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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24225 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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If I remember correctly, the canonical dark forest theory assumes an attack on the scale of supernovae or larger, eradicating entire solar systems anyway.

Your comment kicked off a near day-long scrounging through my local files and online search in order to find the actual goddamn source of my mental recall. This is coming in late, but as I have suffered, so you must suffer with me.

The core of 'The Dark Forest Theory' has been around much longer than Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem trilogy. They just gave it a fancy name.

Charles Pelligrino in 'The Killing Star' was postulating such scenarios as far back as 1995, and I doubt he was the first;

The great silence (i.e. absence of SETI signals from alien civilizations) is perhaps the strongest indicator of all that high relativistic velocities are attainable and that everybody out there knows it.

The sobering truth is that relativistic civilizations are a potential nightmare to anyone living within range of them. The problem is that objects traveling at an appreciable fraction of light speed are never where you see them when you see them (i.e., light-speed lag). Relativistic rockets, if their owners turn out to be less than benevolent, are both totally unstoppable and totally destructive. A starship weighing in at 1,500 tons (approximately the weight of a fully fueled space shuttle sitting on the launchpad) impacting an earthlike planet at "only" 30 percent of lightspeed will release 1.5 million megatons of energy -- an explosive force equivalent to 150 times today's global nuclear arsenal...

I'm not going to talk about ideas. I'm going to talk about reality. It will probably not be good for us ever to build and fire up an antimatter engine. According to Powell, given the proper detecting devices, a Valkyrie engine burn could be seen out to a radius of several light-years and may draw us into a game we'd rather not play, a game in which, if we appear to be even the vaguest threat to another civilization and if the resources are available to eliminate us, then it is logical to do so.

The game plan is, in its simplest terms, the relativistic inverse to the golden rule: "Do unto the other fellow as he would do unto you and do it first."...

And, later on, as he puts it;

We ask that you try just one more thought experiment. Imagine yourself taking a stroll through Manhattan, somewhere north of 68th street, deep inside Central Park, late at night. It would be nice to meet someone friendly, but you know that the park is dangerous at night. That's when the monsters come out. There's always a strong undercurrent of drug dealings, muggings, and occasional homicides.

It is not easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. They dress alike, and the weapons are concealed. The only difference is intent, and you can't read minds.

Stay in the dark long enough and you may hear an occasional distance shriek or blunder across a body.

How do you survive the night? The last thing you want to do is shout, "I'm here!" The next to last thing you want to do is reply to someone who shouts, "I'm a friend!"

What you would like to do is find a policeman, or get out of the park. But you don't want to make noise or move towards a light where you might be spotted, and it is difficult to find either a policeman or your way out without making yourself known. Your safest option is to hunker down and wait for daylight, then safely walk out.

There are, of course, a few obvious differences between Central Park and the universe.

There is no policeman.

There is no way out.

And the night never ends.

Which may simply be physically impossible.

It doesn't seem physically implausible for a supernova to be triggerable by targeting the star in some fashion. Such an "unnatural" supernova could even be more destructive than a regular one, and regular supernova can already be dangerous to life in nearby solar systems.

Then there's stuff like nanites that can just scourge arbitrary areas, etc.

I agree it may be impossible, but it's really hard to tell with our still rather limited understanding (and, arguably, intelligence).

It doesn't seem physically implausible for a supernova to be triggerable by targeting the star in some fashion.

Yes it it. But not because of pesky things like the laws of physics - which I am fairly certain are probably more bendable than most physicists think. After all even now it is 50/50 whether we are living in a finely tuned universe, so someone figuring out how to access god's tuning fork is not out of question.

But that any way that you could make a star go supernova means that you could do so much more fun and dangerous than that - that you shouldn't bother.

It doesn't seem physically implausible for a supernova to be triggerable by targeting the star in some fashion. Such an "unnatural" supernova could even be more destructive than a regular one, and regular supernova can already be dangerous to life in nearby solar systems.

It seems absolutely physically implausible, and the possible properties of a synthetic supernova are barely even conjecture. If pigs could fly, stars could be blown up on demand, and that would surely be very impressive.

Then there's stuff like nanites that can just scourge arbitrary areas, etc.

Fun fact about nanites: There isn't stuff like them.

I agree it may be impossible, but it's really hard to tell with our still rather limited understanding (and, arguably, intelligence).

And I think it makes more sense to work with the boring, limited knowledge we have than with the wild imaginations of science-fiction.

We're literally talking about theoretical civilizations far beyond our tech level, though. If you think speculation is pointless that's your prerogative, but limiting oneself to current "boring" understanding makes as much sense as, say, upon hearing of the possible existence of snakes for the first time, presupposing they must be bi- or quad-pods, since all the mammals you have seen so far are.

It seems absolutely physically implausible, and the possible properties of a synthetic supernova are barely even conjecture. If pigs could fly, stars could be blown up on demand, and that would surely be very impressive.

No offense, but your opinion (let alone level of confidence) goes, ironically, against our current understanding. After double-checking with google and AI, current consensus from theoretical astrophysicists seems to be that it is probably possible to trigger a supernova, but we don't know a practical way to achieve it. In addition, most scientists neither believe we know all possible types of natural supernovae, certainly not completely different unnatural possibilities. Which stacks the deck in favor of "probably possible in some fashion" further.

Trigger supernovae, just like it's possible to travel faster than light by simply building an Alcubierre drive, because theoretical physicists say so? Call me when someone builds a proof of concept.

RE: Snakes - If someone tells me they observed a novel form of locomotion, I'm all ears. If I know them to be an ethusiast for imaginary forms of locomotion, I'll remain skeptical.

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