Alien Life, Interstellar Travel, and Million year Civilizations

[Thomas Shey]

How many people have been to the moon? How long did they stay?

Arguably that's because we left prematurely, before the technology was really ready. We just brute forced it. There's a reason few SF writers in earlier years would have, if asked when man would land on the Moon say "1969". And because we rushed it, we did the financial and social equivelent of tiring ourselves out doing it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The assumption that there could be such a thing as a civilization that lasts for 10s of million of years is itself quite a leap. What makes people think such a thing could exist. Most species don't last 10s of millions of years.

Most species are at the mercy of their environment; they don't change it or their own biology almost at will.

And we already have a society operating on timescales of centuries. America has operated on that timescale, and it is young by global standards.

The question isn't whether a single society can survive that long but whether a successive collection of them can do so without hyperdestructive interims.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I do have to wonder if it wouldn't be just easier to address at least the gravity problem with bioengineering than engineering the ships.

 

[Stalker0]

There is not much to discuss if the idea is that "we will find a solution." Okay, fine. Now what? What does an interstellar human civilization actually look like? Is in A civilization at all, or a bunch of human civilizations? Are they even human? After all, terraforming is probably a lot harder than tweaking our genetic code.

Oh I already answered this much earlier in the thread. The answer is interstellar civilization does not exist based on current physics. It takes way too long to communicate across those distances to have sort of cohesive connection. At best you could be pen pales, periodically updating each other on how things are going but with years of not centuries of delay as to when that update arrives.

My point before was that it’s very doable for one ship to cross interstellar space and colonize a new area. You can do that in 1-2 generations. But this new world would have basically 0 connection with the old. It would be a new cradle for humans, but an entirely different civilization

 

[Thomas Shey]

Oh I already answered this much earlier in the thread. The answer is interstellar civilization does not exist based on current physics. It takes way too long to communicate across those distances to have sort of cohesive connection. At best you could be pen pales, periodically updating each other on how things are going but with years of not centuries of delay as to when that update arrives.

My point before was that it’s very doable for one ship to cross interstellar space and colonize a new area. You can do that in 1-2 generations. But this new world would have basically 0 connection with the old. It would be a new cradle for humans, but an entirely different civilization

Yeah, I think interstellar colonization is possible, and will probably happen to some degree at some point if we don't go face first into an extinction event, barring that the light speed limit isn't discovered to not be quite as limiting as all evidence suggests, I don't think we'll get anything resembling interstellar civilization.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I am not a fan of the Dark Forest. It assumes way too much about alien psychology.

I guess the analogy already tells us what to think of it: Are Dark Forests actually silent? There is a lot going on in forests, day and night, animals need to feed, they need to procreate. Of course, we don't really know what that really means if the "animal" is an entire civilization (and in what form a group of civilizations could constitute a species), but Dark Forest aren't silent places where no one ever interacts. Stuff gets done, some of it ugly and brutal, some not.
Maybe the more interesting aspect of the analogy is- what is the time scale of events in this "Dark Forest", and how could we even percieve something on that scale - we're individually basically the cells in the animals, and how much do the cells know about hunting prey, evading behind hunted, and finding mates, and how much say do they get?
I guess the counter-argument here is that every analogy has its flaws anyway and shouldn't be taken too literal.

But I would say it's not just about alien psychology - it also makes assumptions about technology feasible of things like civilization killing weaponry that cannot be detected or traced back by observers, which is basically the problem we already have without the Dark Forest concept. Maybe the reason we don't see other aliens is because they are hiding from the potential civilization-killing weaponry by some nasty aliens, but maybe we're not seeing them because they are all too far away to be detectable with anything that can be engineered within the resources of a planet-born civlization. We haven't even established yet that we can even do interstellar communication or travel between alien species, and now we're adding even more assumptions!

Maybe you just can't get the resources and energy in feasible time scales that a civilization can manage. Everyone is stuck to their star system, and mostly really their homeworld, because terraforming takes way too long and nothings is truly self-sufficient enough that at some point there isn't a bug, error, mutation, accident or revolution that doesn't require resupply from the homeworld. And maybe, even at some point you get the homeworld to a point that it's not going to be able to support your habits. So we're mostly missing each other, too far out to reach, or if they were closer, they are long gone or have yet to evolve in the next million years.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

The assumption that there could be such a thing as a civilization that lasts for 10s of million of years is itself quite a leap. What makes people think such a thing could exist. Most species don't last 10s of millions of years.

This is true but I think for anything to happen on the scale of interstellar migration or terraforming it would need societies that can last on that kind of scale.
If societies cannot remail stable over 5 centuries or so, then permanent space habitats with the expertise to become self-sufficient may not be possible. This could very well be a great filter. Policial and economic stability.

And we already have a society operating on timescales of centuries. America has operated on that timescale, and it is young by global standards.

Yes and no, by some measures the US is old as societies go. France has had 5 republics since the Revolution, with a couple of Empires and Monarchies thrown in for spice. While most societies claim continuity with the ancient past but there is a Ship of Thesus element to it.
The UK in the lifetime of the US as a state, has gone from 3 kingdoms united under one Crown with their own parliaments, to a unitary state with one crown and parliament.
The monarch meanwhile started out in that period as the head of government, with the Prime Minister being the Monarch's representative in parliament to being a ceremonial Head of State, and the PM and the ministers being the Kings Ministers a polite fiction. Also, a large chunk off one of the kingdoms absconded and became an independent republic.
There are complications but I think that outside the actual maintenance of states, and the odd dynastic war our species has never really attempted something really long term.

 

[Reynard]

I guess the analogy already tells us what to think of it: Are Dark Forests actually silent? There is a lot going on in forests, day and night, animals need to feed, they need to procreate. Of course, we don't really know what that really means if the "animal" is an entire civilization (and in what form a group of civilizations could constitute a species), but Dark Forest aren't silent places where no one ever interacts. Stuff gets done, some of it ugly and brutal, some not.
Maybe the more interesting aspect of the analogy is- what is the time scale of events in this "Dark Forest", and how could we even percieve something on that scale - we're individually basically the cells in the animals, and how much do the cells know about hunting prey, evading behind hunted, and finding mates, and how much say do they get?
I guess the counter-argument here is that every analogy has its flaws anyway and shouldn't be taken too literal.

But I would say it's not just about alien psychology - it also makes assumptions about technology feasible of things like civilization killing weaponry that cannot be detected or traced back by observers, which is basically the problem we already have without the Dark Forest concept. Maybe the reason we don't see other aliens is because they are hiding from the potential civilization-killing weaponry by some nasty aliens, but maybe we're not seeing them because they are all too far away to be detectable with anything that can be engineered within the resources of a planet-born civlization. We haven't even established yet that we can even do interstellar communication or travel between alien species, and now we're adding even more assumptions!

Maybe you just can't get the resources and energy in feasible time scales that a civilization can manage. Everyone is stuck to their star system, and mostly really their homeworld, because terraforming takes way too long and nothings is truly self-sufficient enough that at some point there isn't a bug, error, mutation, accident or revolution that doesn't require resupply from the homeworld. And maybe, even at some point you get the homeworld to a point that it's not going to be able to support your habits. So we're mostly missing each other, too far out to reach, or if they were closer, they are long gone or have yet to evolve in the next million years.

Now you are talking about the Great Filter, which i think is much more likely: any civilization potentially capable of interstellar travel is just as likely to destroy itself along the way.

 

[Ryujin]

How many people have been to the moon? How long did they stay?

My point is, people have left Earth, and plenty of people would do so, given the chance. But that is not the same thing as asking people to get on an Ark.

I'd have jumped into a Space Shuttle the day after Challenger exploded. People aren't going to space because lack of opportunity, not lack of will to do so. Ask for 5000 volunteers for a generation ship programme, tomorrow, and I'm sure that out of more than 8 billion people, you're going to more than fill those seats with qualified candidates.

 

[Ryujin]

Recall that the fluid would not be under the force of gravity. Not sure that wouldn't still help though, interesting problem that.

Regardless, keeping a huge rotating ring in check would be a massive engineering problem no matter what you use to counter balance it. And it needs to fit in with all the other mission requirements.

Only the rotational force matters. Tires can be "balanced" in the same way.

That was the sort of more technical solution that I was thinking about.