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> Are there intelligent beings with a drive to limitlessly expand their population? Let's assume a few things. They're biological (for what passes as biology o
by NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
> Are there intelligent beings with a drive to limitlessly expand their population?
Let's assume a few things. They're biological (for what passes as biology on their planet, anyway), and evolved from what were originally single-celled organisms. They didn't blink into existence as Boltzman Brains or something like that. Also, they are a group of individual beings, and it wasn't some sort of global hivemind with a singular being surrounding the entire planet like some coral or whatever.
If these assumptions are valid, then yes, they'll have a drive to limitlessly expand their population, because those species that didn't have this drive became extinct in their prehistory. They'll be puzzled by it, might go through a phase where it causes them the equivalent of shame, then they'll grow past that and not care once again. And they'll expand. Because not expanding risks extinction, just like it does with us. We either expand to multiple locations outside of our planet, or we risk extinction.
> Are there plausible social arrangements stable enough to last the duration of such a project?
Maybe not. Who cares. If in the 20th century we became aware of a human Dyson spehere half-built in our solar system, a million years old and unfinished, you think we wouldn't turn around and start finishing it? Social arrangements may be unstable and cause minor disruptions, but so too are minor disruptions unstable and humanity might return to the norm on timescales relevant to the construction of a Dyson sphere.
> Is there enough time in the lifetime of a star to build and use those structures?
This is a good question. I don't know the answer to it. We've got, what, another billion years or two in ours? If the construction only takes a couple million years, seems like it might be worth it. Though the thought of the cost overruns and so forth should make even the mightiest bureaucrat shrink in terror.
> A lot of the ideas behind hypothesizing swarms of space structures, each orders of magnitude more massive than Earth, feels very 1970s population/energy-crisis inspired.
I find this hilarious in ways that I can't put into the words to share with you just how funny it is.
- GoblinSlayer 2y agoDemographics isn't attention economy, not expanding doesn't risk extinction, shrinking does.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoBetween expansion and shrinking, their is this razor-thin third option, where you are perfectly breaking even. Which is impossible to achieve in practice, even if theoretically it looks like an option... any unanticipated event threatens to cause unplanned shrinkage. That needs to be repaired immediately, but there is no generalizable plan to expand back to the prior level and then stop immediately, far too easy to overshoot. These instabilities last for decades or centuries, and if another event happens before stabilization, they just continue forever. Not expanding does risk extinction.
- GoblinSlayer 2y agoThat's just fantasy that doesn't correspond to anything real.
- barfbagginus 2y agoWe don't necessarily need to build a Dyson sphere to reach other planets and stars. And if the Dyson sphere gets built by an aggressive singularity to the tune of Stross' Accelerando, then pretty much every human in that singularity's light cone is at serious risk. If that happens, we may have to broadcast human mind vectors out into the galaxy and hope a less awful singularity catches us and gives us a simulated home with reasonable Mind Rights. Humans have a survival impetus to settle multiple planets and star systems. But a fast burn self improving Dyson swarm might easily create more risk than it alleviates. We might therefore choose to stick to more conservative technologies to hit the stars, even with all your assumptions in place. Slow growth swarms might be safe if there's physical reasons that a fast burn Dyson sphere is impossible. But if we uncover the potential for fast burn, we could enter a "swarms race", warring to achieve and control the most effective and rapidly accelerating swarm. In this setup, each major political power tries to start a fast burn, because otherwise an enemy will achieve it first and wipe out your swarm. The result could be, for example, multiple runaway Dyson swarms, fighting each other without our control. Now, saying all this, I still think it would be fun to build a self improving and self replicating swarm. I just don't know if it would be very safe, politically in the short term, and for the species in the long term.