EPTWhy is the universe so full of stars but so silent?
The alien dont want to give us scout information.
Game theory, applied to aliens - Page 9
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Gyro_SC2
Canada540 Posts
Why is the universe so full of stars but so silent? The alien dont want to give us scout information. | ||
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Eknoid4
United States902 Posts
If there is some form of alien culture that discovers us, no human is mentally equipped or qualified to determine what they would do. Humans aren't even capable of predicting what the human race would do. | ||
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Tektos
Australia1321 Posts
On January 06 2012 10:28 Flamingo777 wrote: Because in a Zero Sum Game, one party wins, and the other must lose! It isn't a zero sum game though.... Each could benefit from the other, two winners. | ||
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Krikkitone
United States1451 Posts
If a civilization stays silent, then you don't get a second strike against it.... Unless 1. a civilization sends the reply that they have RKVs 'ready to fire' 2. a civilization is spread out (Earth gets destroyed, but various comm systems give the data on where the RKV came from to colonies in Barnard's Star, Alpha centauri, Epsilon Eridani, etc.) The North Korean empire would have the problem that their colonies might turn on each other (maintaining complete radio silence) | ||
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marconi
Croatia220 Posts
End of discussion. | ||
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Maenander
Germany4927 Posts
On January 06 2012 10:52 Simberto wrote: Also, we should stop polluting debates on concepts with technobabble. Quite realistically, i don't think anyone in this thread has any idea how hard or not hard it would be to fire missiles to other solar systems, or to intercept those. But for the general discussion, this information is not actually needed. This is a purely theoretical argument trying to analyse the results of a certain basic principles. If those are not correct, the whole analysis is probably not correct, but that does not mean one can not talk about it regardless, one just needs to realise that it not necessarily reflects reality. But that takes all the fun out of it! The concept of RKVs is at least rooted in physical reality. I prefer that subject over a purely theoretical scenario with more or less rational "players". | ||
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turdburgler
England6749 Posts
On January 06 2012 09:26 Ender985 wrote: Interesting read. If a kill-first-ask-later policy would be the best course of action for any individual/society/alien species, life on Earth would already have become extinct, after a ferocius fight between the first few self-replicating RNAs that came to be. Since the social behavior is clearly a better alternative for survival in general, I think we can pretty much expect the same outcome in a galactic scale. The only relevant difference between Earth and the Universe is the information speed limit, which for the Universe distances is admittedly quite low. I can see two possible scenarios regarding this: either there is a way to circunvent it, or there isn't. If there is a way to supraluminic communication, then the Universe case becomes the same as the Earth case, and we'll live in a mix of collaboration and agression between species, as we do now between ourselves,. But not on a death-on-first-contact Universe. If there is no way around the speed of light, then any space-faring race will inherently become fragmented and anarchic, spreading out to distant planets or systems that will inevitably become fully independent, since there will be no phisical way to control all society from any central government. Which would lead to a completely RKV-proof habitat, making the death-on-first-contact way simply not plausible. Either way, I think we should worry much more about our own politicians than any lightspeed asteroids being sent our way. kill all is the best (at the most basic level) strat in a feral world. you protect your babies and kill everything else, look at any animal. the only time you dont fight is when you judge them to be stronger than you or that the fight will make you too weak for further fights, again look at any animal, its all about presenting strength. tribal systems built up around extended families which were still worth defending and civ's grew up around that. even today power blocks exist between similar peoples and you care more about the survival of your son than a random kid. it depends on whether resources are contested or not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_(game) required reading for anyone who doesnt know what game theory is | ||
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pyrogenetix
China5098 Posts
However once a civilization reaches MAD arms tech, they wouldn't have that long of a window of time to launch anything into space before one day their politics screws up and they annihilate their own planet. Just like Einstein said: "I don't know what weapons we would use for World War 3, but World War 4 we would be using sticks and stones." | ||
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Flamingo777
United States1190 Posts
On January 06 2012 11:41 Tektos wrote: It isn't a zero sum game though.... Each could benefit from the other, two winners. My bad on that assumption. | ||
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Xiphos
Canada7507 Posts
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dacthehork
United States2000 Posts
Theory destruction: Planets dont have to be the only way habitate, spaceships harvesting needed supplies from planets is much more likely for advanced "aliens", meaning you cant just destroy every planet in their system to assure their destruction. 1. Why are aliens "isolated" to planets? 2. I dont think it would be as hard to detect as you imagine give possible technologies 3. "It's easy to launch with currently technology". No, it's not. also a "blackbody?" 4. The delay time in launching and landing is ridiculous It's just really bad logic and thinking, seems like someone took a game theory course and thought up all of htis without thinking much. An intelligent alien species is INCOMPREHENSIBLE, can you imagine humanity (assuming we survive) in 40,000 years? Life will be completely different, and even living on a planet maybe something of the past, even having a single physical location might not be something that exists, it could be AI's stored on a mainframe and drone bodies everywhere etc. Also the idea such an advanced civiilzation would not be dispersed EVERYWHERE is ridiculous. The much more likely scenario is one civilization is infinitely more advanced than the other and doesn't really care or easily in ANY way they choose destroy the others. That or there are just so many questions and space there really is no reason to mess with the other or a form of MAD type scenario. | ||
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Tor
Canada231 Posts
On January 06 2012 12:08 turdburgler wrote: kill all is the best (at the most basic level) strat in a feral world. you protect your babies and kill everything else, look at any animal. the only time you dont fight is when you judge them to be stronger than you or that the fight will make you too weak for further fights, again look at any animal, its all about presenting strength. tribal systems built up around extended families which were still worth defending and civ's grew up around that. even today power blocks exist between similar peoples and you care more about the survival of your son than a random kid. it depends on whether resources are contested or not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_(game) required reading for anyone who doesnt know what game theory is You might want to consider the real world before you start making claims that kill all is the best strategy... there aren't many animals that run around murdering everything in their sights... neither humans nor any other animal I can think of actually attacks things without a reason (self defence or food), the risk of injury typically deters most animals from getting into fights (with maybe the exception of the wolverine). Probably the biggest detractor from kill all is the many examples of symbiotic relationships in the wild, evidence that the "best" strategy is actually whatever keeps you alive, not some preconcieved notion that everything can hurt you. edited for clarity | ||
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sviatoslavrichter
United States164 Posts
On January 06 2012 12:35 dacthehork wrote: This is some really bad logic. Theory destruction: Planets dont have to be the only way habitate, spaceships harvesting needed supplies from planets is much more likely for advanced "aliens", meaning you cant just destroy every planet in their system to assure their destruction. 1. Why are aliens "isolated" to planets? 2. I dont think it would be as hard to detect as you imagine give possible technologies 3. "It's easy to launch with currently technology". No, it's not. also a "blackbody?" 4. The delay time in launching and landing is ridiculous It's just really bad logic and thinking, seems like someone took a game theory course and thought up all of htis without thinking much. An intelligent alien species is INCOMPREHENSIBLE, can you imagine humanity (assuming we survive) in 40,000 years? Life will be completely different, and even living on a planet maybe something of the past, even having a single physical location might not be something that exists, it could be AI's stored on a mainframe and drone bodies everywhere etc. Also the idea such an advanced civiilzation would not be dispersed EVERYWHERE is ridiculous. The much more likely scenario is one civilization is infinitely more advanced than the other and doesn't really care or easily in ANY way they choose destroy the others. That or there are just so many questions and space there really is no reason to mess with the other or a form of MAD type scenario. Maybe the proper response then is to not aim at their planets, but aim at the stars instead? Destroy all their sources of energy production? | ||
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Tektos
Australia1321 Posts
On January 06 2012 12:50 sviatoslavrichter wrote: Maybe the proper response then is to not aim at their planets, but aim at the stars instead? Destroy all their sources of energy production? So instead of an RKV we should make a giant hose to extinguish their sun? I agree. | ||
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Poyo
Canada790 Posts
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Cascade
Australia5405 Posts
On January 06 2012 12:08 turdburgler wrote: kill all is the best (at the most basic level) strat in a feral world. you protect your babies and kill everything else, look at any animal. the only time you dont fight is when you judge them to be stronger than you or that the fight will make you too weak for further fights, again look at any animal, its all about presenting strength. tribal systems built up around extended families which were still worth defending and civ's grew up around that. even today power blocks exist between similar peoples and you care more about the survival of your son than a random kid. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_(game) required reading for anyone who doesnt know what game theory is The difference in the OPs scenario (everyone can insta-gib other civilizations) is that communication is slow. You dont have the information to judge if someone is stronger etc, and everyone are equally strong anyways, in the sense that they can one-shot you whenever they like. I think his scenario can be compared to a huge black area with a lot of ppl, everyone armed with instant-kill guns. You will not survive long if you try to engage in discussion with people you bump into, rather than shot first. So the scenario is different than "real world" were there are stronger individuals that can defend or retaliate to an attack from a weaker individual. to OP: The idea is a funny thought experiment, and I agree that if interstellar war works the way you describe (essentially insta-gib on first contact), evolution will favour kill-first behaviour. why 50% of light speed though? If the civilization is very advanced, I think it is safe to assume that they can shoot at 100% light speed.  Just take a big asteroid or a chunk of a big planet or whatever, transform 1% into a laser beam and you will hit before the target can see anything.You assume that there is no way for another civilization to defend themselves from this kind of attacks, on the basis that they wont see it coming. This is not true. The problem the killer has is that the information they have about their target is old (depending on distance, but from a few years for neighbouring stars to billions of years on the other side of the universe), and they wont hit until later in the future. ( in the rest-frame of the killer for example). You can calculate the orbit of the planet if you are good at gravity calculations, sure. But a planet can regularly manually change it's orbit randomly, for example by shooting out some ray in some direction, giving recoil. If the killer just calculates the orbit assuming the planet stays as it is, it will miss. This would completely change the picture of accurate instant kill snipes, into a picture of wild shooting and crossed fingers. What a killer CAN do however, is to shoot a killing device, that takes up information about the target as it moves, and uses this information to adjust trajectory. This would return the picture the one originally described in the OP. BUT: then the first civilization can do the same. This first message doesn't have to be just a "hi". It can be a killing device programmed to identify other civilizations, and kill them if they find them a threat. Then the original guys will get a report (a million years later) that the probe found this civilization and didn't trust it, so it killed it. In this way, the optimal strategy seems to be to send out a lot of almost-speed-of light probes in all direction, programmed to identify and kill threats, or if they find an empty system, to stop there, multiply, and send out 1000 new identical probes at almost speed of light. Maybe set up a warning beacon to warn the "home planet", if there even is such a planet, in case it sees a threat. Then the picture would be that of civilizations expanding like spheres in space at close to speed of light, killing (absorbing, multiplying, consuming, whatever) everything it passes. I can see the queen of blades doing this. The winning civilizations would be the one that expands the fastest, and that can beat other probes when they encounter them. If there is such a thing as a home-planet, they will sit in the centre and get more and more delayed reports from the front as it moves out. until one day you will get a message from a beacon 25 000 light years away: "unidentified probe spotted. moving at 0.9999c. Activate defensive measures." then 3 seconds later "ERROR: DEFENCE BREACHED" then silence. Then you know that you have 2.5 more years to live, and that's the end of that civilization. This assumes that there will be no faster-than-light BS, or workarounds like wormholes etc, but that advanced civilizations will get very close to the limit of light speed in terms of warfare. Then what would the winning strategy be? What if a drone from a successful civilization came to earth? How will the drone do to best make sure that we don't kill them, and to as soon as possible send out new drones, and maximise defence from other incoming drones? Answer is: I have no idea. But I doubt that we will enjoy it. | ||
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Whyzguy
Canada263 Posts
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Zealotdriver
United States1557 Posts
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jacosajh
2919 Posts
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NerZhuL
United States57 Posts
On January 06 2012 12:52 Tektos wrote: So you're saying if I'm walking down the street late at night and I see a stranger I should shoot them in case they are going to shoot me? Imagine if you and the stranger had the ability to kill each other faster than being able to communicate. Infact imagine if everyone on earth had this ability, everyone would start killing each other immediately for their own survival. That is what the op is saying, that communication takes too long compared to just using the RKV (because the wave has to reach and return to the source). | ||
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