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0 pointsEthanHeilman9y ago0 comments

>What is the motive for an enormously advanced species annihilating humans/earth/our solar system?

Here are some assumptions:

* Information limitations imposed by the speed of light mean that there is very little reaction time between the development and firing of a near speed of light weapon and any defensive measures taken. This favors pre-emptive strikes even against a far less advanced civilization. Consider two civilizations 100lys away. In 80 years the less advanced civlization could develop and launch such a weapon. Maybe they already built it and fired it at you 20yrs ago. All your information is both incomplete and 100 years out of date. Striking as early as possible is the only way to be sure that you preempt such an attack.

* Technological process may be an S-curve which allows less advanced species to quickly catch up and reach destructive parity with more advanced species.

We can't know until we find out and by then it is too late. Caution is called for in these circumstances. We should listen and lurk until we have enough data to make reasonable risk assessments.

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Arizhel9y ago· 1 in thread

This still doesn't explain why a civilization with interstellar travel technology would ever want to attack another civilization in the first place. What is to be gained? If you want resources, that's not a problem if you have the ability to travel between star systems. If you're limited by resources, you're not going to be traveling between (or building weapons that can span) star systems. Once you have interstellar flight, you have the ability to easily harvest everything in your star system, and to travel to neighboring systems to harvest whatever you want (or just synthesize what you want, as the energy requirements for transporting raw materials between star systems would be prohibitive compared to that).

EthanHeilmanOP9y ago

>This still doesn't explain why a civilization with interstellar travel technology would ever want to attack another civilization in the first place. What is to be gained?

Safety, security.

These sorts of arguments are not about access to resources, they are about removing as many existential threats as possible.

Fewer civilizations --> fewer risks of nutjob firing a light speed weapon which makes the star which you live around go nova. Stross writes about a Nicoll-Dyson Beam:

>A Nicoll-Dyson beam is what you get when the entire emitted energy of a star is used to pump a myriad of high powered lasers, all pointing in the same direction. You could use it to boost a light sail with a large payload up to a very significant fraction of light-speed in a short time ... and you could use it to vapourize an Earth-mass planet in under an hour, at a range of hundreds of light years. [0]

A civilization which can build a Nicoll-Dyson Beam should be fairly concerned that others may also have this capability.

[0]: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/04/on-the-g...

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