Even traveling at 10% the speed of light, it would take a ship one million years to cross the galaxy. The energy required to accelerate to that speed (and then decelerate to rest) is absurdly high. Once you realize how large the costs become for interstellar travel, simple economics makes most of these arguments moot. The outcome is not worth the cost for almost anything you want to achieve.
- postalrat 4y ago
  We are about 30k light years from the center and the milky way radius is about 50k light years. So if we sent out probes in every direction we could hit 100% of the galaxy in 800k years. A 100kg probe at 10% of the speed of light is about the energy of a 20 megaton nuke. Another 20 megatons to slow it down. It seems very likely that the technology necessary will be developed in the next 100-10,000 years.
  - vecter 4y ago
    Let's say we send 10,000 probes out, each weighing 1,000kg at 10% the speed of light out into the Milky Way. We would do this with the sole intention of destroying an entire planet once we find any hint of even bacterial life? There isn't enough time to phone home to decide what to do with this information, so the probe would have to decide for itself whether or not to commit immediate genocide. How could any government possibly convince their citizens that this is the best use of trillions of tax dollars (if not quadrillions of dollars), not to mention how can we create a 1,000kg device that can categorically annihilate an entire planet? If the Dark Forest theory is indeed true, why haven't we seen evidence of such galactic levels of destruction? The Milky Way has been around for over 10 billion years. Surely by then there must've been at least one civilization advanced enough to do this in that time. Yet we see no evidence for this whatsoever. The more you spell this out, the more absurd it becomes from any practical perspective.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - sophacles 4y ago
      I find it amusing that your assertions about what aliens may or may not do completely ignores the fact that the one intelligent species we can observe does all the things you claim no species would ever do. Really drives home the point you are making with your satirical take.
      - vecter 4y ago
        I don't think that's true at all. Humans used to invade foreign lands and decimate the native population, but we did that in pursuit of resources, not as the primary goal (when Columbus sailed off from England, he wasn't sent out with the dictum of "go find other intelligent species and annihilate them"). Furthermore, that is clearly not the case anymore in modern times. As I've stated, we have the technology and military might to wipe many nations off the face of the Earth, yet we choose not to. Our destruction of the environment is different also. Cutting down the Amazon is a side-effect of our pursuit of natural resource. We do not go there with the intention of killing all of the species there. That is just an unfortunate consequence of our hunt for resources. The Dark Forest is entirely different. The entire thesis of that theory is an advanced civilization would have the singular goal of sterilizing all other life in the galaxy as the goal in and of itself. There is simply nothing analogous to that in human history.

asdff 4y ago

It could be as simple as a hedging your bet strategy. You might not even need faster than light travel. The weapon of our destruction in the distant future could have already been launched, making its way from its factory at 99% the speed of light as we speak, simply because the characteristics of our planets suggest a nonzero possibility of life arising. If the bet means your species has no potential predator in the future, then committing all the resources you can to such an effort would be a decent strategy. I hope I am wrong of course.

vecter 4y ago
Everyone seems to be overlooking that the costs for this are insanely high. This has to be funded by tax dollars. Why should we use taxpayer money to try to annihilate every other single living organism in the galaxy? The reasoning that "there's a non-zero chance that if we don't, someone else will do it to us" is practically useless reasoning, especially from a policy perspective. That's like saying that the laws of quantum mechanics prescribe a non-zero probability to a planet-sized nuclear bomb materializing next to Earth and instantly exploding, demolishing all life here, yet we don't make policies based on such vanishingly low probability events. Plus is every sentient species going to be this genocidal by nature? Humans do have a history genocide, but in civilized society today, we do everything we can to avoid war. The United States clearly has the military might to invade any number of nations in the world and easily conquer them, yet we don't for a whole host of totally valid and logical reasons. Heck, we pass laws (I assume for good and justifiable moral reasons) to protect indigenous people even though we have the might to completely obliterate them. Everything about the Dark Forest is completely impractical when thought through with the smallest amount of sensible reasoning.
- asdff 4y ago
  I was framing it more like the aliens are the ones launching these weapons, not us, we can hardly get our act together for such farsighted planning. And sure, not every species are genocidal, but some certainly are by nature. We hesistate fighting other humans because they are humans, and we value ourselves more than any other lifeform. But people don't hesitate swatting a mosquito, or dumping bleach on a colony of mold in their shower. My cat doesn't care about slowly and painfully killing the insects it catches. The tree doesn't care if its shade blocks other plants from taking advantage of the sun. The invasive species doesn't care if it displaces the native ones. The virus doesn't care if it kills its host. Alien life might realize this, that the probability is very high that other life forms really don't care about the continued reproductive success of other life forms, unless there is some lopsided benefit involved. Maybe they aren't even consuming their own resources to act on this goal of wiping out the possibility, however low, of a danger to their species emerging. Maybe they've already sent out some AI controlled probes, that are on distant metal rich asteroids far from their homeworld, autonomously mining, building weaponry, identifying targets, and launching these weapons that will hit their targets millions or billions of years in the future. Such implementation could even outlast the species that initially created it.

Zurrrrr 4y ago

We don't even understand gravity entirely. It's entirely possible we will come up with a different theory which is largely consistent with much of what we do know, while still allowing for things that we currently think are impossible. We know so very, very little.