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Why would it be? It’s full of corrosive oxygen and biomass that would be a biohazard to anything carbon based and organic. It’s habitable to us because we evolv

by api 2y ago

Why would it be? It’s full of corrosive oxygen and biomass that would be a biohazard to anything carbon based and organic. It’s habitable to us because we evolved here but it might be toxic hell to something else. If you are going to sterilize Earth you might as well just terraform something dead. This isn’t even getting into the ethical questions, just looking at practicality. If you’ve got the technology to come here, well, you might as well terraform something dead. We almost have the technology to terraform Mars (albeit over thousands of years) and it seems easier to do and possibly faster than interstellar flight. Building giant space station habitats is also easier than interstellar flight. Uploading brains to machines, which would allow settlement of almost anywhere, is probably easier than interstellar flight. AGI is probably easier than interstellar flight. In fact interstellar flight is so hard it might rarely be attempted anywhere by anyone unless there’s a forcing function like one’s star becoming unstable or some other cosmic scale calamity. Solar systems are huge and contain vast amounts of resources.

pfdietz 2y ago
Why would a colonizing civilization have to choose between these options? If it experiences relentless growth, it would occupy everything. If it has grown to occupy some locations around a large number of stars, that's enormous growth from its initial system. Why would this growth stop? Instead, I'd expect it to fully exploit all the resources in all the systems reached. The solar system would look very different from what it looks like. There would be no asteroid belt; there would be a space colony belt.
- api 2y ago
  I suppose this does tell us something: there are no ancient super high tech hyper-expansionary civilizations in this galaxy, or at least not near us. That could mean a lot of things including just chance. There could be galaxies out there that have in fact been fully colonized.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    Expanding is a significant use of resources. It requires consistent dedication over very long timeframes to succeed. Just look at how long it's taking to even have a permanent presence (not even close to a self-sustaining colony) on the Moon, which is one light-second away.
    - api 2y ago
      That’s one reason I’m skeptical of ultra-grabby hyper-expansionist aliens. Human cultures have become less obsessively expansionist as they’ve become more educated and advanced, with rare and usually transient exceptions. Imperialism usually burns out after a while as the cost begins to exceed the benefit. I could see a universe of mostly steady state civilizations that experience occasional bouts of expansionism or the sending of things like the Nauvoo from The Expanse. But those are transient events. This would greatly increase the time required for the galaxy to become saturated with life as per Fermi paradox models. It might happen eventually, meaning if we wait long enough some alien Mormons might show up. (The Expanse reference.) Then consider that intelligence is probably a recent (on cosmic time scales) phenomenon due to metallicity. Previous generations of stars and planets probably lack the mineral diversity to support complex intelligent life.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        I see pretty much the opposite. There will be strong selection for expansionist cultures and species. As long as the universe is mostly unoccupied, expansion means increasing your share of the total population. Relatively static cultures will simply become irrelevant compared to their expansionist competitors. The experience on Earth recently is in the context of a world where all places that can be occupied (at the current tech level) have been. The selection effect will operate at the biological level as well. Currently on Earth birth rates are declining. Modern civilization is acting like a kind of pesticide. But like any pesticide, it's going to select for resistance. This will likely mean more people will have an increased desire to have children. Selecting for this may take a while, but on the time scales involved in this thread it would happen very quickly. In the long term, all societies in which selection is allowed to operate will push up against limits and be in states of Malthusian equilibrium. To counter this would require an unreasonable uniformity of control across time and space. All ET species, at all points in their history once they can undertake colonization, will have to exert rigid control on their societies and biology. Any defections from this uniformity will explode exponentially and overwhelm those who are not controlled. Metallicity is not a good argument, since there are zones, even in our own galaxy, with higher metallicity. Closer in to the center, for example. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-01977-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-01977-z

by api 2y ago

pfdietz 2y ago

Why would a colonizing civilization have to choose between these options? If it experiences relentless growth, it would occupy everything. If it has grown to occupy some locations around a large number of stars, that's enormous growth from its initial system. Why would this growth stop? Instead, I'd expect it to fully exploit all the resources in all the systems reached. The solar system would look very different from what it looks like. There would be no asteroid belt; there would be a space colony belt.

api 2y ago
I suppose this does tell us something: there are no ancient super high tech hyper-expansionary civilizations in this galaxy, or at least not near us. That could mean a lot of things including just chance. There could be galaxies out there that have in fact been fully colonized.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  Expanding is a significant use of resources. It requires consistent dedication over very long timeframes to succeed. Just look at how long it's taking to even have a permanent presence (not even close to a self-sustaining colony) on the Moon, which is one light-second away.
  - api 2y ago
    That’s one reason I’m skeptical of ultra-grabby hyper-expansionist aliens. Human cultures have become less obsessively expansionist as they’ve become more educated and advanced, with rare and usually transient exceptions. Imperialism usually burns out after a while as the cost begins to exceed the benefit. I could see a universe of mostly steady state civilizations that experience occasional bouts of expansionism or the sending of things like the Nauvoo from The Expanse. But those are transient events. This would greatly increase the time required for the galaxy to become saturated with life as per Fermi paradox models. It might happen eventually, meaning if we wait long enough some alien Mormons might show up. (The Expanse reference.) Then consider that intelligence is probably a recent (on cosmic time scales) phenomenon due to metallicity. Previous generations of stars and planets probably lack the mineral diversity to support complex intelligent life.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      I see pretty much the opposite. There will be strong selection for expansionist cultures and species. As long as the universe is mostly unoccupied, expansion means increasing your share of the total population. Relatively static cultures will simply become irrelevant compared to their expansionist competitors. The experience on Earth recently is in the context of a world where all places that can be occupied (at the current tech level) have been. The selection effect will operate at the biological level as well. Currently on Earth birth rates are declining. Modern civilization is acting like a kind of pesticide. But like any pesticide, it's going to select for resistance. This will likely mean more people will have an increased desire to have children. Selecting for this may take a while, but on the time scales involved in this thread it would happen very quickly. In the long term, all societies in which selection is allowed to operate will push up against limits and be in states of Malthusian equilibrium. To counter this would require an unreasonable uniformity of control across time and space. All ET species, at all points in their history once they can undertake colonization, will have to exert rigid control on their societies and biology. Any defections from this uniformity will explode exponentially and overwhelm those who are not controlled. Metallicity is not a good argument, since there are zones, even in our own galaxy, with higher metallicity. Closer in to the center, for example. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-01977-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-01977-z