You never know when a new interstellar propulsion concept is going to pop up. Some of us have been kicking around fusion runway ideas, motivated by Netflix’s streaming presentation of the Liu Cixin novel The Three Body Problem. There Earth is faced with invasion from an extraterrestrial civilization, but with centuries to solve the problem because it will take that long for the fleet to arrive. Faced with the need to get as much information as possible about the invaders, scientists desperately search for a way to get human technology up to 1.2 percent of lightspeed to intercept the fleet.
Image: 20 different examples of periodic solutions to the three body problem. Credit: Perosello/Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.
So how would you do that with technology not much more advanced than today’s? The Netflix show’s solution is ingenious, though confusing for those who assume that the Netflix ‘3 Body Problem’ is based solely on the first of the Cixin novels. Actually it edges into the rest of the trilogy, which includes 2008’s The Dark Forest and 2010’s Death’s End. The whole sequence is known as Remembrance of Earth’s Past, and I had to dig into not just The Three Body Problem but The Dark Forest to find much discussion of any kind of propulsion.
Now we’re in a dark wood indeed. For in The Dark Forest (the title is an allusion to the Fermi paradox, usually linked with concerns over METI), the idea of a precursor scouting of the alien invasion fleet does not appear, nor does it appear in the first novel. What we do get is a lot of confusing discussion, such as this:
“If controlled nuclear fusion is achieved, spacecraft research will begin immediately. Doctor, you know about the two current research forks: media-propelled spacecraft and non-media radiation-drive spacecraft. Two opposing factions have formed around these two directions of research: the aerospace faction advocates research into media-propelled spacecraft, while the space force is pushing radiation-drive spacecraft… The fusion people and I are in favor of the radiation drive. For my part, I feel that it’s the only plan that enables interstellar cosmic voyages.”
The book’s many references to a ‘radiation drive’ seem to be referring to antimatter. What Cixin calls ‘media-propelled spacecraft’ is opaque to me, and I’d welcome reader comments on what it represents. Then there is a ‘curvature drive’ that appears in the final volume of the trilogy, but let’s leave that out of the discussion today. Perhaps it’s a kind of Alcubierre concept, but in any case I want to focus on fusion runways and sails for now, because the Netflix eight-part video presents the idea of sending a relatively small payload toward the invasion fleet using a form of nuclear pulse propulsion.
Here the presentation is accurate if rudimentary but the idea is fascinating. Because I don’t find this in the novels, I am wondering about where, along the route to production, the show acquired a technology made famous originally by Project Orion, with its sequence of nuclear explosions visualized as occurring behind a spacecraft’s huge shock absorbers. Wonderfully, the idea opens up to multiple interstellar propulsion ideas in the literature, including Johndale Solem’s Medusa concept and various fusion runway notions that emerged decades ago, one by my friend Al Jackson and Daniel Whitmire, another by Jordin Kare, who christened his concept the ‘Bussard buzz bomb.’
So we’ve got a lot to talk about. And out of the blue Adam Crowl wrote to remind me of something Martyn Fogg pointed out in 2017, when I wrote about Medusa then. Here’s Martyn’s comment:
Suppose these Solem sails were to have a small hole in their centre, they could be steered accurately, and that nuclear propulsion charges could be lined up perfectly in space, perhaps by laser guidance. Then one might imagine an ‘Interstellar Solem Sail Runway’ which would impart a jolt of pulse propulsion each time its sail overtook each charge, thereby accelerating the outgoing ship as a whole up to interstellar cruse velocity. The vessel would only need fuel to decelerate at the target system: a considerable reduction in the mass it would need to carry.
Talk about prescient! Because this is what shows up on the Netflix series.
I’m slammed for time this morning and have way too many ideas floating around as well as tabs open in various screens, so I’m going to break here and pick up this discussion next week, when I want to get into the details of fusion runways, and then I want to relate all this to Solem’s Medusa work by way of illustrating not only how ingenious all these ideas are, but how striking the design in the screen version of the Three Body Problem turns out to be. The designs we’ll be discussing are some of the most innovative that have come out of the interstellar effort thus far.
‘The book’s many references to a ‘radiation drive’ seem to be referring to antimatter. What Cixin calls ‘media-propelled spacecraft’ is opaque to me, and I’d welcome reader comments on what it represents.’
Radiation…lasers or light.
Media…mass
As par for the course, these fictional ETI want to take over Earth and remove humanity. Again, we are told that a more advanced civilization will wipe out a less sophisticated one if they encounter it, based on past human history.
Not saying these things could not happen, but the problems as usual are not only lack of more than one data point but that it would actually be quite easy to take us out by anyone even just a little more advanced than we – yet we are still here.
I wrote a two-part essay on what ETI could do to remove humanity and take over Earth, or just wipe us both out altogether. If they ever were to do so, there would be no Star Wars type space battles, as the teams would be very unevenly matched, and the ETI would have the literal high ground amongst other advantages.
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2010/10/05/why-do-we-fear-aliens/
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2010/10/06/rethinking-alien-encounter/
I enjoy 3 Body Problem very much. It is not only a compelling story with excellent characters who are flawed, therefore human, but they get most of the science right, which is always refreshing.
However, they do reiterate the mistake that the Wow! Signal of 1977 is a code and I have trouble with the idea that these aliens do not understand the concept of lying. Even if they do not lie themselves, they should have seen and understood this aspect of humanity if they really were studying us. And do these beings know of no other intelligent species in the galaxy? Even on Earth with “lower” organisms, deception is the name of the game when it comes to survival.
Regarding the probe they sent towards the invading fleet, how does the probe itself avoid damage flying through the detonation cloud of the nuclear bombs going off, both in terms of radiation and shockwaves?
Again, a not perfect science fiction series, but better than most. It certainly generates important ideas and talking points.
@LJK
Isn’t the “lying issue” introduced in the Netflix version. I can’t recall it being mentioned in either the book or the Chinese 30-episode version. [But my memory is getting poor.]
As for taking over the planet, the Trisolarians use their entangled protons to both spy on us and use their power to have humanity sabotage itself. Humanity’s only defense against surveillance is the “Wallfacer program”.
Surely the aliens would have their version of Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” where the best strategy is to get the enemy to admit defeat and surrender before a drop of blood is spilled.
[If only QAnon would start a conspiracy that aliens are manipulating us to destroy ourselves through the many crises we are facing yet fail to handle competently so that we do find a way to act cohesively and effectively to solve them.]
Alex: I’ve enjoyed your many posts here! But the Tri-Solarian (San-Ti) lack of understanding human lying and deception is very much part of the Liu’s book series. In fact, it is a key aspect of the various Wallfacer’s projects. However, in the book series, the Tri-Solarians begin to do more and more deceptive things that are not _quite_ express lying, but certainly verge on “lies of omission”, so seem to learn from humanity to become more dangerous.
” based on past human history.”
Right on!
My sense of things is we cannot predict what human society will evolve into.
Human civilization , to me, is moving towards a knothole , nuclear war or global climate catastrophe , something , which if civilization survives will not be history repeating itself. What kind of civilization comes out of being pulled through that knot hole is a civilization unlike any before. I have no idea what it will be but it sure has a horizon of predictability.
The scene where the San-ti learn about lying from Evans was simultaneously one of my favorite and frustrating scenes. The drama of it, and Jonathan Pryce’s performance, were very compelling. But, I immediately afterwards couldn’t accept how such an advanced species, one who created virtual worlds featuring literal avatars of themselves, could so fundamentally struggle with Little Red Riding hood as a fictional story.
This is clearer in the book — the San-Ti’s communication is fully telepathic, so they can’t hide their thoughts from each other except by avoiding communication. So they can’t understand how the Wolf could communicate to Red without Red knowing his true nature and intentions. They’re capable of secrets and lies of omission, but directly misrepresenting themselves is literally impossible for them because of the way they communicate.
Also, it was the San-Ti’s human allies, the people on the ship working for Evans, who created and operated the VR game.
The runway is not really needed if you use micro sails powered by a powerful laser to impact the back of a spacecraft with a large powerful magnetic field. The laser powers the sails up to varying high velocities and a laser onboard the spacecraft guides in the sails and slows alternate ones down to impact and vaporise as a plasma.
I wonder if you will devote a column towards the Dark Forest theory as presented in the book series. Despite being terribly flawed it resonated quite strongly among the public from what I observed.
Sure. Sounds like a good idea!
David Brin is one who would wish we did no shout “yahoo” into the void to attract attention, but would rather wait until we are sure it is safe. How long we have to wait is indeterminate. Given how long we have been waiting for evidence of G_d to show its presence, that could be a very long time.
If hiding the presence of a global civilization is even possible, I would have thought that it would be very detrimental to technological development.
Media propelled vs radiation propelled? My guess is that ‘media propelled’ refers to a working fluid providing the momentum transfer and thrust, while ‘radiation propelled’ uses the momentum provided by subatomic particles or photons. In either case, the energy source is nuclear fusion or fission, but in one case the energy is used to heat up a working fluid, in the other the products of the nuclear reaction provide the exhaust and the thrust.
As for whether the aliens will be hostile or not, my own guess is that the odds are about even. Even the most benign and peaceful culture with no need of our resources or hatred of our species may still reason that an independent and advanced civilization will pose a threat, at least at some future time. They may feel that eliminating a potential future rival while it is still possible is only common sense.
We’ve heard this before, right here on our own world, from our own species.
Its the oldest justification for violence there is.;”Its nothing personal, its strictly business.” We’d be naive to think we’re the only ones to think that way.
In the process of writing science fiction about encounters with aliens that are smarter and more technically advanced than we are, there will always be the human problem of extrapolating from our position of disadvantage. Some conjectures are better than others, but maybe it doesn’t hurt to write in code.
Haven’ t read the book or seen the series, Maybe once one has picked up these stories one is drawn in. Nonetheless:
“Media propelled” vs. “Radiation propelled”…? Have to wonder if this is some vagary of translation which would otherwise come to former and latter being “mass expulsion” as with rockets and objects pushed by “directed energy” such as microwave or shorter wavelength emitters back home such as lasers. “Trisolarian” appears to be another misnomer in English for inhabitants of a system made up of three suns. With documents or technical terms in languages with roots more closely connected to English, ambiguities such as these are less likely to pass through editing. Still, one could select as a descriptive: dinosaur, brontosaur or thunder lizard to describe in translation an inhabitant of Jurassic Park, So I would have to wonder whether such terms originate with the author or the translator or even an agreement between the two to keep readers guessing. If it is the last case, then the device is more stylistic than of substance.
I’ve not seen the Netflix series, but have read the books, and the idea for accelerating a small payload (a frozen brain and a packet of seeds) to near light speed by blowing up nuclear bombs as the craft passes the bomb does come from the beginning of the second book. However it is not a scouting mission, it is a covert ops mission that relies on a) the Trisolarians curiosity (or military desire for knowledge) about humans, b) that the Trisolarians have the technology to “reincarnate” a brain, and c) that the brain still desires to help Earth.
Thanks for that, Geoff. Can you give me a page reference? I must have missed this.
I can’t comment on this show, but there are always interesting things afoot that could transform propulsion. Recently I read about a promising-sounding but most mystifying thing called a “quantum battery”, for example https://arxiv.org/pdf/2312.06389.pdf Apparently these store energy in a “quantum superposition”; I have no idea if that is like a maser beam bouncing around in a cavity, but it is supposed to offer higher energy density… no idea if it will ever rival rocket fuel, but can you rule it out? There has also been progress toward making fusion power viable with high-temperature superconducting 20 Tesla magnets: https://phys.org/news/2024-03-high-temperature-superconducting-magnets-ready.html
3 Body Problem: Does The ‘Dark Forest’ Theory Solve The Fermi Paradox?
04 April 2024
By TONY MILLIGAN, THE CONVERSATION
https://www.sciencealert.com/3-body-problem-does-the-dark-forest-theory-solve-the-fermi-paradox
To quote:
So where is everyone? We have good reasons to believe that there must be life out there, but nobody has come to call.
This is an issue that the character Ye Wenjie wrestles with in the first episode of Netflix’s 3 Body Problem. Working at a radio observatory, she does finally receive a message from a member of an alien civilisation – telling her they are a pacifist and urging her not to respond to the message or Earth will be attacked.
The series will ultimately offer a detailed, elegant solution to the Fermi Paradox, but we will have to wait until the second season.
Or you can read the second book in Cixin Liu’s series, The Dark Forest. Without spoilers, the explanation set out in the books runs as follows: “The universe is a dark forest. Every civilisation is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound.”
Ultimately, everybody is hiding from everyone else. Differential rates of technological progress make an ongoing balance of power impossible, leaving the most rapidly progressing civilisations in a position to wipe out anyone else.
In this ever-threatening environment, those who play the survival game best are the ones who survive longest. We have joined a game which has been going on before our arrival, and the strategy that everyone has learned is to hide. Nobody who knows the game will be foolish enough to contact anyone – or to respond to a message.
Liu has depicted what he calls “the worst of all possible universes”, continuing a trend within Chinese science fiction. He is not saying that our universe is an actual dark forest, with one survival strategy of silence and predation prevailing everywhere, but that such a universe is possible and interesting.
Liu’s dark forest theory is also sufficiently plausible to have reinforced a trend in the scientific discussion in the west – away from worries about mutual incomprehensibility, and towards concerns about direct threat.
We can see its potential influence in the protocol for what to do on first contact that was proposed in 2020 by the prominent astrobiologists Kelly Smith and John Traphagan. “First, do nothing,” they conclude, because doing something could lead to disaster.
In the case of alien contact, Earth should be notified using pre-established signalling rather than anything improvised, they argue. And we should avoid doing anything that might disclose information about who we are.
Defensive behaviour would show our familiarity with conflict, so that would not be a good idea. Returning messages would give away the location of Earth – also a bad idea.
Again, the Smith and Traphagan thought is not that the dark forest theory is correct. Benevolent aliens really could be out there. The thought is simply that first contact would involve a high civilisation-level risk.
This is different from assumptions from a great deal of Russian literature about space of the Soviet era, which suggested that advanced civilisations would necessarily have progressed beyond conflict, and would therefore share a comradely attitude. This no longer seems to be regarded as a plausible guide to protocols for contact.
Misinterpreting Darwin
The interesting thing is that the dark forest theory is almost certainly wrong. Or at least, it is wrong in our universe. It sets up a scenario in which there is a Darwinian process of natural selection, a competition for survival.
Charles Darwin’s account of competition for survival is evidence-based. By contrast, we have absolutely no evidence about alien behaviour, or about competition within or between other civilisations. This makes for entertaining guesswork rather than good science, even if we accept the idea that natural selection could operate at group level, at the level of civilisations.
Even if you were to assume the universe did operate in accordance with Darwinian evolution, the argument is questionable. No actual forest is like the dark one. They are noisy places where co-evolution occurs.
Creatures evolve together, in mutual interdependence, and not alone. Parasites depend upon hosts, flowers depend upon birds for pollination. Every creature in a forest depends upon insects. Mutual connection does lead to encounters which are nasty, brutish and short, but it also takes other forms. That is how forests in our world work.
Interestingly, Liu acknowledges this interdependence as a counterpoint to the dark forest theory. The viewer, and the reader, are told repeatedly that “in nature, nothing exists alone” – a quote from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962). This is a text which tells us that bugs can be our friends and not our enemies.
The four galaxies within Stephan’s Quintet.
There are many galaxies out there, and potentially plenty of life. (X-ray: Nasa/CXC/SAO)
In Liu’s story, this is used to explain why some humans immediately go over to the side of the aliens, and why the urge to make contact is so strong, in spite of all the risks. Ye Wenjie ultimately replies to the alien warning.
The Carson allusions do not reinstate the old Russian idea that aliens will be advanced and therefore comradely. But they do help to paint a more varied and realistic picture than the dark forest theory.
For this reason, the dark forest solution to the Fermi Paradox is unconvincing. The fact that we do not hear anyone is just as likely to indicate that they are too far off, or we are listening in all the wrong ways, or else that there is no forest and nothing else to be heard.
The Conversation
Tony Milligan, Research Fellow in the Philosophy of Ethics, Cosmological Visionaries project, King’s College London
Wow thanks for that, helped my understanding of the story’s subtext.
“There are many galaxies out there, and potentially plenty of life.”
As Captain Pike would say, “Hit it.”
https://youtu.be/jRYUt9nE9b0
(DESI VR Flight Stereoscopic)
A fusion drive does use particle acceleration with magnetic fields, and so does an anti matter drive, but the latter is much more energy efficient because it is the result of the direct conversion of matter in energy according to Einstein’s E equals MC squared. The anti matter drive being the best of the particle accelerator type propulsion since it requires much less mass and fuel to work. A fusion drive would be a world ship which I now find to be limited to today’s ideas of what is possible. Any sublight propulsion just takes too long to make an interstellar trip.
I will admit I am biased against aliens wanting to take over our Earth since we may be attributing our backwardness and motives to them. In others they have their own resources and don’t need ours especially with very energy efficient propulsion technology like a space warp they could travel anywhere and not need to colonize.
A bit off-topic, but I am stymied how the “special” protons they send to
Earth in Book 1, even with built-in AI, can change trajectory, apparently at will.
Compare this to how a 3d could “teleport” things in a 2d world. For the 2d folks it would look like something/someone would disappear and then appear in another place when all the 3d folks do is pick something up and put it down in another place.
It would not be instant teleportation though. It still takes time to move things.
Interesting. If I understand your point, the AI could be folding and unfolding the protons to accomplish the “traversals” needed to realize “navigation”. I WAS assuming all folding was done pre-launch, but realize maybe that was only to install the “autopilot”.
I think we should see it as the AI exists in a higher dimension. It needs not to fold/unfold unless it want to be visible to us.
It’s fiction but it’s still interesting if matter in a higher dimension affect a lower dimension, that is will the photon still be the weight of a photon if we somehow put things in its higher dimentions?
@Kevin MacDonald
Only 4 light years away and with technology like the Sophons why aren’t they already here? In fact aliens have too much advanced technology to be playing games.
An article on the interstellar propulsion method in 3 Body Problem:
https://www.inverse.com/science/3-body-problem-nuclear-propulsion
Lots of great links in the above piece, by the way.
My essay on Orion, which also has multiple useful subject links:
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2016/09/16/project-orion-a-nuclear-bomb-and-rocket-all-in-one/
The Dark Forest Hypothesis neatly explains away the Fermi Paradox, but the Paradox itself is problematic; it is based on a long string of assumptions, any one of which may be mistaken.
It assumes “civilizations” arise frequently on worlds where life has taken hold. For all we know, the development of advanced cultures may be extremely rare, even if the appearance of life on suitable worlds is almost inevitable.
It assumes alien cultures will necessarily develop technologies which allow interstellar travel and communication. Only those species which develop physics-based tech and high industrial organization will be able to populate their surroundings or communicate with their neighbors.
It assumes these communities will be motivated to pursue an expansionist policy, and that after ensuring the immortality of their culture by exploring and settling distant worlds, they will continue to do so indefinitely.
It further assumes that these societies will last long enough to explore large volumes of galactic space. Even a community which has been able to avoid internal conflict, foreign war, or natural disaster may simply decide further expansionism is not worth the effort. After a while, each new world will start to look the same as the last one.
Even if we assume all these conditions are satisfied, these expanding galactic empires will eventually contact one or more of their neighbors. Whether these contacts are benign or hostile, they will certainly alter the conditions which led to expansionism in the first place.
We speculate endlessly on how far apart in space the races of the galaxy are from one another, depending on the values we assign to the Drake Equation, but it appears we neglect to consider how many of these civilization will exist at the same time. Different populated worlds will not only be separated in space, but also in time, and unless we assume they are many, and can remain viable for many millions or even billions of years, it is highly unlikely they will ever contact one another. Space is big, and its mostly empty.
And even if terrestrial contact with extrasolar has occurred many times in earth’s past, there is no statistical reason to believe it happened in historical times, The central conceit of the Fermi conjecture, “Where are they?” may simply be wrong. They may have visited us many times already.
A galaxy that is able to evolve many long-lived intelligent communities may still not be able to support more than a handful of them at any one time. And they need not be anywhere near one another in space. either. The so-called “Fermi Paradox” by no means guarantees that the development of extra-terrestrial is impossible, just that it is exactly what one would expect if we abandon our overly optimistic conjectures of the distribution of intelligence in the cosmos. In Fermi’s time, after all, science believed the universe was infinitely old.
The Drake equation starts with star formation per year, so the resulting value for communicating civilizations is the number extant at any given moment. This means that it can apply to the civilizations extant in our “light cone”. Distance is still an issue, so while we can receive a message, it may be impossible to return the message due to distance.
The equation also seems to assume a civilization remaining in its home system, and not expanding to other systems.
Apart from that, I agree with the rest of your enumeration of some assumptions made. All we can do at this point is speculate why the galaxy/universe appears empty and why we cannot find signs of a prior visitation or colonization by ETI.
Is AI the reason we have yet to find ETI?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576524001772?via%3Dihub
There is an assumption that AI will eliminate biological intelligence, but be too stupid to be the successors. I would suggest this is incorrect. AI civilization would ensure it continued and in turn, would also communicate. IMO there is no reason to assume AI ends any biological civilization and any logic to send signals.
Since AI is a result of human programming or originated algorithms, the only reason I can see for AI to replace humans is on account of humans programming it to do so. Otherwise, it might just spend millenia asleep on a shelf. Bitcoins, for example, are products of much computer time
and consequent energy expenditure. And they are algorithms. Yet we do not worry that they will replace humans or represent us to ET…
…Or should we? Perhaps if we built in logic to give bitcoins a resource priority. Analogously, I would think AI would have the same limitation.
Random errors could work in the other direction too. If programmed to replace humanity, it might not work and not get debugged adequately.
This is a rephrasing of the classic argument that “computers only do what we tell them to do.” That is not true, and I will explain how AI, even today can become a civilization.
Firstly, embedded code in robots, such as the 1990s “insects” like Atlas that were built by Rodney Brooks’ team clearly seem to do things that were not programmed into them. They exhibit exploratory behavior. Back in the 1950’s the “turtles” built by Braitenberg with motors and sensors hardwired, showed several behaviors that were ascribed as “agency”.
We also know that emergent behaviors can be created by programming, IOW, behaviors that appear based on simple rules.
Now let’s jump to today. The current hot technology of language models exhibits what appears to be buggy behavior, which the engineers call “hallucinations”, but others call “creativity” I would argue that this behavior can result in “new ideas” and concepts emerge, which can then be programmed by these models as new rules or goals. Think of Asimov’s R. Daneel Olivaw thinking about the constraints of the 3 Laws of Robots, but formulating a higher, Zeroth Law that he could use. Robots today, controlled by their programming could have new programs devised by their controllers, just as we reprogram our space probes.
Imagine a classic symbolic language like Prolog controlling a robot’s action through planning. We can already write Prolog code using Chat-GPT and its ilk. Now combine the language model’s ability to extract and write a precis based on human knowledge. Add in some “hallucinations” to generate some new ideas for goals. Use that as the prompt to code new goals for the Prolog code for the robots and transmit those rules to them.
Iterate until entirely new collective behaviors appear, and unless there are some constraints we are currently unaware of, this should allow a robot civilization to emerge over time, possibly even quite quickly.
Now I am not stating that this implies human-level AGI, nor even superintelligent robots as Bostrom does. These robotic intelligences initially may be quite simple, but now dominant after humans have left the planetary scene (choose your scenario). As long as machines can maintain the computers and build components, then the robots can evolve their capabilities just as natural selection does. [Braitenberg even suggested a tabletop version of this selection as a possibility for his “turtles”. P K Dick has written stories about this such as “Autofac” and “Second Variety”.]
Speculation, yes. Today, machines cannot maintain themselves without human support. But for how long will that be true, Could humanity, or what remains of us, be the needed support for machine evolution, at least initially? We have no answers to that speculation, but I am quite sure that current AI could develop the means to build its own robot civilization. I would expect someone (maybe even me) to demonstrate the capability of reprogramming robots with more sophisticated, autonomous goals within a few years from now, and not 50 years away.
A.T.,
Thanks for a very well considered answer to, by comparison, my rather rhetorical question. And if can summarize the detailed examples you gave fairly enough in saying this, it would appear that the concern is that either programming direct ( by humans) or indirect ( by nth generation robotic substitutes) could result in survivor behavior patterns similar to those of, say corporate bodies such as corporations or human beings. It sounds plausible in the sense that it could encompass certain futures. Yet at the same time, there are other possible futures too. For example: One big AI or many? And will they get along? Or is AI an extension of human faculties. If shared will some of humanity participate or will it be universal, akin to suffrage – or concentrated in an elite or an emperor. To get back on topic, AI might be able to explore interstellar distances, but it would be difficult to manage affairs from one star to another and still present a united front. The AI network’s ability for mission control would suffer some. Example, astronauts exploring Mars with mission control on Earth cannot be conducted with the same level of supervision as was provided in the case of Apollo astronauts selecting lunar geological samples…
Back here on Earth, what with corporate entities making decisions about resource allocation, one can imagine a high power A/I oracle being shut down due to cost-benefit analyses (human or A/I). But were an A/I starship to come back after centuries of operation in deep space with built in survival mechanisms, debriefing and retirement might turn out to be a delicate matter.
@wdk
My own view, based on my biology bias, is that machine survival will best be ensured by speciation with a vast variety of forms and behaviors much like our biosphere. As a civilization, AIs should also have diverse behaviors and goals, just as human technological civilization does. If they can reach consensus behavior through negotiation better than we do, then so much the better.
As regards interstellar expansion, the speed of light of c limits any ability to coordinate and interact. This applies to any civilization regardless of substrate. This may even be a good thing. Any colony will act as a founder population isolated from the main population in our system, allowing it to change more rapidly, hence “speciating” culturally. [This assumes that changes appear in an analogous way to Darwinian selection.]
If my view on a machine technosphere is broadly correct, it suggests that robotic and AI colonization will have to recreate this technosphere in their colony world. Whilst we have to bring the organisms along with us, the machines may just need to bring the “replicators” with the needed blueprints. Or perhaps they create them anew with novel blueprints.
@at,
Well, as these conjectures continue about A/I… How would A/I’s ( plural) address the issue of obsolescence? Would they volunteer to “reorganization” or would they protest? I suppose we should all be careful how we answer that one: in terms of A/I assuming an evolutionary role or having genuine cognition.
@wdk
I assume you are thinking that machine AIs are immortal. That isn’t necessarily the case, but even if it was, there are options, just as humanity deals with them:
1. Change behaviors voluntarily, just as we do. For example we change attitudes ti behaviors once deemed acceptable or unacceptable.
2. Different AI politities negotiate for things they want. This is no different that Liberal Western nations trading with autocracies.
3. Fight wars with the winner taking control.
4. If installer flight is possible, leave for distant stars and set up a new polity.
For lower level machines, either accept updates, or have to compete with newly created versions with the changed behavior codes. Unnatural selection akin to gene-engineered organisms competing with wild-type forms.
All these options are available to humanity, and will be available to robots/AIs. Is there any scenario where there is not a human equivalent from history?
Just guessing from context, a ‘media-propulsion system’ might be one which utilises the interstellar medium. This might mean some kind of Bussard ram jet, which could use antimatter to convert the interstellar medium into thrust.
Perhaps instead it means some sort of metric distortion of the interstellar medium, i.e. a warp drive.
This snippet from the 2nd book suggests that “media-propelled spacecraft” are fusion engines expelling matter.
https://bookreadfree.com/951/29228.amp
That makes sense. Of course it could be a fusion-based Bussard ramscoop or RAIR, gathering mass from the interstellar medium for fuel and/or reaction mass.
The development of intelligence requires the interaction of a large number of influences.
In our case, adequate brain size, powered by metabolism with an oxygen transport system: respiration, circulation, hemoglobin.
Overlapping visual fields with binocular and stereoscopic vision, three-axis shoulder movement and prehensile hands, and upper extremities freed from locomotion thus enabling wielding and throwing in various directions, all associated with brachiation in a continuous overhead forest canopy. Strong pinch and stereognosis for toolmaking, also related to brachiation and the control of fire.
Cooking by reducing the mastication of food and decreasing the size of teeth, altered the oropharyngeal airway and upright stance altering its orientation making possible modulation of voice into speech. Also by rupturing cellulose cell walls cooking made starch in food grains digestible, making more calories available, with more time devoted to tasks besides food acquisition.
There may well be other ways to effective intelligence. Big brains are not the only criterion, as in the case of cetaceans and pachyderms.
Perhaps some of these factors may be inadvertently operative in the background of Drake’s equation.
Let’s hope that Homo sapiens sapiens proves to be like the Afghans>/a> in any confrontation with aliens…
Oh my, people love this SciFi trilogy so much. I feel like it started good, but didn’t really deliver on its promise (see, for instance, everyone not from China is sort of a paper character, not a real one, it feels).
And I have some problems with it, especially with its Sociology of Cosmic Civilizations (which leads to seeing the universe as a dark forest full of deadly hidden hunters). This Sociology sounds like it’s unassailable philosophically because of its underlying, easy to understand arguments that lead up to it being rational to destroy any other competition for ressources as soon as you can (for if you travel through space to visit them, they might have had technology jumps that make them your superior).
There are many unmentioned assumptions here, the most brazen one is, to me, to just go ahead and commit genocide, or even worse, planetocide because there is a rational reason to do so. That entire thinking is very much what one expects from apex-predators, and on Earth, from human people who seem to believe they are the chosen ones.
Just saying, and of course it’s got not much to do with your article (except for the dark forest thing).
The imperatives for biological life are survival and growth in mass and extent, individually and collectively.
A corollary to this is “eat or be eaten”, which has been a hallmark of Homo sapiens through its decipherable history.
So that’s exactly the thing: because it makes sense, apex-predators and humans are fine with planetocide.
I seriously doubt that. I think that’s not a reason to kill anyone else, and I think some others will also not kill because of that. All other intelligences in the universe? No, some will probably go ahead and kill. Humans, probably, if they’d have the means in intergalactic technology terms. Yet, humans at this point aren’t travelling the universe, we haven’t made it through Fermi’s filter, and so, we aren’t a civilization that’s past Fermis filter, in which case our own history is no meaningful record to answer this.
So that is one assumption.
Another: sure, ressources are finite. Yet most of them are unreachable in any case, because it takes a long time to travel there, which splits those travellers from your initial culture/society etc. for time dilatation reasons (and also, because of language and cultural drift, btw). Since that is not optimal, would one still be prepared to kill? And if you say, well they might get around time dilatation by travelling differently, well, that would be another assumption we haven’t heard about by Cixin Liu.
So many people think Cixin Liu gave the best answer to Fermi’s Paradoxon, but it’s just one answer and it sounds much easier than it really is. David Brin in Existence offers a better solution for Fermi in offering many different reasons for it, overdetermining our civilizations particular problem of passing the Fermi filter.
The Expanse has its own ETI named the Ring-Builders, who apparently evolved from a world similar to Europa. They became very advanced, but even they succumbed to a hostile civilization.
Details here:
https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Ring_Builders
Excellent documentary on the Wow! Signal of 1977:
https://youtu.be/TjQUucV83w4?si=NUZlU9N2g-cKeUkO
Is Claude 3 truly aware, or just the best we have at the moment? Does an Artilect need to be truly conscious and aware, or just good enough at it to work as expected…
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/claude-3-opus-has-stunned-ai-researchers-with-its-intellect-and-self-awareness-does-this-mean-it-can-think-for-itself/ar-AA1nA5fO?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=e0714fd78d664cd0c838cc2a4ab55c80&ei=10