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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   27033 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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In the spirit of bringing life into the thread, I thought I’d share something a little different.

https://archive.ph/96KCm

Dozens of stars show signs of hosting advanced alien civilizations

Two surveys of millions of stars in our galaxy have revealed mysterious spikes in infrared heat coming from dozens of them.

A summary won’t do it justice, and I encourage anyone interested to read the linked article; it’s not long. In short, though, researchers checked out approximately 5 million stars (in our galaxy—close enough to look well at and potentially one day visit) for anomalous ratios of infrared heat to light. The idea here is that if a star is giving off a lot of light that is being captured, it will heat whatever is doing the capturing up significantly. This is suggested to be possibly due to either unusual debris fields around these stars, which would be unexpected due to their age (most planetary collisions happening early on in a solar system’s lifetime, and these stars being older)… Or due to large amounts of sun-orbiting satellites soaking up solar power, a Dyson swarm. Our exoplanet imaging is still very much in its infancy, and we have already discovered planets that seem to bear biosignatures. The latter explanation is plausible, at least.

This is pretty far from standard culture-war fare, but I suspect that there are enough rationalists and futurists here to find it interesting. There are also a few potential links:

    1. What does the future of our society look in a universe where life is entropically favorable? That is to say, what if life is not rare, and instead happens consistently whenever the right conditions are present for long enough?

This implies that there is either a way through the theorized AI apocalypse, or perhaps that silicon-based life continues growing after taking over from carbon-based life (the “biological boot loader” thesis). While I’m rather attached to my carbon-based existence, it’s at least heartening that in this scenario something is still happening after AI takes over; the spark of life hasn’t left the universe. Unless all that power is going to making paperclips, I suppose.

    1. What sort of societal organization is optimal for a galaxy in which we can expect to interact with numerous alien civilizations? We have (thankfully) yet to encounter grabby aliens, but the game theory seems logical; in an environment where there are limited resources and an ever-expanding population, conflict is inevitable (by historical earth standards).

Does it make sense to enforce population control on a cosmic scale, discouraging humans from expanding to other stars to avoid conflict? Could the “dark forest” hypothesis make sense, where offense is favored over defense and civilizations hide as much as possible?

    1. If we were to travel to other stars in the distant future, would the expected travel times result in human speciation, or such a long remove that cultural exchange and even biological exchange is kept to a minimum? Or is there an “optimal human”, which genetic engineering and biotech could potentially bring us towards as a local maximum?
    1. Is this all bullshit, and are we alone in the universe, forevermore?
    1. Does anyone have any thoughts on the spate of propellantless propulsion efforts currently being made? Somewhat like perpetual motion machines, or room temperature superconductors, or fusion… This is a topic that has very high expected returns, and thus a high expected gain in fame or financing from lying about experimental results. But I do note that fusion seems to be moving forward; while LK-99 didn’t pan out, there are still groups working on things inspired by it, and it seems like lessons learned are leading to next generation superconductors. My point here is that if the laws of physics allow it, we seem likely to eventually create it… And we are yet to discover a Theory of Everything, so who’s to say whether something like propellantless propulsion is possible?

Mods, I apologize in advance if this is insufficiently culture-war adjacent to deserve posting here. I didn’t think it worthy of its own thread, and feel like it’s perhaps healthy for the Motte to have some fresh topics as well. I’m a devoted lurker and thought I should do my part.

Edit- My list got butchered. Trying to fix it, but it seems the method I chose of writing multiple paragraphs after a question is disfavored.

If we discover advanced alien civilizations existing doesn't that actually lessen the evidence for the Dark Forest theory? Something like massive infrared indicators imply that they are not hiding. Dark Forest theory implies hostile and hidden. @hydroacetylene

If this is a valid way of spotting alien civilizations. I think it becomes very important to look at groupings of stars. A cluster of 100 stars all having this indicator right next to each other suggests an expanding and potentially grabby aliens. If its just 100 stars spaced out randomly in the galaxy then that maybe implies that expansion and colonization is not something anyone has bothered with. If there are 100 stars with this indicator that are sort of close to each other but not exactly next to each other then it might imply islands of habitability (explained in this video). I also think if the candidates are randomly dispersed it also means its more likely that this explained by a natural phenomenon (like planets crashing and causing a debris cloud).

I believe propellant-less propulsion is possible and just not widely explored enough. The physics limitation is that you just need something to push or pull on that isn't the craft itself. We know of forces already that do this. Gravity and electromagnetism. Maybe we'll find other forces that do this. Maybe we will find something else to push on in space.

If there’s two prisoners, it’s semi plausible that neither of them defects. If there’s 200 prisoners, it only takes one defector.

And if we assume that even advanced civilizations are mostly planet bound, and that there’s physical reasons limiting the ability to chart exoplanets, then it’s pretty easy to miss an extermination attempt. Maybe finding the homeworld of these aliens is difficult, even if we can tell which star. Can we predict the actual location of known exoplanets well enough to launch a missile which can’t course correct? I’m betting no. Not to mention any individual case could be something other than a civilization, even if it’s phenomenally improbable they all are.

We should adopt an attitude of reflexive paranoia towards possible aliens until they are known to be friendly, and use this as an impetus for dispersion.

If no one is doing intersolar colonization then I really don't see a need to worry.

Hell if someone's fired a sleeper ship at us at the point of our first radio waves and it's not going to get here till some arbitrary future year I don't really consider it of major concern.

If we discover advanced alien civilizations existing doesn't that actually lessen the evidence for the Dark Forest theory? Something like massive infrared indicators imply that they are not hiding. Dark Forest theory implies hostile and hidden.

If we can discover multiple advanced alien civilizations at our current tech level, Dark Forest theory is annihilated. Better said that the Fermi Paradox would stop being a paradox.

Personally, I wish people would stop taking Cixin Liu's plot device in Three Body Problem as a serious speculative hypothesis. The books were an exploration, in their own way, of the problems Scott mulled over in Meditations on Moloch, and the Dark Forest was a kind of literary device for the nihilistic endpoint of progress and memetic competition.

"If we lose our human nature, we lose much, but if we lose our bestial nature, we lose everything."

and

"You must advance, stop at nothing to advance. Advance, advance without regard for consequences!"

These are at the heart of what the books are getting at.

Personally, I wish people would stop taking Cixin Liu's plot device in Three Body Problem as a serious speculative hypothesis.

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forge_of_God]Greg Bear[/url] came up with it long before anyway. And Fred Saberhagen as that article points out, though I don't know how explict he was about it.

I've read some of Saberhagen's books. And yeah, before it was "The Dark Forest Hypothesis" it was "The Berzerker Hypothesis" so he should get some credit for coming up with it first. But they're very silly space opera books, lots of action with basically no deep thinking. They're not meant to be taken too seriously, so I can see how people slept on the idea.

Still, as crazy as it sounds, there is a certain elegance to the idea- it solves the "it only takes one" problem. Like, maybe most aliens just don't want to expand, or don't want to build megastructures, or are using tech that is somehow hidden from us. That's all fine, but you'd think there'd be at least one similar to us so that we could detect it easily. But in the same light, maybe 99.99% of aliens are peaceful, but there's just that one group of assholes who built berzerker probes and wiped out everyone else (maybe including themselves).

But they're very silly space opera books, lots of action with basically no deep thinking.

Eh, not really; a lot of them are basically "puzzle" stories, where the protagonist has to outsmart the berzerker.

Anyway, that's not a complaint you can make about the rather heavier in tone Greg Bear books. Bear may have called it a "vicious jungle" rather than a "dark forest", but it's the same thing.

I just found the quote I'd misremembered as being by either Niven or Pournelle, but which turns out to be from "The Killing Star".
I won't dump the whole thing because most people will be familiar with it, but it's the one that ends with "There is no policeman. There is no way out. And the night never ends."

You can tell it's from 1995 because the worst imaginable cosmic horror is to be stuck in NYC's Central Park after dark.

So the idea has been bouncing around in science fiction for decades, rather than being slept on.

Personally, I wish people would stop taking Cixin Liu's plot device in Three Body Problem as a serious speculative hypothesis.

Greg Bear came up with it long before anyway. And Fred Saberhagen as that article points out, though I don't know how explict he was about it.

I was under the impression most people are buzzing about it lately because of its prominent featuring in a popular scifi. The specific term "Dark Forest" was added to the Fermi Paradox Wikipedia page in 2016, specifically referencing Cixin Liu. On the other hand "It's dangerous to communicate" was listed as a possible solution well before that. Perhaps I'm overstating my case.

I do think in the novels it's a parable.

I've never read Bear, but Forge and Anvil have been recommended several times. Are they any good?

I loved saberhagen's berserker series. Templar Radiant is brilliant, and The Annihilation of Angkor Apeiron is a paragon of the classic pure concept scifi short story.

Yes, they are. The ending of Forge is one of the more indelible moments I've read in sci-fi.

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