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On January 07 2012 05:58 Kukaracha wrote:
Reading too much sci-fi is bad for you.
Actually I got the idea for this after reading Herman Kahn's treatise On Thermonuclear War.
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On January 07 2012 05:49 sviatoslavrichter wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2012 03:33 Tor wrote:On January 07 2012 02:05 Caller wrote:On January 07 2012 01:34 Cattivik wrote:On January 07 2012 00:50 Caller wrote:
ironically, competition is necessary for development. what better competition is better than war?
evolution by natural selection has creatures developing in specific ways to counter its threats. There were far more innovations during the 50 year Japanese Civil War Period (rise of the peasants, the merchant class, free-market economy, defeudalization) than there were during the peaceful 200 year Tokugawa Shogunate.
Without war, man does not develop: instead they merely stagnate. I disagree to "competition4development" by pointing out a simple thing in nature: symbiosis. Competition doesn't support development, it only supports: Natural selection, which has NOTHING to do with development (that would be epigenetics). Natural selection is the process of life passing and not passing through the sieve created by environmental circumstances. symbiosis is a mechanism by which organisms establish relationships in order to have a competitive advantage against other creatures. This is like an alliance between two countries. for instance, in the case of some smaller fish eating parasites off of big fish, the big fish benefits because parasites suck. the small fish benefits because it doesn't need to compete against faster, more aggressive, fish for food. similarly, england and france would ally, because they are afraid of germany. not all development is technological, some of it is political. the small feudal kingdoms banded together and centralized because individually they were far more vulnerable than otherwise. epigenetics has nothing to do with what i'm saying. that is developmental biology, which is the growth of organisms. country development is a different aspect-it's not like China had "heavy industry" hard coded into its constitution. stop trying to use big words. as for the china and brazil example, china only developed by waging what amounted to a trade war with Japan and the United States. Similarly, Brazil is now busy trying to reassert control of the South American market. It may not be an armed war. But there is still conflict. Why can't an alliance with aliens be better for survival than war with aliens? On the scale of lightyears with faster than light travel being impossible there realistically can't be any competition, and if there IS competition it is for habitable planets, not asteroid fields, destroying planets in this case would be a terrible idea (keep in mind we don't compete with animals living deep within the sea because there is no point). People seem to forget that acts of aggression always carry risks. It could make you LESS safe and thus LESS likely to survive by being an aggressive alien race over a peaceful one. Likely the best way to survive is simply to hide, to develop technologies that mask you from detection. Consider a spacefaring species that can harness the power of suns, it doesn't seem unreasonable that they could create enough interference to make detecting their planets impossible. Also, a species that has the information advantage can improve upon itself by assimilating ideas, technologies, cultures etc. from other alien races. It's entirely concievable that the very first spacefaring species would the best survival rate simply because they can control EVERYTHING. If they see you as a threat they can destroy you before you even gain the ability to detect them, otherwise they can absorb you or use you. Maybe there is one galactic species right now, cultivating us for some reason or another. War is NOT the best way to survive, the best way to survive is to ensure growth and evolution. Growth doesn't mean destroying everything in your path, it means absorbing and utilizing the best traits and materiel available to you. I got news for you, if we shot an RKV at the first alien race we discovered, we could very likely be irradicated as well, and or also be destroying our only ally we had that would save us from some other tyrannical alien race. Adaptability is the key to survival, not absolute destruction of all competitors (at the very least you have to consider subjugation of other species before destruction). Very clearly, in a world of imperfect information, you have no idea whether launching an RKV is going to lead to mutually assured destruction (the worst possible decision for survival), or remove a powerful cooperative relationship that would've improved our chances of survival, or actually removed a threat worth removing. Therefor it's probably best to focus on not being found, rather than destroying everything we see (even if that means holding off space travel and colonization until we've found a way to mask ourselves completely). But again, all your statements rest upon the central idea of being able to coordinate all your actions with the other party from a pair of central decision-makers. This model works for states on Earth, but it does not work on interstellar distances simply because it does not work with our own lifetimes. There is no way to guarantee political continuity on Earth across several thousand years, and hence alien races, even if they are cultivating us, may simply view it as impossible to negotiate with us anyways.
i don't see any math, so this isn't a model.
qed
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On January 07 2012 06:13 Caller wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2012 05:49 sviatoslavrichter wrote:On January 07 2012 03:33 Tor wrote:On January 07 2012 02:05 Caller wrote:On January 07 2012 01:34 Cattivik wrote:On January 07 2012 00:50 Caller wrote:
ironically, competition is necessary for development. what better competition is better than war?
evolution by natural selection has creatures developing in specific ways to counter its threats. There were far more innovations during the 50 year Japanese Civil War Period (rise of the peasants, the merchant class, free-market economy, defeudalization) than there were during the peaceful 200 year Tokugawa Shogunate.
Without war, man does not develop: instead they merely stagnate. I disagree to "competition4development" by pointing out a simple thing in nature: symbiosis. Competition doesn't support development, it only supports: Natural selection, which has NOTHING to do with development (that would be epigenetics). Natural selection is the process of life passing and not passing through the sieve created by environmental circumstances. symbiosis is a mechanism by which organisms establish relationships in order to have a competitive advantage against other creatures. This is like an alliance between two countries. for instance, in the case of some smaller fish eating parasites off of big fish, the big fish benefits because parasites suck. the small fish benefits because it doesn't need to compete against faster, more aggressive, fish for food. similarly, england and france would ally, because they are afraid of germany. not all development is technological, some of it is political. the small feudal kingdoms banded together and centralized because individually they were far more vulnerable than otherwise. epigenetics has nothing to do with what i'm saying. that is developmental biology, which is the growth of organisms. country development is a different aspect-it's not like China had "heavy industry" hard coded into its constitution. stop trying to use big words. as for the china and brazil example, china only developed by waging what amounted to a trade war with Japan and the United States. Similarly, Brazil is now busy trying to reassert control of the South American market. It may not be an armed war. But there is still conflict. Why can't an alliance with aliens be better for survival than war with aliens? On the scale of lightyears with faster than light travel being impossible there realistically can't be any competition, and if there IS competition it is for habitable planets, not asteroid fields, destroying planets in this case would be a terrible idea (keep in mind we don't compete with animals living deep within the sea because there is no point). People seem to forget that acts of aggression always carry risks. It could make you LESS safe and thus LESS likely to survive by being an aggressive alien race over a peaceful one. Likely the best way to survive is simply to hide, to develop technologies that mask you from detection. Consider a spacefaring species that can harness the power of suns, it doesn't seem unreasonable that they could create enough interference to make detecting their planets impossible. Also, a species that has the information advantage can improve upon itself by assimilating ideas, technologies, cultures etc. from other alien races. It's entirely concievable that the very first spacefaring species would the best survival rate simply because they can control EVERYTHING. If they see you as a threat they can destroy you before you even gain the ability to detect them, otherwise they can absorb you or use you. Maybe there is one galactic species right now, cultivating us for some reason or another. War is NOT the best way to survive, the best way to survive is to ensure growth and evolution. Growth doesn't mean destroying everything in your path, it means absorbing and utilizing the best traits and materiel available to you. I got news for you, if we shot an RKV at the first alien race we discovered, we could very likely be irradicated as well, and or also be destroying our only ally we had that would save us from some other tyrannical alien race. Adaptability is the key to survival, not absolute destruction of all competitors (at the very least you have to consider subjugation of other species before destruction). Very clearly, in a world of imperfect information, you have no idea whether launching an RKV is going to lead to mutually assured destruction (the worst possible decision for survival), or remove a powerful cooperative relationship that would've improved our chances of survival, or actually removed a threat worth removing. Therefor it's probably best to focus on not being found, rather than destroying everything we see (even if that means holding off space travel and colonization until we've found a way to mask ourselves completely). But again, all your statements rest upon the central idea of being able to coordinate all your actions with the other party from a pair of central decision-makers. This model works for states on Earth, but it does not work on interstellar distances simply because it does not work with our own lifetimes. There is no way to guarantee political continuity on Earth across several thousand years, and hence alien races, even if they are cultivating us, may simply view it as impossible to negotiate with us anyways. i don't see any math, so this isn't a model. qed
Ryan, drop the UChicago antics bro. We can't really talk math here because the central paradigm behind all the identities of modern game theory (instantaneous and unlimited communication bandwidth) doesn't exist here, and therefore the existing models aren't equipped to handle this discussion.
If we wanted to model this, we would have to rebuild everything from scratch. While that may be an interesting exercise, regretfully I graduated 2 years ago. Of course if you would like to do something like this for your honors thesis that would be fucking awesome.
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On January 07 2012 06:11 sviatoslavrichter wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2012 05:58 Kukaracha wrote:
Reading too much sci-fi is bad for you. Actually I got the idea for this after reading Herman Kahn's treatise On Thermonuclear War.
I was talking about the thread as a whole, I don't know anything about game theory to be honest.
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What is the point of defining or trying to predict something (ie the attitude of extra-terrestrial life forms) according to our extremely ignorant and limited point of view? The universe is so vast that the possibilities are endless; and by the way many replies on this thread are highly biased by american movies and such.
We do everything according to our knowledge (and also sadly according to pathetic action sci-fi movies) and apparently everybody here including the OP is desperately trying to define things. Why not accept to not know? That isn't giving up.
But to go with the flow, I'd say that Humanity is a very agressive life form and violence seems to always be the only way to fix things, whether it's verbal or physical. We can't seem to stop and understand the pointlessness of the struggle in unison (and in unison only). The only way another civilisation in the universe could thrive for thousands of years is by thinking in unison.
Though the odds of that happening is very unlikely due to the universal laws of evolution (the strongest survive for the short term and the most adaptive survive for the longterm), the most straightforward way to survive is ours: own, rule, use and destroy everything for our existence, only thinking short term. So honestly, I don't know how small the odds would be for a fundamentally solidary (thinking and working in unison) civilisation to spawn somewhere in the universe... Yet the universe is so vast that it must have happened somewhere sometime. But on top of that, the odds of that civilisation to find us in our little corner, to have the exact technology to do so, to "travel" all the way here and to be visible (and to speak english hahahahaha) is even less than what it was initially.
Extra-terrestrial life does exist, it must, due to the vastness of the universe, but for it to be visible and recognizable for us humans is so unlikely. On top of that, Humanity will be extinct soon, so the tiny lifespan of existence Humans had on this planet minimizes even more the chances of encountering other life forms in the universe. By now, after those 3 layers, it's nearly impossible for "aliens" to get in contact with us.
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On January 07 2012 06:20 sorrowptoss wrote:
What is the point of defining or trying to predict something (ie the attitude of extra-terrestrial life forms) according to our extremely ignorant and limited point of view? The universe is so vast that the possibilities are endless; and by the way many replies on this thread are highly biased by american movies and such.
We do everything according to our knowledge (and also sadly according to pathetic action sci-fi movies) and apparently everybody here including the OP is desperately trying to define things. Why not accept to not know? That isn't giving up.
But to go with the flow, I'd say that Humanity is a very agressive life form and violence seems to always be the only way to fix things, whether it's verbal or physical. We can't seem to stop and understand the pointlessness of the struggle in unison (and in unison only). The only way another civilisation in the universe could thrive for thousands of years is by thinking in unison.
Though the odds of that happening is very unlikely due to the universal laws of evolution (the strongest survive for the short term and the most adaptive survive for the longterm), the most straightforward way to survive is ours: own, rule, use and destroy everything for our existence, only thinking short term. So honestly, I don't know how small the odds would be for a fundamentally solidary (thinking and working in unison) civilisation to spawn somewhere in the universe... Yet the universe is so vast that it must have happened somewhere sometime. But on top of that, the odds of that civilisation to find us in our little corner, to have the exact technology to do so, to "travel" all the way here and to be visible (and to speak english hahahahaha) is even less than what it was initially.
Extra-terrestrial life does exist, it must, due to the vastness of the universe, but for it to be visible and recognizable for us humans is so unlikely. On top of that, Humanity will be extinct soon, so the tiny lifespan of existence Humans had on this planet minimizes even more the chances of encountering other life forms in the universe. By now, after those 3 layers, it's nearly impossible for "aliens" to get in contact with us.
True, but this post is more about analyzing what they do AFTER they detect us. Even if they don't, the chance becomes that once they do, it would result in instant catastrophe...
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this thread is just fantasy and conjecture
what if aliens shoot magic lasers that ignore the laws of physics, travel faster than light and burn hotter than any star
what if aliens are sentient energy beings who can teleport and inhabit human minds
what if aliens have an anal fetish, and rather than destroy us, simply come to probe us with a RAD (relativistic anal dildo)
I mean, that's the problem with talking about things that are not based on facts whatsoever, you can just make up anything you like because you have no input data, the conclusions drawn by the OP are equally as legitimate as what I wrote above, because they are based on the assumption that other civilizations exist in the universe, and that their sole goals are to harvest more energy and make more planet-bullets.
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On January 07 2012 06:17 sviatoslavrichter wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2012 06:13 Caller wrote:On January 07 2012 05:49 sviatoslavrichter wrote:On January 07 2012 03:33 Tor wrote:On January 07 2012 02:05 Caller wrote:On January 07 2012 01:34 Cattivik wrote:On January 07 2012 00:50 Caller wrote:
ironically, competition is necessary for development. what better competition is better than war?
evolution by natural selection has creatures developing in specific ways to counter its threats. There were far more innovations during the 50 year Japanese Civil War Period (rise of the peasants, the merchant class, free-market economy, defeudalization) than there were during the peaceful 200 year Tokugawa Shogunate.
Without war, man does not develop: instead they merely stagnate. I disagree to "competition4development" by pointing out a simple thing in nature: symbiosis. Competition doesn't support development, it only supports: Natural selection, which has NOTHING to do with development (that would be epigenetics). Natural selection is the process of life passing and not passing through the sieve created by environmental circumstances. symbiosis is a mechanism by which organisms establish relationships in order to have a competitive advantage against other creatures. This is like an alliance between two countries. for instance, in the case of some smaller fish eating parasites off of big fish, the big fish benefits because parasites suck. the small fish benefits because it doesn't need to compete against faster, more aggressive, fish for food. similarly, england and france would ally, because they are afraid of germany. not all development is technological, some of it is political. the small feudal kingdoms banded together and centralized because individually they were far more vulnerable than otherwise. epigenetics has nothing to do with what i'm saying. that is developmental biology, which is the growth of organisms. country development is a different aspect-it's not like China had "heavy industry" hard coded into its constitution. stop trying to use big words. as for the china and brazil example, china only developed by waging what amounted to a trade war with Japan and the United States. Similarly, Brazil is now busy trying to reassert control of the South American market. It may not be an armed war. But there is still conflict. Why can't an alliance with aliens be better for survival than war with aliens? On the scale of lightyears with faster than light travel being impossible there realistically can't be any competition, and if there IS competition it is for habitable planets, not asteroid fields, destroying planets in this case would be a terrible idea (keep in mind we don't compete with animals living deep within the sea because there is no point). People seem to forget that acts of aggression always carry risks. It could make you LESS safe and thus LESS likely to survive by being an aggressive alien race over a peaceful one. Likely the best way to survive is simply to hide, to develop technologies that mask you from detection. Consider a spacefaring species that can harness the power of suns, it doesn't seem unreasonable that they could create enough interference to make detecting their planets impossible. Also, a species that has the information advantage can improve upon itself by assimilating ideas, technologies, cultures etc. from other alien races. It's entirely concievable that the very first spacefaring species would the best survival rate simply because they can control EVERYTHING. If they see you as a threat they can destroy you before you even gain the ability to detect them, otherwise they can absorb you or use you. Maybe there is one galactic species right now, cultivating us for some reason or another. War is NOT the best way to survive, the best way to survive is to ensure growth and evolution. Growth doesn't mean destroying everything in your path, it means absorbing and utilizing the best traits and materiel available to you. I got news for you, if we shot an RKV at the first alien race we discovered, we could very likely be irradicated as well, and or also be destroying our only ally we had that would save us from some other tyrannical alien race. Adaptability is the key to survival, not absolute destruction of all competitors (at the very least you have to consider subjugation of other species before destruction). Very clearly, in a world of imperfect information, you have no idea whether launching an RKV is going to lead to mutually assured destruction (the worst possible decision for survival), or remove a powerful cooperative relationship that would've improved our chances of survival, or actually removed a threat worth removing. Therefor it's probably best to focus on not being found, rather than destroying everything we see (even if that means holding off space travel and colonization until we've found a way to mask ourselves completely). But again, all your statements rest upon the central idea of being able to coordinate all your actions with the other party from a pair of central decision-makers. This model works for states on Earth, but it does not work on interstellar distances simply because it does not work with our own lifetimes. There is no way to guarantee political continuity on Earth across several thousand years, and hence alien races, even if they are cultivating us, may simply view it as impossible to negotiate with us anyways. i don't see any math, so this isn't a model. qed Ryan, drop the UChicago antics bro. We can't really talk math here because the central paradigm behind all the identities of modern game theory (instantaneous and unlimited communication bandwidth) doesn't exist here, and therefore the existing models aren't equipped to handle this discussion. If we wanted to model this, we would have to rebuild everything from scratch. While that may be an interesting exercise, regretfully I graduated 2 years ago. Of course if you would like to do something like this for your honors thesis that would be fucking awesome.
If this is the person that I think it is, long time no see.
I already graduated though lawl so no can do
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Not very constructive but...
Once a civilisation is at a point where it can create an RKV game theory, as we understand it, might well be perceived as nonsense, the gabagooing of an infant.
Although I would really like to read a paper about game theory over relativistic distances, in fact I'm a little surprised there isn't one out there already.
This thread puts me in mind of this book:
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://www.iain-banks.net/lib/TheAlgebraist.jpg) Lots of war at relativistic speeds plus a sentient race that evolved on gas giants.
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On January 07 2012 06:17 sviatoslavrichter wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2012 06:13 Caller wrote:On January 07 2012 05:49 sviatoslavrichter wrote:On January 07 2012 03:33 Tor wrote:On January 07 2012 02:05 Caller wrote:On January 07 2012 01:34 Cattivik wrote:On January 07 2012 00:50 Caller wrote:
ironically, competition is necessary for development. what better competition is better than war?
evolution by natural selection has creatures developing in specific ways to counter its threats. There were far more innovations during the 50 year Japanese Civil War Period (rise of the peasants, the merchant class, free-market economy, defeudalization) than there were during the peaceful 200 year Tokugawa Shogunate.
Without war, man does not develop: instead they merely stagnate. I disagree to "competition4development" by pointing out a simple thing in nature: symbiosis. Competition doesn't support development, it only supports: Natural selection, which has NOTHING to do with development (that would be epigenetics). Natural selection is the process of life passing and not passing through the sieve created by environmental circumstances. symbiosis is a mechanism by which organisms establish relationships in order to have a competitive advantage against other creatures. This is like an alliance between two countries. for instance, in the case of some smaller fish eating parasites off of big fish, the big fish benefits because parasites suck. the small fish benefits because it doesn't need to compete against faster, more aggressive, fish for food. similarly, england and france would ally, because they are afraid of germany. not all development is technological, some of it is political. the small feudal kingdoms banded together and centralized because individually they were far more vulnerable than otherwise. epigenetics has nothing to do with what i'm saying. that is developmental biology, which is the growth of organisms. country development is a different aspect-it's not like China had "heavy industry" hard coded into its constitution. stop trying to use big words. as for the china and brazil example, china only developed by waging what amounted to a trade war with Japan and the United States. Similarly, Brazil is now busy trying to reassert control of the South American market. It may not be an armed war. But there is still conflict. Why can't an alliance with aliens be better for survival than war with aliens? On the scale of lightyears with faster than light travel being impossible there realistically can't be any competition, and if there IS competition it is for habitable planets, not asteroid fields, destroying planets in this case would be a terrible idea (keep in mind we don't compete with animals living deep within the sea because there is no point). People seem to forget that acts of aggression always carry risks. It could make you LESS safe and thus LESS likely to survive by being an aggressive alien race over a peaceful one. Likely the best way to survive is simply to hide, to develop technologies that mask you from detection. Consider a spacefaring species that can harness the power of suns, it doesn't seem unreasonable that they could create enough interference to make detecting their planets impossible. Also, a species that has the information advantage can improve upon itself by assimilating ideas, technologies, cultures etc. from other alien races. It's entirely concievable that the very first spacefaring species would the best survival rate simply because they can control EVERYTHING. If they see you as a threat they can destroy you before you even gain the ability to detect them, otherwise they can absorb you or use you. Maybe there is one galactic species right now, cultivating us for some reason or another. War is NOT the best way to survive, the best way to survive is to ensure growth and evolution. Growth doesn't mean destroying everything in your path, it means absorbing and utilizing the best traits and materiel available to you. I got news for you, if we shot an RKV at the first alien race we discovered, we could very likely be irradicated as well, and or also be destroying our only ally we had that would save us from some other tyrannical alien race. Adaptability is the key to survival, not absolute destruction of all competitors (at the very least you have to consider subjugation of other species before destruction). Very clearly, in a world of imperfect information, you have no idea whether launching an RKV is going to lead to mutually assured destruction (the worst possible decision for survival), or remove a powerful cooperative relationship that would've improved our chances of survival, or actually removed a threat worth removing. Therefor it's probably best to focus on not being found, rather than destroying everything we see (even if that means holding off space travel and colonization until we've found a way to mask ourselves completely). But again, all your statements rest upon the central idea of being able to coordinate all your actions with the other party from a pair of central decision-makers. This model works for states on Earth, but it does not work on interstellar distances simply because it does not work with our own lifetimes. There is no way to guarantee political continuity on Earth across several thousand years, and hence alien races, even if they are cultivating us, may simply view it as impossible to negotiate with us anyways. i don't see any math, so this isn't a model. qed Ryan, drop the UChicago antics bro. We can't really talk math here because the central paradigm behind all the identities of modern game theory (instantaneous and unlimited communication bandwidth) doesn't exist here, and therefore the existing models aren't equipped to handle this discussion. If we wanted to model this, we would have to rebuild everything from scratch. While that may be an interesting exercise, regretfully I graduated 2 years ago. Of course if you would like to do something like this for your honors thesis that would be fucking awesome.
Your comments reflect a lack of understanding of game theory, so I offer this model based on information sets and extensive form sequential games.
Consider:
1.) Player 1 chooses to broadcast or not broadcast.
2.) Player 2 receives message and chooses whether or not to broadcast or launch a RKV.
3.) Player 1 either receives broadcast or detects RKV and decides whether to launch RKV. (this stage is a 3-fold branching. Detect response first, detect RKV first, or detect nothing)
That fully specifies an extended form game (tree structure) with all the necessary components to establish information sets given some strongly negative payoff for being dead and some presumably slightly negative payoff for having to launch an RKV, with broadcasting information being basically free. Information sets come into play in stage 3, since player 1 does not know if an RKV has been sent or not and has to make a decision based on the possibility of both situations.
The OP suggests that a SPNE is for 1 not to broadcast and launch RKV on detection of traceable communication. This is trivally a SPNE since the payoffs are 0 for both parties and we have not formulated any positive payoffs in this game. Thus, since we cannot do better (period), we cannot do better by deviating. (simple argument from weakening)
Later on, the OP suggests a peaceful outcome if the game is extended into
1.) Player 1 chooses to broadcast location, not broadcast, or to broadcast that player possesses advanced first strike and broadly decentralized second strike capabilities.
2.) Player 2 receives message and chooses whether or not to broadcast or to broadcast in turn the possession of advanced first strike and broadly decentralized second strike capabilities or to launch a RKV.
3.) Player 1 either receives broadcast or detects RKV and decides whether to launch RKV.
In this game, we see that broadcasting advanced first strike capabilities with broadly decentralized second strike capabilities while committing to launch RKV on detection of incoming RKV is also a SPNE. Given the payoffs we described earlier, there is a strongly negative payoff for player 2 to launch RKV, since they will be greeted in turn with an RKV in response.
A point that was somewhat unclear to me after the somewhat confusingly ordered edits in the OP was whether or not the origin of an RKV could be successfully traced for MAD. If RKVs are traceable then as I said in the previous paragraph, communication can still be an RKV. Otherwise, the only SPNEs are those where the first player does not broadcast.
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On January 07 2012 07:09 Gummy wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2012 06:17 sviatoslavrichter wrote:On January 07 2012 06:13 Caller wrote:On January 07 2012 05:49 sviatoslavrichter wrote:On January 07 2012 03:33 Tor wrote:On January 07 2012 02:05 Caller wrote:On January 07 2012 01:34 Cattivik wrote:On January 07 2012 00:50 Caller wrote:
ironically, competition is necessary for development. what better competition is better than war?
evolution by natural selection has creatures developing in specific ways to counter its threats. There were far more innovations during the 50 year Japanese Civil War Period (rise of the peasants, the merchant class, free-market economy, defeudalization) than there were during the peaceful 200 year Tokugawa Shogunate.
Without war, man does not develop: instead they merely stagnate. I disagree to "competition4development" by pointing out a simple thing in nature: symbiosis. Competition doesn't support development, it only supports: Natural selection, which has NOTHING to do with development (that would be epigenetics). Natural selection is the process of life passing and not passing through the sieve created by environmental circumstances. symbiosis is a mechanism by which organisms establish relationships in order to have a competitive advantage against other creatures. This is like an alliance between two countries. for instance, in the case of some smaller fish eating parasites off of big fish, the big fish benefits because parasites suck. the small fish benefits because it doesn't need to compete against faster, more aggressive, fish for food. similarly, england and france would ally, because they are afraid of germany. not all development is technological, some of it is political. the small feudal kingdoms banded together and centralized because individually they were far more vulnerable than otherwise. epigenetics has nothing to do with what i'm saying. that is developmental biology, which is the growth of organisms. country development is a different aspect-it's not like China had "heavy industry" hard coded into its constitution. stop trying to use big words. as for the china and brazil example, china only developed by waging what amounted to a trade war with Japan and the United States. Similarly, Brazil is now busy trying to reassert control of the South American market. It may not be an armed war. But there is still conflict. Why can't an alliance with aliens be better for survival than war with aliens? On the scale of lightyears with faster than light travel being impossible there realistically can't be any competition, and if there IS competition it is for habitable planets, not asteroid fields, destroying planets in this case would be a terrible idea (keep in mind we don't compete with animals living deep within the sea because there is no point). People seem to forget that acts of aggression always carry risks. It could make you LESS safe and thus LESS likely to survive by being an aggressive alien race over a peaceful one. Likely the best way to survive is simply to hide, to develop technologies that mask you from detection. Consider a spacefaring species that can harness the power of suns, it doesn't seem unreasonable that they could create enough interference to make detecting their planets impossible. Also, a species that has the information advantage can improve upon itself by assimilating ideas, technologies, cultures etc. from other alien races. It's entirely concievable that the very first spacefaring species would the best survival rate simply because they can control EVERYTHING. If they see you as a threat they can destroy you before you even gain the ability to detect them, otherwise they can absorb you or use you. Maybe there is one galactic species right now, cultivating us for some reason or another. War is NOT the best way to survive, the best way to survive is to ensure growth and evolution. Growth doesn't mean destroying everything in your path, it means absorbing and utilizing the best traits and materiel available to you. I got news for you, if we shot an RKV at the first alien race we discovered, we could very likely be irradicated as well, and or also be destroying our only ally we had that would save us from some other tyrannical alien race. Adaptability is the key to survival, not absolute destruction of all competitors (at the very least you have to consider subjugation of other species before destruction). Very clearly, in a world of imperfect information, you have no idea whether launching an RKV is going to lead to mutually assured destruction (the worst possible decision for survival), or remove a powerful cooperative relationship that would've improved our chances of survival, or actually removed a threat worth removing. Therefor it's probably best to focus on not being found, rather than destroying everything we see (even if that means holding off space travel and colonization until we've found a way to mask ourselves completely). But again, all your statements rest upon the central idea of being able to coordinate all your actions with the other party from a pair of central decision-makers. This model works for states on Earth, but it does not work on interstellar distances simply because it does not work with our own lifetimes. There is no way to guarantee political continuity on Earth across several thousand years, and hence alien races, even if they are cultivating us, may simply view it as impossible to negotiate with us anyways. i don't see any math, so this isn't a model. qed Ryan, drop the UChicago antics bro. We can't really talk math here because the central paradigm behind all the identities of modern game theory (instantaneous and unlimited communication bandwidth) doesn't exist here, and therefore the existing models aren't equipped to handle this discussion. If we wanted to model this, we would have to rebuild everything from scratch. While that may be an interesting exercise, regretfully I graduated 2 years ago. Of course if you would like to do something like this for your honors thesis that would be fucking awesome. Your comments reflect a lack of understanding of game theory, so I offer this model based on information sets and extensive form sequential games.Consider: 1.) Player 1 chooses to broadcast or not broadcast. 2.) Player 2 receives message and chooses whether or not to broadcast or launch a RKV. 3.) Player 1 either receives broadcast or detects RKV and decides whether to launch RKV. (this stage is a 3-fold branching. Detect response first, detect RKV first, or detect nothing) That fully specifies an extended form game (tree structure) with all the necessary components to establish information sets given some strongly negative payoff for being dead and some presumably slightly negative payoff for having to launch an RKV, with broadcasting information being basically free. Information sets come into play in stage 3, since player 1 does not know if an RKV has been sent or not and has to make a decision based on the possibility of both situations. The OP suggests that a SPNE is for 1 not to broadcast and launch RKV on detection of traceable communication. This is trivally a SPNE since the payoffs are 0 for both parties and we have not formulated any positive payoffs in this game. Thus, since we cannot do better (period), we cannot do better by deviating. (simple argument from weakening) Later on, the OP suggests a peaceful outcome if the game is extended into 1.) Player 1 chooses to broadcast location, not broadcast, or to broadcast that player possesses advanced first strike and broadly decentralized second strike capabilities. 2.) Player 2 receives message and chooses whether or not to broadcast or to broadcast in turn the possession of advanced first strike and broadly decentralized second strike capabilities or to launch a RKV. 3.) Player 1 either receives broadcast or detects RKV and decides whether to launch RKV. In this game, we see that broadcasting advanced first strike capabilities with broadly decentralized second strike capabilities while committing to launch RKV on detection of incoming RKV is also a SPNE. Given the payoffs we described earlier, there is a strongly negative payoff for player 2 to launch RKV, since they will be greeted in turn with an RKV in response. A point that was somewhat unclear to me after the somewhat confusingly ordered edits in the OP was whether or not the origin of an RKV could be successfully traced for MAD. If RKVs are traceable then as I said in the previous paragraph, communication can still be an RKV. Otherwise, the only SPNEs are those where the first player does not broadcast.
Whoa thanks. This cleared up a lot of things, I'm adding this to the OP. Caller are you satisfied now?
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This discussion reminds me of Greg Bear's books: The Forge of God, and Anvil of Stars.
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2 Points:
1, you're theory rests upon the assumption of an anarchic state of relations, and you dont know that this is true. The assertion seems like its based on the idea that there is no effective communication between species, which i am willing to grant for the purpose of the discussion, but it discounts the possibility of one race establishing hegemonic rule. A strong hegemony with effective early warning systems could be relatively secure from RKVs (which I assume can be deflected or destroyed if you have fore warning an counter launch your own devices at the RKV, or if you can manipulate gravity to do the same), and thus make first communications safe, which in turn gives an opportunity for dialogue and cooperation.
2, communications could be established within an anarchic system using satellites, sending messages from uninhabited worlds etc. If Civ A has a small satellite or outpost somewhere removed from its inhabited territories it could use that as a relay station, or even more effectively as the first point in a series of similar relay stations, to establish contact, could it not? And then if Civ B launches RKVs, Civ A can note the location and retaliate, and the loss would be just the satellite. If Civ B does not launch, then either they did not receive the message or they did but lack the capacity for or interest in responding. If a return message is received then dialogue can be attempted, and even if the dialogue fails then Civ A has not been exposed. If a return message is not received, then presumably Civ A has still not been exposed.
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On January 07 2012 05:49 sviatoslavrichter wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2012 03:33 Tor wrote:On January 07 2012 02:05 Caller wrote:On January 07 2012 01:34 Cattivik wrote:On January 07 2012 00:50 Caller wrote:
ironically, competition is necessary for development. what better competition is better than war?
evolution by natural selection has creatures developing in specific ways to counter its threats. There were far more innovations during the 50 year Japanese Civil War Period (rise of the peasants, the merchant class, free-market economy, defeudalization) than there were during the peaceful 200 year Tokugawa Shogunate.
Without war, man does not develop: instead they merely stagnate. I disagree to "competition4development" by pointing out a simple thing in nature: symbiosis. Competition doesn't support development, it only supports: Natural selection, which has NOTHING to do with development (that would be epigenetics). Natural selection is the process of life passing and not passing through the sieve created by environmental circumstances. symbiosis is a mechanism by which organisms establish relationships in order to have a competitive advantage against other creatures. This is like an alliance between two countries. for instance, in the case of some smaller fish eating parasites off of big fish, the big fish benefits because parasites suck. the small fish benefits because it doesn't need to compete against faster, more aggressive, fish for food. similarly, england and france would ally, because they are afraid of germany. not all development is technological, some of it is political. the small feudal kingdoms banded together and centralized because individually they were far more vulnerable than otherwise. epigenetics has nothing to do with what i'm saying. that is developmental biology, which is the growth of organisms. country development is a different aspect-it's not like China had "heavy industry" hard coded into its constitution. stop trying to use big words. as for the china and brazil example, china only developed by waging what amounted to a trade war with Japan and the United States. Similarly, Brazil is now busy trying to reassert control of the South American market. It may not be an armed war. But there is still conflict. Why can't an alliance with aliens be better for survival than war with aliens? On the scale of lightyears with faster than light travel being impossible there realistically can't be any competition, and if there IS competition it is for habitable planets, not asteroid fields, destroying planets in this case would be a terrible idea (keep in mind we don't compete with animals living deep within the sea because there is no point). People seem to forget that acts of aggression always carry risks. It could make you LESS safe and thus LESS likely to survive by being an aggressive alien race over a peaceful one. Likely the best way to survive is simply to hide, to develop technologies that mask you from detection. Consider a spacefaring species that can harness the power of suns, it doesn't seem unreasonable that they could create enough interference to make detecting their planets impossible. Also, a species that has the information advantage can improve upon itself by assimilating ideas, technologies, cultures etc. from other alien races. It's entirely concievable that the very first spacefaring species would the best survival rate simply because they can control EVERYTHING. If they see you as a threat they can destroy you before you even gain the ability to detect them, otherwise they can absorb you or use you. Maybe there is one galactic species right now, cultivating us for some reason or another. War is NOT the best way to survive, the best way to survive is to ensure growth and evolution. Growth doesn't mean destroying everything in your path, it means absorbing and utilizing the best traits and materiel available to you. I got news for you, if we shot an RKV at the first alien race we discovered, we could very likely be irradicated as well, and or also be destroying our only ally we had that would save us from some other tyrannical alien race. Adaptability is the key to survival, not absolute destruction of all competitors (at the very least you have to consider subjugation of other species before destruction). Very clearly, in a world of imperfect information, you have no idea whether launching an RKV is going to lead to mutually assured destruction (the worst possible decision for survival), or remove a powerful cooperative relationship that would've improved our chances of survival, or actually removed a threat worth removing. Therefor it's probably best to focus on not being found, rather than destroying everything we see (even if that means holding off space travel and colonization until we've found a way to mask ourselves completely). But again, all your statements rest upon the central idea of being able to coordinate all your actions with the other party from a pair of central decision-makers. This model works for states on Earth, but it does not work on interstellar distances simply because it does not work with our own lifetimes. There is no way to guarantee political continuity on Earth across several thousand years, and hence alien races, even if they are cultivating us, may simply view it as impossible to negotiate with us anyways.
There is no need to communicate because there is no incentive to destroy other races. Rather, destroying other races could actually negatively effect your survival. Additionally, there is no reason to compete for resources (and risk a war that could destroy you) until resources become limited. Animals do not attack animals pre-emptively, they attack for food or for self defence. The whole argument for killing everything you see is irrational, it could easily lead to your own destruction. If you destroy an alien that can't fight back, then you are throwing away a resource that poses no risk to you. If you destroy an alien planet that CAN fight back (even though there is no evidence it's actually attacking you) then you are risking a war that could lead to your destruction. The imaginary circumstances required to justify total war with all other sentient alien species do not exist in the real world.
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Well im reading this..and..basically i want to think up the best defense system assuming rkvs exist and what not, and then how the defense could be broken.
Ideally, if radio waves broadcast location, it would probably be more convenient to have all outside communication done thru effectively proxy galaxies so only they can be destroyed. Ideally the galaxies will be located in a relative circle around the home civilization, and possibly it would be ideal to have a few circles. These planets circleing the home planet would each have intense self defense mechanisms so the home planet is never in danger. Considering this is 3d land, the planets would have to form a sphere
Now a few questions i have: if a defense system fails and the aliens know their planet is dead, could the aliens not just ditch the planet? From this perspective it seems i could suggest a form of machine plain t hat can wrap around planets togather resources, and the aliens can leave and not have to pack up stuff. Im suggesting every alien colony is just a home base vehicle that can go onto planets. I figure this should be possible and it should make just killig people too hard.
Also maybe this is out of the topic but with such advanced technology do you think it could be possible to genetically alter genes? What if a race more intelligent than us can have a baby a month? A week? Its hard to go extinct that way
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On January 06 2012 15:31 Mercy13 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 06 2012 15:16 Cascade wrote:On January 06 2012 15:07 Mercy13 wrote:On January 06 2012 14:50 sviatoslavrichter wrote:On January 06 2012 14:44 Mercy13 wrote:On January 06 2012 14:12 Cascade wrote:On January 06 2012 14:03 Mercy13 wrote:
Interesting read, but I think you made at least one big error:
"but if you assume all aliens choose their initial actions upon finding other intelligent life from an equally likely basket of hostile and not-so-hostile actions"
You state this is an assumption but then treat it as a given. It is certainly possible that the portion of aliens choosing the non-hostile portion of the basket significantly outweighs the hostile portion of the basket.
according to the OPs approach it doesnt matter much what proportions there are. Even with a million pacifist hippie civilizations, and only a single shoot-first civilization, evolution will take care of the hippies. All the hippies will encounter the shoot-first eventually, and will die once they do. The shoot-first will expand unhindered, and will eventually take all the universe. So in that case we (earth) may be lucky and run into one (or even several) of the hippies first, but we will always hit the shoot-first eventually, and we are doomed the second we send out strong enough signals to be seen by the shoot-first. edit: oh, now i understand what you refer to. you mean that the statement "first contact will most likely be a RKV" depends on the distributions of strategies among the civilizations. That is ofc true. sorry.  Actually, I think your first point was close to what I was arguing.... I think the OPs approach is wrong in that he/she assumes the proportions don't matter. Using your example, if there are 1M hippy Civs and only one shoot first Civ, it is more likely that a hippy Civ will make first contact with another hippy Civ. And what do hippies do when they first meet? They hook up! As more hippies band together, it becomes more and more difficult for the 1 shoot-first Civ to survive, b/c eventually even hippies will defend themselves. Now, I FULLY realize that this is just blind speculating based on highly imperfect information and many assumptions. However, I would never presume to couch it in game theory : ) How are the hippie civs supposed to talk to one another if each message takes tens of thousands of years to transmit? They are a peculiar species of space plant that lives for 1 million years on average. To them, ten thousand years is naught but the blink of an eye. This is a frivolous example which demonstrates why it is silly to try to apply logic when you are working with highly imperfect information. I did find the OP an interesting read. I just think that if you're going to say that it's logical you're going to have to add a lot more assumptions. Like that there's no long-lived space plants that are perfectly happy to wait 10K years to recieve a message. It's illogical to assume that, by looking at something logically when you have virtually NO information, you will come up with anything approaching an accurate result. Edit: slightly off topic, but I just remembered something the OP might want to discuss. We actually have some evidence of what happened the last time humanity encountered a new species it couldn't communicate with : ) Neandertals anyone? Def. not a reliable proxy for two advanced Civs encountering each other, but still... Imagine a brain, but instead of nodes in a skull sending electrical signals to each other, you have planets in a galaxy sending signals! A galaxy would be a huge brain, and a single thought would take a million years. The Andromeda galaxy, being only 2.6M light years away, would be close enough to have a chat with the milky way without any communication problems.  Good one! How about this: A passive aggressive race has mastered the power of quantum entanglement, which allows them to communicate instantly over extremely long distances. They send a Doomsday Probe to the newly discovered planet Earth, and use it to send real time data back regarding its civilization so they can evaluate whether or not humans are a threat. The Probe continuosly gathers information relating to such topics as technology, politics, and, unfortunately, popular culture, and sends it back to its alien masters. The human race survives for ~11 milliseconds subsequent to the Probe relaying the latest Justin Bieber song. I'm not sure what the Nash equilibrium would be in this case, but it would probably involve a preemptive strike against Justin Bieber by US Navy SEALS.
they will preemptively send water bottle in his direction
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Why wouldn't the best option be to immediately send the message, wait, and at the 25% point of the message's trip (@ full lightspeed), and send a remotely destructible RKV? That way, We will able to receive transmission from the potentially hostile civilization at 75% of the RKV's trip, (assuming they respond immediately) and decide based upon their response to pre-detonate the RKV, or let it annihilate the civilization.
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On January 07 2012 12:09 Flamingo777 wrote:
Why wouldn't the best option be to immediately send the message, wait, and at the 25% point of the message's trip (@ full lightspeed), and send a remotely destructible RKV? That way, We will able to receive transmission from the potentially hostile civilization at 75% of the RKV's trip, (assuming they respond immediately) and decide based upon their response to pre-detonate the RKV, or let it annihilate the civilization.
You'd have account for the message getting to the RKV. Assume an RKV has already gone 75% there, then the RKV will not get the message itself until after it has already destroyed the other planet.
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There is no defense against a single RKV, let alone several of them, unless you break Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Unlikely, to say the least. A single gram of matter fired at 90%c has almost double the payload of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. How are you going to defend an entire planet against specks of dust?
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On January 07 2012 05:58 Kukaracha wrote:
Reading too much sci-fi is bad for you.
Calm down, you're going to get a heart attack.
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EPT
