EPTGame theory, applied to aliens - Page 16
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Intr3pid
Switzerland336 Posts
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cLutZ
United States19574 Posts
On January 12 2012 01:44 Acrofales wrote: Lol, there you go. Economic reasons are another good reason why RKVs are completely infeasible in the forseeable future  1.7 Billion dollars is hardly even a line item in the US federal budget. | ||
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Tor
Canada231 Posts
On January 08 2012 12:12 Bigtony wrote: Why would an alien civilization just want to blow planets up? Also, I don't believe that alien life exists. The question being asked is "Is there a logical/rational reason to erradicate every sentient lifeform in the universe?" OP suggests that the only logical route to dominance in a universal scale is through mass erradication of all competitors through the use of an RKV. OP several naive assumptions and calls them reason for total war. The theory being "The universe is silent because either broadcasting your location is tantamount to announcing your death, or the universe is silent because all sentient life has erradicated eachother, so in order to survive we must A) not broadcast our location and B) destroy all others who broadcast" Naive assumptions: All alien species are competitors. Problem: We are only competitors if we have a shortage of space, given the limitations of space travel and the vast quantities of space, it's unlikely any species would ever have a reason to compete (unless there was a specific shortage of something, in which case, a destroyed planet is unlikely to have any unique value) Broadcasting reveals your position: Problem: It's not inconcievable that tactics could be employed to make the broadcast impossible trace. And far more easily, a broadcast does not need to be made from the home planet or system. Finding planets are easy: Given the limitations of no faster than light travel, it would take years for a accurate information of a system to be relayed back to the home planet. While a probe could be launched to each star system, the probe would have to also be the RKV, an RKV capable of scanning a planet ahead of time (correct me if i'm wrong but, if we're limited to relativity then a just below light speed craft could not send any signal ahead of it since the signal itself can't go faster than light). Furthermore, due to the exponential difficulties in exploring areas, identifying and exploring systems would likely become infeasible for any species after a certain distance. Launching an RKV makes you safer: For some reason, people seem to think attacking an preemptively attacking and alien species of which you have no knowledge about it's capabilities (except those implied by the limitations of light speed) is the best way to keep you safe. Of course, if you can be sure you can destroy an alien with no consequences than you might have an argument. However given our limited understanding of the universe, it's not inconcievable that both the RKV could be stopped, could miss, could not have a target in the first place, and could force an attack by unknown starsystems. This reinforces the idea the best way to survive in a competitve universe is simply to hide. We have perfect information: It seems the OP is making the argument that communication is impossible (most likely faulty), and so the best course of action (because our lack of information) is to be as aggressive as possible. This belief ignores all the previous facts I just brought up. Essentially the argument made by the OP is that because we have imperfect information, we must make preemptive attacks on aliens to make sure they don't attack us, however, the problem is, in order to attack the aliens we need perfect or at least better information than our basic assumptions imply. It's a logical fallacy. I would suggest that, as it currently stands, there are far too many variables to accurately assume launching an RKV is inherently safe. Thus it's far more logical to spend any energy on hiding yourself rather than destroying competitors. Since the very act of aggression could cause our own extinction. I could go on and on about this topic, but this is alot of words. I will say that this doesn't enough touch the topic of logical fallacies or the actual implications of some of the current assumptions made. For instance, assuming that we cannot communicate because FTL communication is impossible implies far more than just difficulty communicating. It means it's practically impossible to identify other systems on a scale that has the slightest impact on the galaxy (and thus implies there really is no galactic competition). The amount of energy required to explore all the star systems within 100 lightyears is inconcievable. And given a scale of one billion years of sentience, the idea that any species could impact any competitors who could have stretched out and colonized planets nearly one billion light years apart, is laughable at best. tl:dr Competition on a galactic scale is impossible. The OP makes assumptions that are based on perfect information even though they are motivated by imperfect information. The OP`s assumptions imply far more than just ``RKV`s are the best way to compete``, although the OP does make a decent case for making sure our systems are difficult to detect. | ||
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Orangu
Canada198 Posts
On January 06 2012 07:32 Haemonculus wrote: If aliens exist or have ever existed, I just find it highly unlikely that they and us exist in the same time period. Humanity has existed as a species for roughly what, 200,000 years, and we've only really been aware of ourselves as a species for the last 10,000 or so, and only in the last 50 have we even had the technology to bother thinking we can actually communicate with an alien race. Given the age of the universe, what are the odds that an advanced alien species is out there, at the exact same time that we presently exist? Chances are they either were born, lived, and died off billions of years ago, or they'll be born, live, and die billions of years after we're gone. I think it all depends on if inter planetary space travel is actually possible considering distances and narrow conditions needed for a planet to be habitable. If space travel is possible and maybe if terra forming is possible then i think its possible that at least some species would advance that far before their planet was destroyed and then would be able to continue on existing for ever by continually moving to new planets or maybe developing like a world ship assuming a power source able to fuel something like that is even possible. Of course space could simply be too big and too inhospitable to life for an entire civilization to move into space and continue to thrive, but then again maybe there are life forms that are more hardy than us, for all we know there are space whales chilling some where out there. Either way considering what we currently think the size of the universe is i personally think its pretty likely that concurrent life of some form exists some where out there even if its really basic like bacteria, but is almost certainly separated by insurmountable distance. Existence of advanced life right now, within range of any sort of communication or even within our galaxy? yah i doubt that too. | ||
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opisska
Poland8852 Posts
On January 12 2012 06:15 Butcherski wrote: Hasnt faster than light communication been invented already ? The "Spooky action at a distance" or quantum entanglement ? You can prove that quantum entanglement can not actually carry usefull information FTL. It is such a complex thing that we should probalby make a new thread if we were to discuss that. | ||
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Dirich
Italy101 Posts
).But, anyway, let's assume the game best strategy is to launch an RKV, as for the OP's post. If you wanna play "peaceful race" than the best option is not to play the game. The comment I am ignoring, consider a game where "to not play" is a playable option, but the game considered by the OP doesn't. If you don't play the game, aka you do not answer to messages and do not send messages, than the only way to have contact is by direct contact. So there are 2 scenarios: another race finds you with its spaceship, or you find one with yours (or you meet somehwere? kinda like startrek). If you are found by a spaceship, you can evaluate the aliens' behaviour and decide if they can be trusted or you need to send a RKV (if you are able to get the other race homeplanet cohordinates). They could send a message with your planet cohordinates for an attack, but you would be able to destroy their ship (or you wouldn't stand a chance anyway), launch the RKV and would have (probably) enough time to evacuate your planet considering the signal travel time and their RKV travel time. If they send no signal, there is no risk (but we still have to kill them, even if we are peacefull). The only problem is if they send it and we can't get their homeplanet cohordinates, but there is no strategy to counter this event, besides having better tech so this scenario isn't possible. EDIT: even in this case it is possible to evacuate, provided we kill their ship or we won't be able to escape to a new unknown location. Due to this reasoning, if you wanna go around the space with a spaceship, you want avoid to do the first contact (or if you do, you never communicate it to your planet if the aliens are of the "bad type", and you delete any record of the cohordinates from the computers and your brains (you never know!), which means that (if you can't escape?) you vaporize yourself). The third scenario is the interstellar meeting, where you can pretty much apply the second scenario strategy (provided you can't simply kill them) in case of "bad aliens". P.S. There is unsafety in the evacuations, as the bad guys could send RKVs to all the systems near ours, so it would be safest to evacuate very far from home(planet), but this is beyond the game. As for the probes suggestion, what happens is essentially what I described here, as the direct contact in that case is made by an AI, but it's still a direct contact nonetheless. | ||
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archonOOid
1983 Posts
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Mataza
Germany5364 Posts
Let me explain: An aggressive and paranoid civilization would kill everyone on first sight. BUT would such a civ actually reach the technological level to fire (whatever) interstellar weaponry? I came to the conclusion(and maybe there are papers agreeing with me, but I didn´t see them yet), that in doubt, cooperating with other sentient beings is the superior plan. If you are aware of the Prisoner´s dilemma and related experiments(I actually searched for another one, but couldnt find it right now), you will hopefully understand what I mean. What I actually searched for was an experiment in which real people could gain real money. 2 people(A &B) sit across a table so they cant see each other. At first, 1 dollar is offered to A. He may decline or accept. If he declines, then B will be offered 2 dollars next. Same decision, money doubles evertime one declines. If one accepts, game is over. (Also any other communication aside from accept or decline is naturally forbidden) Logically and taking game theory as basis, you should accept at first chance(indeed, competitive chess players did without exception). In reality, most players cooperated multiple times, cooperating silently under absolute uncertainty. I don´t remember the specifics, but I think financial standing was insignificant to who would first accept. Just throwing it out there.(If you remember the experiment I couldnt find,please pm me) | ||
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hp.Shell
United States2527 Posts
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SEA KarMa
Australia452 Posts
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Brett
Australia3822 Posts
On January 06 2012 07:07 iPAndi wrote: What the hell did i just read. hahaha pretty much what I thought after reading the whole thing and all the edits... | ||
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Sabin010
United States1892 Posts
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Sabin010
United States1892 Posts
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Cel.erity
United States4890 Posts
Isn't it possible that a civilization that advanced will have become enlightened to the point of benevolence? Maybe they're so well-evolved that everything is boring to them besides interacting with and assisting other lifeforms. If they possess technology that can demolish planets at interstellar distances, why don't they have the technology to just inhabit whatever the hell planet they like and terraform it? To find a way to communicate with us instead of blowing us up? Again, I know you're saying this is just the "most likely" scenario, but I think it is equally likely that they will just be bored/curious and want friends. | ||
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HardlyNever
United States1258 Posts
1. Being a "destroy all other species" civilization is actually a terrible strategy for civilization survival, mainly because we live in an imperfect, and seemingly random universe. Which leads me to my second point. 2. You are using a model that is not only inconsistant, but largely contrary to the only model we know exists. That model is how humans behave on Earth. While I'm certainly willing to accept the possibility of species behaving differently than humans on Earth, to assume that they will automatically behave in an almost contrary fashion makes no sense. We are the only known sentient species, therefore, we have to assume that any behavior will be more like our own, not less like our own, because it is the only one we know to exist. Tying those two points together sort of destroys your "game theory (why you call this game theory I have no clue, as it isn't related to game theory at all)." Let's say there are 3 nations on Earth. One of these nations behaves like the "destroy everything" civilization you describe. The other two do not (because not all humans want to destroy other civilizations, although some do). The two nations that do not behave that why, by chance, live much closer to each other and discover each other first, and decide to become friendly towards each other and participate in a mutually beneficial relationship. The "destroy all civilizations" species finds out about one of the friendly nations (the one closer to it) and decides to destroy it. However, because destroying entire civilizations can be difficult, they don't succeed (or they even could succeed, it doesn't matter). This lets the surviving "friendly" civilization know about the hostile one, and they take hostile action. Now you have a war, and it comes down to who destroys who first. Now lets say instead of two friendly nations, they are 10. You can add as many "hostile" nations to the equation as you want, because by your logic, they will never cooperate and only want to destroy all other civilizations. While it is true some humans want to destroy other civilizations, it cannot be the overriding urge, otherwise there would only be one civilization in the world (which there isn't). TL;DR Humans are the only known sentient species, so you have to assume other sentient species will behave in a similar fashion, because this is the only known way sentient species behave. While it is certainly possible that other species will behave in a way that isn't human-like, your "destroy all civilizations" behavior is one out of infinite possibilies, and one that will likely get that civilization destroyed by more cooperative civilizations. Edit: You are also assuming all civilizations will be an equal distance away from each other, which makes no sense at all. If three friendly civilizations are all 10 light years away from each other, and the hostile civilization is 1000 light years away from any of them, the friendly nations could find out about each other, and communicate back and forth at least 50 times before the hostile civilization ever even found out about the friendly civilizations, much less divised a way to kill all 3 civilizations in one fell swoop with a device that is untracable and moves at the speed of light. You make WAY to many assumptions that MUST be perfect in order for your theory to have any relevance. | ||
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nebula.
Sweden1431 Posts
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marvellosity
United Kingdom36161 Posts
On February 09 2012 01:56 tsilaicos wrote: i came here for game theory and perhaps some linear programming and i get this? Why so serious? Enjoy the thread for what it is. | ||
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nebula.
Sweden1431 Posts
On February 09 2012 03:07 marvellosity wrote: Why so serious? Enjoy the thread for what it is. sorry i just think the OP has a really weird way of concluding things and that it's mostly made up of nonsense. but i guess it's a matter of taste and i suppose i should take it for what it is | ||
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Sbrubbles
Brazil5776 Posts
I know this does against assumption 3) that RKVs are unstoppable, but unless we reach this science "ceiling", it is probably a false assumption. Of course, this problem is moot until space colonization is discovered possible, otherwise two alien civilization's home planets will have no reason to harm each other. A galactic civilization that would strike first out of pure paranoia would also be paranoid against everything else and would die before investing space technology. | ||
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Kimaker
United States2131 Posts
Nice read. | ||
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