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Too simplistic reasoning imo. If your civ can build impossibly large relativistic weapons, can't it survive an impact of one? Wouldn't the huge cost of building

Too simplistic reasoning imo. If your civ can build impossibly large relativistic weapons, can't it survive an impact of one? Wouldn't the huge cost of building those/providing energy favor the pacifists? And so on. I think it's essentially impossible to predict what to expect from a point of view of specific technologies, and a more fundamental approach is more interesting: given the possible gains we might have, and the possible threats (termination should have a fair likelihood), the expected utility from contact should be hugely skewed negatively -- assuming -inf utility for termination and +finite for whatever gains.

Houshalter 13y ago
At that level of technology, destroying primitive societies like ours would be trivial. It wouldn't necessarily take an impossibly large relativistic weapon. Maybe just a lot of nukes, carefully designed super-virus that wipes out our species, or sending a single self-replicating nanobot (or superior life form) to our planet. We don't know what other destructive technologies are possible. >the expected utility from contact should be hugely skewed negatively -- assuming -inf utility for termination and +finite for whatever gains. If you are assuming death is -inf, almost any action has infinite negative utility. Also see pascal's mugging (http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilities_of_vast/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilitie...).
- akiselev 13y ago
  >> Maybe just a lot of nukes, carefully designed super-virus that wipes out our species, or sending a single self-replicating nanobot The insane energy scales of relativistic travel (especially between .9 and .9999-repeating) combined with the ridiculously advanced technologies throws any speculation out of the window. Interstellar nukes surviving relativistic deep space travel while guiding themselves to a solar systems light years away (and with your ability to turn measure in tiny radians of the same)? Super-virus that operates across massive evolutionary scales while, again, surviving said travel (and for kicks only 240 of the known 500 amino acids are naturally occurring [1] and it depends entirely on random mutations and environment)? Self-replicating nanobots, one half of the holy grail (billions of years being the other) that would place in the hands of mortals that which allowed natural selection to give birth to the aforementioned aliens? At the technological level of relativistic weapon systems + nanobots you're basically talking the ability to do whatever you wanted. If they can have near omnipotent self-replicating nanobots flying to destroy civilizations, why not to slightly shift their stellar orbit by consuming the rest of the solar system (relativistic guidance and navigation is an entirely different ordeal) to add some interstellar non-determenacy or send out nanobots to replicate their civilization on hospitable solar systems? Sending out a bunch of relativistic nukes is probably going to be one hell of an expense (don't imagine you'd be able to do a gravitational sling shot without a black hole or perfect premonition). If the civilization was that scared of being wiped out, it'd probably be cheaper to build a single defense for their civilization rather than a bunch of attack platforms intended to wipe out other civilizations.
  - Houshalter 13y ago
    You are significantly underestimating what is possible. For one we are talking about a civilization millions of years older than us (very likely, the chance of intelligences evolving within a few thousand, let alone a few hundred, years of each other is negligible.) They will likely have hit physical limits of what is possible technologically long ago. Maxxed out tech trees, essentially. It's possible they can have dyson spheres, and artificial brains the size of planets, running far faster and more efficient computers and algorithms. This is of course just wild speculation, I'm only trying to give a sense of how absurdly far ahead of us they could be. Interstellar travel is difficult yes, but possible. We've had the basic technology requirements for interstellar spaceship since the 50's (project Orion.) If you accept the premise that it's possible to send a reasonable size package (possibly as small as a pin if nanotechnology is possible) then wiping out a primitive planet doesn't seem so difficult. >If the civilization was that scared of being wiped out, it'd probably be cheaper to build a single defense for their civilization rather than a bunch of attack platforms intended to wipe out other civilizations. Possibly. It depends entirely on the costs of defense against advance civilizations vs the cost of wiping out primitive planets before they become a threat. We don't know what futuristic interstellar warfare would be like, but my guess is crushing intelligences before they advance to far, is far easier.
    - akiselev 13y ago
      Am I underestimating what is possible or are you under estimating what becomes possible when you spend those millions of years developing technology that could feasibly pull off any of those interstellar extermination methods? The technology necessary to reach out and destroy another civilization light years away cannot be developed in a vacuum. No matter how you accelerate the nuke, navigate it or protect the payload from the harsh realities of relativistic flight, you will develop an entire canon of technologies and an understanding of the universe that before you would ever be capable of identifying, let alone destroying, another intelligent civilization.
      - Houshalter 13y ago
        1) Ok, so what? 2) Why do you think interstellar travel will be so complicated/impossible?
c23gooey 13y ago
> If your civ can build impossibly large relativistic weapons, can't it survive an impact of one? Atomic bombs would suggest a negative response.
- ehsanu1 13y ago
  Unlike with nukes (Project Orion notwithstanding), having access to relativistic weapons also implies having access to space travel. This is not necessarily the case, especially given biological constraints, but let's assume you have space travel. Well, then you are also spread out, and given enough time, you spread throughout a galaxy. With that level of spread, the safety in numbers and distribution over a large space is a form of strong defense against relativistic weapons from other civilizations. Furthermore, the technology for these weapons may also open up avenues for defense, even if such is not the case for nuclear weapons. Consider a relativistic missile detection system that continually scans for incoming missiles and is able to quickly accelerate its own for head-on collisions. Granted, there's not much notice. But let's say you have missiles at 0.99c - quite fast - and a light year away (would any closer be plausible for a launch? Maybe with relativistic ICBMs... or ISBMs rather). By my non-relativistic calculations, that gives you almost 90 hours to prepare countermeasures. A "simpler" countermeasure is just to go overboard with the spreading idea. Simply live on millions of asteroids with your advanced propulsion tech slapped on. When a relativistic threat is detected, each asteroid is nimble enough to get out of the way, and if some are still hit, it's a small loss. Though, the attacker could just shoot many smaller, faster missiles dispersed over a wide area. Not civilization-annihilating now, unless it was overwhelming in number, but still painful.
  - Houshalter 13y ago
    One proposed method of interstellar warfare involves nanotechnology. You launch millions of tiny machines at near the speed of light. These could be the size of a pin or smaller. A fraction of them survive and begin to self-replicate and take over their planet. Do this for every solar system they inhabit. Couldn't they defeat it with their own nanotech? Well possibly. Perhaps the winning civilization is just slightly more advanced and has an advantage. Perhaps they slip in somewhere undetected and have time to mess things up before they can be stopped. Perhaps stopping nanobots from self-replicating is just harder to do than replicating. Who really knows what technology is possible. An 18th century person never would have predicted machine guns and planes. A 19th century person couldn't have anticipated nuclear weapons. Few 20th century people probably even heard of nanotechnology. We can't guess a century of technological progress, let alone millions.

Houshalter 13y ago

At that level of technology, destroying primitive societies like ours would be trivial. It wouldn't necessarily take an impossibly large relativistic weapon. Maybe just a lot of nukes, carefully designed super-virus that wipes out our species, or sending a single self-replicating nanobot (or superior life form) to our planet. We don't know what other destructive technologies are possible. >the expected utility from contact should be hugely skewed negatively -- assuming -inf utility for termination and +finite for whatever gains. If you are assuming death is -inf, almost any action has infinite negative utility. Also see pascal's mugging (http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilities_of_vast/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilitie...).

akiselev 13y ago
>> Maybe just a lot of nukes, carefully designed super-virus that wipes out our species, or sending a single self-replicating nanobot The insane energy scales of relativistic travel (especially between .9 and .9999-repeating) combined with the ridiculously advanced technologies throws any speculation out of the window. Interstellar nukes surviving relativistic deep space travel while guiding themselves to a solar systems light years away (and with your ability to turn measure in tiny radians of the same)? Super-virus that operates across massive evolutionary scales while, again, surviving said travel (and for kicks only 240 of the known 500 amino acids are naturally occurring [1] and it depends entirely on random mutations and environment)? Self-replicating nanobots, one half of the holy grail (billions of years being the other) that would place in the hands of mortals that which allowed natural selection to give birth to the aforementioned aliens? At the technological level of relativistic weapon systems + nanobots you're basically talking the ability to do whatever you wanted. If they can have near omnipotent self-replicating nanobots flying to destroy civilizations, why not to slightly shift their stellar orbit by consuming the rest of the solar system (relativistic guidance and navigation is an entirely different ordeal) to add some interstellar non-determenacy or send out nanobots to replicate their civilization on hospitable solar systems? Sending out a bunch of relativistic nukes is probably going to be one hell of an expense (don't imagine you'd be able to do a gravitational sling shot without a black hole or perfect premonition). If the civilization was that scared of being wiped out, it'd probably be cheaper to build a single defense for their civilization rather than a bunch of attack platforms intended to wipe out other civilizations.
- Houshalter 13y ago
  You are significantly underestimating what is possible. For one we are talking about a civilization millions of years older than us (very likely, the chance of intelligences evolving within a few thousand, let alone a few hundred, years of each other is negligible.) They will likely have hit physical limits of what is possible technologically long ago. Maxxed out tech trees, essentially. It's possible they can have dyson spheres, and artificial brains the size of planets, running far faster and more efficient computers and algorithms. This is of course just wild speculation, I'm only trying to give a sense of how absurdly far ahead of us they could be. Interstellar travel is difficult yes, but possible. We've had the basic technology requirements for interstellar spaceship since the 50's (project Orion.) If you accept the premise that it's possible to send a reasonable size package (possibly as small as a pin if nanotechnology is possible) then wiping out a primitive planet doesn't seem so difficult. >If the civilization was that scared of being wiped out, it'd probably be cheaper to build a single defense for their civilization rather than a bunch of attack platforms intended to wipe out other civilizations. Possibly. It depends entirely on the costs of defense against advance civilizations vs the cost of wiping out primitive planets before they become a threat. We don't know what futuristic interstellar warfare would be like, but my guess is crushing intelligences before they advance to far, is far easier.
  - akiselev 13y ago
    Am I underestimating what is possible or are you under estimating what becomes possible when you spend those millions of years developing technology that could feasibly pull off any of those interstellar extermination methods? The technology necessary to reach out and destroy another civilization light years away cannot be developed in a vacuum. No matter how you accelerate the nuke, navigate it or protect the payload from the harsh realities of relativistic flight, you will develop an entire canon of technologies and an understanding of the universe that before you would ever be capable of identifying, let alone destroying, another intelligent civilization.
    - Houshalter 13y ago
      1) Ok, so what? 2) Why do you think interstellar travel will be so complicated/impossible?

c23gooey 13y ago

> If your civ can build impossibly large relativistic weapons, can't it survive an impact of one? Atomic bombs would suggest a negative response.

ehsanu1 13y ago
Unlike with nukes (Project Orion notwithstanding), having access to relativistic weapons also implies having access to space travel. This is not necessarily the case, especially given biological constraints, but let's assume you have space travel. Well, then you are also spread out, and given enough time, you spread throughout a galaxy. With that level of spread, the safety in numbers and distribution over a large space is a form of strong defense against relativistic weapons from other civilizations. Furthermore, the technology for these weapons may also open up avenues for defense, even if such is not the case for nuclear weapons. Consider a relativistic missile detection system that continually scans for incoming missiles and is able to quickly accelerate its own for head-on collisions. Granted, there's not much notice. But let's say you have missiles at 0.99c - quite fast - and a light year away (would any closer be plausible for a launch? Maybe with relativistic ICBMs... or ISBMs rather). By my non-relativistic calculations, that gives you almost 90 hours to prepare countermeasures. A "simpler" countermeasure is just to go overboard with the spreading idea. Simply live on millions of asteroids with your advanced propulsion tech slapped on. When a relativistic threat is detected, each asteroid is nimble enough to get out of the way, and if some are still hit, it's a small loss. Though, the attacker could just shoot many smaller, faster missiles dispersed over a wide area. Not civilization-annihilating now, unless it was overwhelming in number, but still painful.
- Houshalter 13y ago
  One proposed method of interstellar warfare involves nanotechnology. You launch millions of tiny machines at near the speed of light. These could be the size of a pin or smaller. A fraction of them survive and begin to self-replicate and take over their planet. Do this for every solar system they inhabit. Couldn't they defeat it with their own nanotech? Well possibly. Perhaps the winning civilization is just slightly more advanced and has an advantage. Perhaps they slip in somewhere undetected and have time to mess things up before they can be stopped. Perhaps stopping nanobots from self-replicating is just harder to do than replicating. Who really knows what technology is possible. An 18th century person never would have predicted machine guns and planes. A 19th century person couldn't have anticipated nuclear weapons. Few 20th century people probably even heard of nanotechnology. We can't guess a century of technological progress, let alone millions.