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> Is there enough time in the lifetime of a star to build and use those structures? Easily. Sci-fi has misconstrued what a Dyson Sphere is to the point where t

by cletus 2y ago

> Is there enough time in the lifetime of a star to build and use those structures? Easily. Sci-fi has misconstrued what a Dyson Sphere is to the point where the preferred nomenclature is "Dyson Swarm". A Dyson Sphere was never a rigid shell around a star. Such a thing isn't possible with any known or theorized material. And it makes no sense even if you could. So a Dyson Swarm around our Sun would be approximately a billion O'Neil Cylinders (orbitals 2-4 miles in diameter and 10-20 miles long). You don't have to build them all at once. Build them as you need them. The more you build the more industrial capacity you have. They can all be built independently too. I imagine it would take less than 10 years to build one once you have the capability. > Are there intelligent beings with a drive to limitlessly expand their population? Population is only one concern. A more driving force may well be the desire for energy and raw materials. Raw materials, and in fact most problems, can be reduced to being an energy problem. Some things will require a truly mind-boggling amount of energy eg interstellar travel. Our Sun won't live forever. It's estimated to go into a red giant phase in 4-5 billion years, that will end up swallowing the Earth most likely. Long before then, life won't be able to exist on Earth as the Sun's solar output is increasing by about 10% every billion years. Earth as it stands now to us as we are now will be uninhabitable in ~1.6 billion years. So to be truly long-lived we're going to have to do something about that. There are lots of options. Those include reducing the energy that hits the Earth, moving the Earth or moving our species to a different system. The last one is particularly attractive because white or red dwarves will likely exist for trillions of years. Every one of these options requires a vast amount of energy. > ... swarms of space structures, each orders of magnitude more massive than Earth That's not what a Dyswon Swarm is.

api 2y ago
> Are there intelligent beings with a drive to limitlessly expand their population? Since the development of contraceptives we are now selecting hard for any and all traits associated with intentional reproduction or the desire for children. A few thousand years of this and the only thing left will be people who really want kids, or who are prone to adopt beliefs or attitudes that lead them to want kids. Maybe this is how you get a Dyson swarm. I’m not even including potential AI “life” in this picture.
- Zigurd 2y ago
  When you give women literacy, opportunity, and bodily autonomy, population problems go away.
  - api 2y ago
    … for now. What happens after ten generations of selection for the ones who reproduced? (This is also a major reason I think the current right wing fertility panic is mostly bullshit with the exception of maybe a few places with unusually low rates of reproduction.)
    - robbiep 2y ago
      You’re talking as though the only decision behind reproducing is an active rejection of contraception. Whilst this be practically happening during the fecund period, it is hardly the only influence and is certainly not responsible for the decrease in average fecundity women have seen across the world. The idea that this is a trait that is going to be selected for when every breeding pair are part of it is patently ridiculous to my perception, there is no population bottleneck or significant progeny advantage that you are gaining against every other reproducing couple that drives an evolutionary advantage; and we’re certainly not going to be able to select for a shorter gestation or increased/earlier independence of the young
      - barfbagginus 2y ago
        > we're certainly not going to be able to select for a shorter gestation period or increased/earlier independence of the young. I've decided to not have kids until artificially sentient children are a thing - and I'm hoping to find like minded individuals. Hopefully our work will help pave the ground for artificially sentient humans, and establish hybrid families of biological and AI humans. And my AI babies will probably have faster gestation and development times than normal human babies. But they're still going to be my babies. l will consider them human offspring, assuming I can properly socialize and humanize them. And maybe many humans will make similar choices to have artificial children. So the range of standard gestation and child rearing times could change a lot, perhaps over a very short period! That said, I wanted to ask a question about your argument. OP argues that the cohort of contraceptive users will simply select itself out of existence by choosing to reproduce less. You seem to argue that this can't happen because all breeding pairs are part of the global drop in fecundity. If it was happening, the trend would be for higher fecundity, not less. That makes a strong argument for the present. Does that dismiss their claim that the drop of fecundity will lead to a critical situation where fertility collapses, and it's up to reproductive rights deniers to save the day? The reason I want to dismiss that argument, in no unclear terms, is that I believe it may be a sort of indirect or wishful thinking eugenic argument. The moral failings of reproductive rights advocates are supposed to end up ironically being the mechanism for their own genetic culling. It sounds fishy.
bloopernova 2y ago
Now I'm wondering what the sky would look like from the inner surface of an O'Neil Habitat. And what the difference between the skies for 2, 8, and 64 mile wide cylinders. I wish I knew how to create those views in some 3D editor like Blender.
moralestapia 2y ago
>That's not what a Dyswon Swarm is. Cool, but GP didn't say they were. (S)he's exploring possibilities.

by cletus 2y ago

api 2y ago

> Are there intelligent beings with a drive to limitlessly expand their population? Since the development of contraceptives we are now selecting hard for any and all traits associated with intentional reproduction or the desire for children. A few thousand years of this and the only thing left will be people who really want kids, or who are prone to adopt beliefs or attitudes that lead them to want kids. Maybe this is how you get a Dyson swarm. I’m not even including potential AI “life” in this picture.

Zigurd 2y ago
When you give women literacy, opportunity, and bodily autonomy, population problems go away.
- api 2y ago
  … for now. What happens after ten generations of selection for the ones who reproduced? (This is also a major reason I think the current right wing fertility panic is mostly bullshit with the exception of maybe a few places with unusually low rates of reproduction.)
  - robbiep 2y ago
    You’re talking as though the only decision behind reproducing is an active rejection of contraception. Whilst this be practically happening during the fecund period, it is hardly the only influence and is certainly not responsible for the decrease in average fecundity women have seen across the world. The idea that this is a trait that is going to be selected for when every breeding pair are part of it is patently ridiculous to my perception, there is no population bottleneck or significant progeny advantage that you are gaining against every other reproducing couple that drives an evolutionary advantage; and we’re certainly not going to be able to select for a shorter gestation or increased/earlier independence of the young
    - barfbagginus 2y ago
      > we're certainly not going to be able to select for a shorter gestation period or increased/earlier independence of the young. I've decided to not have kids until artificially sentient children are a thing - and I'm hoping to find like minded individuals. Hopefully our work will help pave the ground for artificially sentient humans, and establish hybrid families of biological and AI humans. And my AI babies will probably have faster gestation and development times than normal human babies. But they're still going to be my babies. l will consider them human offspring, assuming I can properly socialize and humanize them. And maybe many humans will make similar choices to have artificial children. So the range of standard gestation and child rearing times could change a lot, perhaps over a very short period! That said, I wanted to ask a question about your argument. OP argues that the cohort of contraceptive users will simply select itself out of existence by choosing to reproduce less. You seem to argue that this can't happen because all breeding pairs are part of the global drop in fecundity. If it was happening, the trend would be for higher fecundity, not less. That makes a strong argument for the present. Does that dismiss their claim that the drop of fecundity will lead to a critical situation where fertility collapses, and it's up to reproductive rights deniers to save the day? The reason I want to dismiss that argument, in no unclear terms, is that I believe it may be a sort of indirect or wishful thinking eugenic argument. The moral failings of reproductive rights advocates are supposed to end up ironically being the mechanism for their own genetic culling. It sounds fishy.

bloopernova 2y ago

Now I'm wondering what the sky would look like from the inner surface of an O'Neil Habitat. And what the difference between the skies for 2, 8, and 64 mile wide cylinders. I wish I knew how to create those views in some 3D editor like Blender.

moralestapia 2y ago

>That's not what a Dyswon Swarm is. Cool, but GP didn't say they were. (S)he's exploring possibilities.