Space, the Final Frontier: It Gazed Into My Open Refractor

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Space, the Final Frontier: It Gazed Into My Open Refractor

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

feedmyleg posted:

As just some idiot on the internet, I've found the idea quite compelling that as the universe expands, the distance between galaxies increases at such a speed that it makes even near-light speed travel between systems prohibitively difficult. I believe I picked up this idea from a Kurzgesagt video on YouTube, but is there anything more to this?

They also have a very popular video on the Fermi paradox, which looking at that waitbutwhy article, may be heavily based on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNhhvQGsMEc

Cool idea for a thread op.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 17:47

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 01:55

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Adar posted:

Here's a horror movie type take on it:

-Let's assume that life is extremely common and intelligent life is only slightly less common.
-Let's further assume that the technological curve of any given civilization is similar to our own, i.e. an Industrial Revolution type event can make a military from the year 2000 completely obliterate every military combined on an 1800-era planet.
-Let's also assume technology doesn't ever entirely stall out / there will always be some advancements to be made.
-This means no two civilizations will ever be at the same stage of development and the more advanced civilization is extremely likely to technologically and militarily dominate the weaker one. Insert colonialism comparison here.
-This also means the weaker civilization can never catch up without immense effort.
-Based on the law of large numbers, any given civilization is vanishingly unlikely to be the most senior. Unless you're leading the Galactic Council and have personally checked, you can never be sure.
-It is also vanishingly unlikely that all civilizations have the same benevolent mindset. Wholly benevolent civilizations could happen, but they themselves would never be sure there isn't a Big Bad out there. A Big Bad would also never know whether it was the biggest. Game theory suggests a preemptive arms race of some type is a certainty by at least some civilizations; even if they don't run into the Biggest Bad they could always come across an only slightly inferior and hyper militarized force.
-If you don't have galactic FTL scanners and cannot check everything, how do you deal with this? What happens when you can build Dyson sphere type monuments but they're a galactic broadcast to anyone who uses the visual spectrum? Aren't you eventually marking yourself for death?

If you're a sufficiently unified and late stage civ, I think the answer is that you pick a planet, build a big shell around it, put giant thrusters on it and sail off away from the galaxy into the deepest, darkest corner of space possible, trusting the unlikelihood of anyone checking that exact region for the next few trillion years. The only way to compete in a game like that is to remove yourself from the board and make sure no one ever finds you.

Isn't this similar to the Three Body Problem take? I've only read a summary. There's a lot of sci fi that uses malicious conquering races or all devouring Von Neumann machines as the solution for the Fermi paradox.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 18:38

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Adar posted:

For the same reason, the simplest and possibly single most probable take on why we've seen nothing unusual is that everyone is hiding from everyone else.

Right and I thought that (end spoilers for a book I haven't read) The 3BP plot revolves around us getting discovered by one of those conqueror races and they're comin' for us. The way we solve it is by threatening to blow up the earth in such a way that it reveals the aggressors' location to anyone in the galaxy watching, presumably a bigger fish.. If you plan on reading the book I'd not mouse over, and not worry about answering me.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 18:58

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Lightning Knight posted:

Be nice, Kerning. This thread is fun! Don�t ruin it for everyone else.

Also I said this in USPOL but my favorite version of the Fermi solution is the idea that there is a galactic scale apex predator or even multiple that effectively grooms and factory farms spacefaring civilizations. Major examples in video games include Dead Space and Mass Effect. It�s a very unlikely solution realistically speaking but it�s poetic in that we never consider how say, cows and other livestock creatures think about human civilization, just like a galactic scale apex predator species wouldn�t care what we think.

Check out the Revelation Space books.

It'd be nice if it was because of invisible crystal spheres set around each habitable system by a mysterious progenitor race that protect a civilization until it's ready to go out into interstellar space :kiddo:

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 20:22

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Lightning Knight posted:

This is still kind of scary, in that we are effectively like an ant farm or gerbil and the relationship is still with another being on an incomprehensible scale.

Obviously not as bad as getting factory farmed tho.

It's from a Hugo winning short story by David Brin. All my Fermi Paradox knowledge comes from sci fi speculation (oh and so does every one else's :twisted:

)

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 20:31

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

thegalagakid posted:

This was the plot from The Forge of God and Anvil of Stars. Noisy civilizations attract the Von Neumann probes and render their own extinction except for the Ships of the Law and those that are rescued by the Benefactors. An utterly terrifying thought.

Fred Saberhagen would like to remind you not to forget ancient invincible planetoid-sized sentient doomsday weapons that turned on their masters and now rove the galaxy seeking and destroying all life

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 21:22

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Again though, if berserkers are everywhere why doesn't the fermi paradox apply to "if berserkers are everywhere, why don't we see them"? if not seeing things is possible than we solved the fermi paradox without berserkers.

It's not a serious theory. ....I hope....

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 22:14

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

We know everything about the moon: it sucks and is boring and I can't believe we got the worst moon in the whole solar system.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 22:26

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

1. Titan
2. Europa
3. Io
4. Charon
5. Ganymede
6. Enceladus
7. Triton
8. Mimas
9. Iapetus or Callisto, both look insanely cool but I can't pick.

I think Phobos and Deimos have a lot of spunk as well so HM.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 22:35

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

I think the most disheartening explanation for the Fermi paradox is that galactic phenomena like ELE asteroid strikes and gamma ray bursts are constantly wiping out civilizations before they get a chance go interstellar.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2018 22:43

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Alright spoilsports, how implausible is a Dyson sphere.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2018 04:17

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

My favorite sci fi aliens from a uniqueness perspective are the ones from Blindsight. The idea of a non-self-aware intelligence is so difficult to wrap my head around, but it's such a good reminder that we approach ideas about alien life from such a limited and entrenched perspective that it may be literally impossible for the human mind to imagine it. Which could also be one of the explanations to the Paradox; that we just can't recognize ET intelligence because it's so different from our own.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2018 17:02

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

I think we should attempt no landings there.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2018 19:31

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

There is tons of sci-fi about killer bugs from beyond the stars and leiningen versus the ants but xenomorphs and alien bug hiveminds, but is there any sci-fi where we meet aliens and they are all just mindless ants that just eventually have a bunch of evolved behaviors that result in space ships and stuff and our thing of thinking about stuff and coming up with things personally is a weird aberration compared to the normal way of inventing things by evolving the task over millions of fast dying generations?

Blindsight.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2018 17:47

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 01:55

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Revelation 2-13 posted:

Humans are biological von Neumann probes. However, as evidenced by us being about to destroy ourselves via climate change, we're either way down the replication generations and our programming has become faulty, or we're supposed to self-destruct once we've 'phoned home' by creating radar, radio and so on.

I'm going to preface this by saying that obviously climate change is the greatest threat facing humanity today, that it will already lead to hundreds of millions suffering and dying, and if unchecked will lead to the death of billions and the vast majority of all humans. I am in no way trying to deny or downplay the threat of anthropogenic climate change to our species.

But, I see "climate change = human extinction" frequently and I'm genuinely curious what the exact cause for that is considered to be. Toba Catastrophe Theory hypothesizes that at one point the global population was reduced to 10-30k, but that's not extinct. And I'm not saying we'll just bounce back, if we go that low, we're probably never getting past the early agrarian stage again, but does the human extinction theory presuppose a disease or a war precipitated by resource loss, or something else?

# ¿ Dec 4, 2018 17:40

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