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> So if Liu’s hypothesis is right, it makes sense for the galaxy’s top civilizations to just look at every star, see if there’s a civilization there, and wipe i
by anonymouskimmer 3y ago
> So if Liu’s hypothesis is right, it makes sense for the galaxy’s top civilizations to just look at every star, see if there’s a civilization there, and wipe it out if so.
If resource are scarce, destroying stars and planets seems counterproductive. Why not just colonize as the Trisolarans made steps to do to Earth?
- wintorez 3y agoAre resources really scarce? Other than stars and planets, there are plenty of resources in the astroids and gas giants, and interstellar space. We can argue that the most scarce resource is organic matter. In universal scale, wood is exponentially more scarce than gold.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoAre you sure? The estimate for gold in the universe is 50B tons. There's 550B tons of organic matter on earth - I'm assuming most of that being plant mass. And that's if you're certain Earth is the only planet in the entire universe that has organic life.
- macspoofing 3y ago>The estimate for gold in the universe is 50B tons. That is a wild underestimate. Our galaxy alone has around 100 million Earths worth of gold [1]. [1] https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/astronomers-tally-all-the-gold-in-our-galaxy https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/astronomers-ta...
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoInteresting - this was the first thing that popped up on Google: https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/natural-sciences/chemistry-articles/periodic-table/how-gold-is-made-science-064654/ https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/natural-sciences/che... But I see there's an estimate that there's more gold than that just in our Sun.
- davorak 3y agoMaybe a serious math error? From your link[1] > It is estimated that the amount of gold present in the entire universe is about 50 billion tons, with about one ounce for every 150 billion tons of Earth. According to Alexander Budianto on quora[2] the earth is ~6.58310^21 tons ~ 710^21 710^21/(15010^9) / 10^9 = 46 billion So that is ~46 billion ounces of gold on earth, rounded up 50 billion. Maybe that is where they obtained 50 billion from? [1] https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/natural-sciences/chemistry-articles/periodic-table/how-gold-is-made-science-064654/ https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/natural-sciences/che... [2] https://www.quora.com/How-much-is-the-mass-of-the-earth-in-tons https://www.quora.com/How-much-is-the-mass-of-the-earth-in-t...
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- dumah 3y agoUSGS estimates humans have discovered 244,000 tons of gold, and that’s just in the crust near the surface. This estimate is off by many orders of magnitude.
- ertian 3y agoThis...cannot possibly be right. It's estimated that there are a minimum of 200B galaxies in the observable universe (up to 2 trillion). 50B tons of gold in the universe would mean 0.25 tons per galaxy (shared among the ~100B stars, and let's guess 500B planets)--but we've already extracted ~250k tons from earth alone. 50B tons seems like a suspiciously low number even just within our own galaxy.
- wintorez 3y agoI think 50B tons is a huge underestimation.
- RichardCA 3y agoI think there is a hypothesis going on, that the Earth has an above average quantity of gold because of some novel cosmic event, e.g. neutron star activity that just happened to be in our neighborhood ~5 billion years ago during the formation of our Solar System. My layman understanding of Astrophysics is that we understand things up to Iron pretty well. Beyond that there is a lot of conjecture. I've never heard it explained very well, the best I can find is a 40 year old PBS show. Thanks to Virginia Trimble. https://youtu.be/0byMj2VrT2g?t=565 https://youtu.be/0byMj2VrT2g?t=565
- floxy 3y agoAccording to this: https://www.quantamagazine.org/did-neutron-stars-or-supernovas-forge-the-universes-supply-of-gold-20170323/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/did-neutron-stars-or-supernov... ...one supernova can produce 7.4e22 kg of gold (the moon's mass), while a neutron star to neutron star collision can produce 1.9e27 kg of gold (a Jupiter's mass worth). 50e9 tons is 4.6e13 kg.
- margalabargala 3y agoThe estimate for the amount of gold on Earth is a bit short of 50B tons. The issue of course is that most of that gold is at the center of the Earth, not accessible to us. So that's not 50B tons per universe, but rather, per rocky Earth-type planet.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago>Are resources really scarce? That's the claim in the linked article.
- ertian 3y agoYeah, and the nature of the Dark Forest galaxy would mean that no civilization could get anywhere close to utilizing a significant share of total resources--or even a significant share of the total resources in their backyard--because doing so would attract attention and lead to their extinction. If everybody is busy hiding and being as quiet and careful as possible then resources would be abundant for lack of use--and thus it would not be worth it to fight over resources in the short term.
- stcredzero 3y agoIf resource are scarce, destroying stars and planets seems counterproductive. Just stick with destroying life bearing planets. Over 99% of the matter in the Solar System is in the Sun. Why not just colonize as the Trisolarans made steps to do to Earth? If one is technologically advanced enough to move to the next star system 4 LY away in a huge generation ship fleet, one is advanced enough to build O'Neil cylinder space colonies and dominate the solar system. Going after Earth makes no sense.
- digging 3y agoIn the book, the entire system would be sacrificed. It's many orders of magnitude easier to target a star than a planet, and the tool used permanently altered spacetime itself in a sphere expanding at lightspeed (similar to vacuum decay, but I can't recall the exact mechanism).
- pavel_lishin 3y agoI don't recall it expanding at light-speed, and the tool flattened 3D-space into 2D-space, permanently. (The implication being that eventually, the entire universe would flatten down to 2D space, since the process can't be stopped.) And that was just one possible weapon, used by one possible species, I think?
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoIn the local zone it was at light speed, which is why only the ships which use a propulsion system which slows the local speed of light could escape. Though oddly some higher dimensional spacetime could still intersect with the newly collapsed spacetime in the future, so I don't think the mechanism was fully thought out. You're right on the rest, which makes me wonder why bother going through any of the rest of this instead of just making everything two-dimensional the moment you invent the technology in order to wipe everyone else out from the get go. I guess the reason not to is that this wouldn't stop new 2D species from evolving and eventually threatening you, so it's better to only use on an as needed basis. But if that's the case, then it's better to actually look into whether a species is capable of threat (physically or psychologically) or not before striking them.
- digging 3y ago> If resource are scarce, destroying stars and planets seems counterproductive. Resources aren't scarce, they're just finite. If there are 19 uninhabited systems for every inhabited one, it may seam reasonable to obliterate 5% of systems if it helps you control the other 95%.
- MattPalmer1086 3y agoI thought it was not scarce resources but simply a first strike mentality, given weapons (e.g. relativistic) that could wipe you out.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoAs others have pointed out, this is the most absurd thing. Resources are not scarce. Once you're out of your gravity well and have the tech to stay out of it, energy is effectively unlimited and probably any solar system has all the elements you'll need for whatever the thing is you do. All of this kind of sci-fi is just projecting earthbound colonialism/imperialism motives built around the profit motive and resource scarcity and power out into a universe where none of that makes sense. They're good stories by analogy but have nothing to do with the "reality" of the future-worlds they purport to describe.
- ertian 3y agoWell...and even during the most competitive and severe colonialist/imperialist periods on earth, extermination was very much the exception and not the norm.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoThe worst extermination was accidental -- disease, or famine.
- hammyhavoc 3y agoAccidental? https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/229.html https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/229.html
- ertian 3y agoThere were instances of deliberate disease warfare in America, but that was already centuries after something like 80% of the population of the Americas was killed by diseases that early European explorers didn't even know they were spreading.
- someuser2345 3y agoWe used to think that the idea of humans wiping out species was absurd; after all, there are so many animals out there that us puny humans can't possibly kill all of them. Maybe its the same with interstellar resources; once we master space travel, our energy needs will grow to an absurd amount.
- skywhopper 3y agoYou should probably read the book if you are interested. I don't think this author's summary of the Dark Forest idea is at all accurate.
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoI read all three a while back.
- sliken 3y agoI don't think it has anything to do with resources. It's more to do with anyone in the galaxy can decide to end your planet, do you really want to bet your civilization on ALL other civilizations being friendly? It could be rational, game theory, "grabby aliens", religious reasons, etc. The other issue is you could meet a perfectly sane looking alien civilization, but lose track of them, and before you check in again (say after 100 years) they could be a completely different civilization. Just imagine if the USA can go from far Obama to Trump in a year (or a day), how far you might get in 100 years. Combine the high latency communications and impossible defense against a good offense (near light speed weapons) leads to the dark forest hypothesis.
- tetron 3y agoYes, my recollection of the books is that it isn't about the need to keep consuming resources, it is about the premise that it is impossible to judge if another civilization is hostile or going to turn hostile If your civilization can annihilated in a single strike, the only civilizations that survive have the strategy to a) avoid being detected and b) destroy anyone who has detected them (which results in destroying everyone, to eliminate uncertainty). The idea being that assuming the actual survival of your species is at the top of your moral pyramid, all kinds of atrocities in its defense are justifiable.
- sliken 3y agoWell it's all a side effect of nearly unlimited energy (I.e. enough to accelerate a mile wide asteroid up to nearly light speed) which cause asymmetry in warfare favoring offense. I'm sure humans would kill anyone outside their village/city if defense was impossible and anyone that wanted to kill your city/village just had to push a button.
- snapplebobapple 3y agoIts not about resource scarcity, its about first strike capability in the face of inability to communicate. You think we would have avoided buclear armeggedon up to now if there wasnt a red phone in the kremlin and in the oval office to allow the ussr and us leader to directly communicate? What do you do when you can't communicate but you possess galaxy ending stealth weapons and you can't tell if the other guy also posses them? Shoot first, ask questions later
- WithinReason 3y agoAlien civilisations were destroying entire stars for just being suspicious, and did it within a few decades of receiving information, which means (due to the speed of light limitation) that star destroying weapons were spread around the galaxy every few dozen light years. This means resources were extremely abundant, so it's absurd that a civilisation that can do this simply can't send a probe to every star to check for civilisations.
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoDarn straight. And then colonize or subjugate any existing populations. I think the books obliquely addressed this by having one of the major civilizations mention a comparable civilization that was its antagonist. But even so, subjugation or incorporation of other intelligent species shouldn't have been impossible.
- me_me_me 3y agoIts not about resources but survival. The theory is that any civilization can become as powerful as you are and then you are at constant threat of first strike attack. So you need to first strike before they will ever get that chance. You cannot make an assumption about other side. They can be pacifists or a hive mind with no morals. > Why not just colonize Why bother, you are already star destroying apex species. Trisolarans were relatively low tech civ in the book. In the book and theory of dark forest only most ruthless civs will survive. Civ that will make contact with others might thrive for a while, until they get discovered by ruthless civ.