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> Then they might assemble something like a robotic attack army and send it over Why would they want to though? What do we have here that someone who could do
by dividedbyzero 3y ago
> Then they might assemble something like a robotic attack army and send it over
Why would they want to though? What do we have here that someone who could do the above couldn't get much easier otherwise?
- _nalply 3y agoRead more about the Dark Forest Hypothesis. I don't mean that this hypothesis is valid but it makes sense to think about it.
- swarnie 3y ago[flagged]
- bartread 3y ago[flagged]
- Retric 3y agoThings have gone poorly for them, but they didn’t know it would happen like this when they invaded. In theory the USSR could have greatly benefited from a short war that gained them resource rich territory at minimal cost like the previous time they invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_occupation_of_Crimea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_occupation_of_Crimea However, an alien civilization has little reason to invade a planet they can’t live on. Imagine someone suggesting we invade Jupiter,
- SiempreViernes 3y agoI don't think Russia gained materially from that. While they ruthlessly exploited whatever resources they could get hold of in the Donbas, that of course that leaves the region much poorer so the have just concentrated wealth, not creates more of it overall.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Retric 3y agoA thief doesn’t care about overall economic outcomes. Crimea may be worse off but that’s not necessarily relevant to Russia’s leadership.
- leetcodesucks 3y ago[dead]
- SiempreViernes 3y agoSure, leadership might gain via corruption but the parent I responded to was more likely speaking of the nation as a whole and not simply leadership.
- gcanyon 3y agoI thought Crimea was about warm water ports?
- SiempreViernes 3y agoI'm not sure how important the physical ports were, if they were important I suspect it mainly their symbolic importance.
- SiempreViernes 3y ago> > Why would they want to though? > Without wanting to turn this into a political debate you could ask this question about Russia attacking Ukraine Reading you narrowly, I agree that of course you can always ask why an actor chooses a particular action. But I don't really understand your larger point, do you mean that all offensive wars are irrational? Because pointing out that wars in the history of planet earth have irrational causes is a long way away from explaining why an interstellar actor should attack whatever it sees.
- bartread 3y ago> Because pointing out that wars in the history of planet earth have irrational causes is a long way away from explaining why an interstellar actor should attack whatever it sees. I'm not explaining why they'd want to or wouldn't want to: I'm suggesting that it doesn't make sense to simply default assume they won't be hostile because we can't imagine reasons why they'd want to attack. I'm picking the example of Russia/Ukraine because it's the most recent conflict example that I can think of where the aggressor's published reasons for attacking - at least to many observers - don't seem to stand up to rational scrutiny. You can have a debate about whether that's correct or not, and different people will have differing perspectives. The point is that aggressors can be aggressive for reasons that don't make sense or seem rational to others. Within the context of this conversation I am not looking to take a position on Russia/Ukraine: it's simply an example that most people will be aware of. Perhaps too current though to avoid an off-topic argument. I explicitly didn't say anything about "all offensive wars" in general. Your narrow reading is, from what you've said here, correct and I wasn't trying to make a larger point beyond suggesting that we don't have much of a basis to assume beings from another world will or won't be hostile. If I were trying to make a larger point I would have stated it explicitly. One of my pet peeves with online discussion is a culture of implication (i.e., people choosing not to speak plainly) that leads, in many cases, to other comments being overread/overinterpreted when they were never intended to be. Hence, I would have chosen to make the wider point explicit rather than leave it to chance, but it seems like I wasn't clear enough in any case, for which I apologise.
- wongarsu 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y ago"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bartread 3y agoRespectfully, I object. Evidently I wasn't clear enough, for which I apologise, but I've explained the intent of my comment in more detail in response to @SiempreViernes' sibling comment. Hopefully that clarifies.
- dang 3y agoWe have to go by effects, not intent, which means the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate their intent. If the topic is divisive and the intention is not inflammatory, that may require some care. That's why the HN guidelines say "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." More explanation on these points in case anyone finds it helpful: effects, not intent: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28932445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28932445 and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=troll%20effects%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=burden%20disambiguate%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- pharmakom 3y agoTo ensure that we don’t do the same.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago"They might be hostile. So lets send an army of robots to wipe them out." But if the army of robots fails, then they'll definitely be hostile. That's... putting a lot of trust in your robots to win when faced with completely unknown conditions.
- jayGlow 3y agothe dark forest requires a relatively simple cheap and effective way of sterilizing a stat system. if there is an easy way to do that then a first strike becomes a more reasonable first contract option.
- jl6 3y agoHopefully there is no way to drop a contaminant into a star to affect its output. A +/-10% change in brightness over a sustained period would probably neutralize us.
- Enginerrrd 3y agoPlanetary bombardment is almost certainly going to be the cheaper option there. Less mass and energy overall. You will still have to accelerate it to a significant speed though.
- baja_blast 3y agoBut the environments that they evolved in and the environment we evolved is completely different. Earth to them would be unbearable for them to live on, and any resource they could possibly want would be readily available via asteroids. One last thing is the biology of Earth would most likely be toxic and incompatible with their biology.
- checkyoursudo 3y ago
- tchaffee 3y agoDivisive politics to the point of violence or even self destruction. Some pests you try to exterminate.