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> Intergalactic flight would require something more like 0.95c to 0.99c Why would it require speeds that high? Sure, it's going to take a very long time, but

> Intergalactic flight would require something more like 0.95c to 0.99c Why would it require speeds that high? Sure, it's going to take a very long time, but why is that an insurmountable obstacle? There are enough isolated stars in intergalactic space that one can even imagining making the trip in smaller steps, with colonization in between. At a stellar density nine orders of magnitude lower than our galaxy stars are still within thousands of light years of each other.

lazide 2y ago
Because most people go nearly insane in solitary confinement? and that isn’t even really solitary. And gov’ts and social structures rarely last a few generations, let along 100 of them. Not to mention inbreeding. What makes you think any humans stuck in something the size of even the most generously sized starships won’t go full lord-of-the-flies and be unable to effectively maintain the ship long before it ever arrives?
- pixl97 2y ago
  Of course I see this as a conflation of life versus intelligence. Do I suspect we'll see life commuting between galaxies, seems unlikely life as is fragile compared to how damned harsh space is. But intelligence is a completely different story. We send rudimentary intelligences to space and have racked up billions of miles on them. It seems far more likely that any space faring civilization would look like the following. 1. They would ship the instruction to build life when the reach the destination they are heading too. Machines with error correction seem much more resilient would be much more likely to reach a destination if they had enough energy for the trip so they could refurbish themselves over time. 2. Getting rid of the bodies/life part in the first place. Who cares if it's a million years if you can just pause yourself? Of course the fact the entire universe isn't filled with Von Neumann probes (at least that we see) points out that this hasn't happened yet.
  - lazide 2y ago
    1) that seems to be a lot harder than it seems. Entropy is a nightmare, and data corruption is a big problem. And having a general purpose system capable not only adapting to all the various situations and challenges likely to be faced, that also would have the reserves to deal with them usefully AND reproduce is something we can only hope for in our dreams right now. And until such a thing exists, it’s only speculation it wouldn’t have similar types of problems, eh? Humans are the most adaptable and intelligent anything we have yet run across, and we still regularly struggle to solve the problems we run across even in our comfy and well known existing biosphere which is right here, and that we’re quite well adapted to. And that is assuming a one way trip. Energetically, what could it hope to return to us that would be worth the cost we’d sink into it to try? Panspermia/species wide genetic reproductive drive, maybe - but then sending a robot doesn’t scratch that itch does it? 2) opportunity cost of time is a thing. Some would argue even that time itself is the most valuable thing we have. Pausing yourself for a million years while your competitors don’t, could be a real problem. Also, think of all the new TV shows you’d miss! Agree on the von neumann probe problem. The lack of them doesn’t lend credence to it actually being straightforward or even possible solution for sure. But hey, maybe all the UFO folks are onto something, warp drives/wormholes exist and are cheap, etc. In which case, disclose it already assholes so we can start doing cool stuff with it!
- pfdietz 2y ago
  We're not talking about sending a single person, so I don't know where the solitary confinement comment comes from. A colonized galaxy will have people mostly living in artificial habitats. A starship of sufficient size is just an artificial habitat moving at high speed. One would get around the issues you discuss by just sending multiple vehicles. And anyway, this is in rebuttal to the idea that intergalactic colonization is impossible. The onus on that argument is to show it can't work, not argue there are obstacles that would make it uncertain in any particular case.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Nah. Strong claims require strong evidence. Your claims that all this is easy and entirely possible - has no evidence, because near as we can tell we haven’t seen anyone visiting us or anywhere we’ve seen with any of these setups. And we haven’t successfully gone even beyond our moon with a manned mission. I don’t think anyone is claiming intergalactic colonization is impossible. All I’m saying is it doesn’t seem worth the cost, by any metric we currently have, or straightforward to actually do, based on our current understanding of physics. And that there are a lot of real issues with trying to do it that would make it unlikely to succeed if we tried right now, without making it even more costly.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      > Your claims that all this is easy Where did I say that? I didn't. > I don't think anyone is claiming intergalactic colonization is impossible Let's look at what they actually said: > Intergalactic travel is borderline impossible barring unknown physics or travel very close to the speed of light. And I was arguing against that claim, which I believe is clearly spurious. You seem to agree with me on that. > All I’m saying is it doesn’t seem worth the cost, I don't see it as fundamentally different from interstellar colonization in that respect. Anyway, lots of things are done for the hell of it, and on the scale of a galactic economy an intergalactic colonization program would be less than pocket change.

lazide 2y ago

Because most people go nearly insane in solitary confinement? and that isn’t even really solitary. And gov’ts and social structures rarely last a few generations, let along 100 of them. Not to mention inbreeding. What makes you think any humans stuck in something the size of even the most generously sized starships won’t go full lord-of-the-flies and be unable to effectively maintain the ship long before it ever arrives?

pixl97 2y ago
Of course I see this as a conflation of life versus intelligence. Do I suspect we'll see life commuting between galaxies, seems unlikely life as is fragile compared to how damned harsh space is. But intelligence is a completely different story. We send rudimentary intelligences to space and have racked up billions of miles on them. It seems far more likely that any space faring civilization would look like the following. 1. They would ship the instruction to build life when the reach the destination they are heading too. Machines with error correction seem much more resilient would be much more likely to reach a destination if they had enough energy for the trip so they could refurbish themselves over time. 2. Getting rid of the bodies/life part in the first place. Who cares if it's a million years if you can just pause yourself? Of course the fact the entire universe isn't filled with Von Neumann probes (at least that we see) points out that this hasn't happened yet.
- lazide 2y ago
  1) that seems to be a lot harder than it seems. Entropy is a nightmare, and data corruption is a big problem. And having a general purpose system capable not only adapting to all the various situations and challenges likely to be faced, that also would have the reserves to deal with them usefully AND reproduce is something we can only hope for in our dreams right now. And until such a thing exists, it’s only speculation it wouldn’t have similar types of problems, eh? Humans are the most adaptable and intelligent anything we have yet run across, and we still regularly struggle to solve the problems we run across even in our comfy and well known existing biosphere which is right here, and that we’re quite well adapted to. And that is assuming a one way trip. Energetically, what could it hope to return to us that would be worth the cost we’d sink into it to try? Panspermia/species wide genetic reproductive drive, maybe - but then sending a robot doesn’t scratch that itch does it? 2) opportunity cost of time is a thing. Some would argue even that time itself is the most valuable thing we have. Pausing yourself for a million years while your competitors don’t, could be a real problem. Also, think of all the new TV shows you’d miss! Agree on the von neumann probe problem. The lack of them doesn’t lend credence to it actually being straightforward or even possible solution for sure. But hey, maybe all the UFO folks are onto something, warp drives/wormholes exist and are cheap, etc. In which case, disclose it already assholes so we can start doing cool stuff with it!
pfdietz 2y ago
We're not talking about sending a single person, so I don't know where the solitary confinement comment comes from. A colonized galaxy will have people mostly living in artificial habitats. A starship of sufficient size is just an artificial habitat moving at high speed. One would get around the issues you discuss by just sending multiple vehicles. And anyway, this is in rebuttal to the idea that intergalactic colonization is impossible. The onus on that argument is to show it can't work, not argue there are obstacles that would make it uncertain in any particular case.
- lazide 2y ago
  Nah. Strong claims require strong evidence. Your claims that all this is easy and entirely possible - has no evidence, because near as we can tell we haven’t seen anyone visiting us or anywhere we’ve seen with any of these setups. And we haven’t successfully gone even beyond our moon with a manned mission. I don’t think anyone is claiming intergalactic colonization is impossible. All I’m saying is it doesn’t seem worth the cost, by any metric we currently have, or straightforward to actually do, based on our current understanding of physics. And that there are a lot of real issues with trying to do it that would make it unlikely to succeed if we tried right now, without making it even more costly.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    > Your claims that all this is easy Where did I say that? I didn't. > I don't think anyone is claiming intergalactic colonization is impossible Let's look at what they actually said: > Intergalactic travel is borderline impossible barring unknown physics or travel very close to the speed of light. And I was arguing against that claim, which I believe is clearly spurious. You seem to agree with me on that. > All I’m saying is it doesn’t seem worth the cost, I don't see it as fundamentally different from interstellar colonization in that respect. Anyway, lots of things are done for the hell of it, and on the scale of a galactic economy an intergalactic colonization program would be less than pocket change.