Bay 12 Games Forum
Finally... => General Discussion => Topic started by: Scoops Novel on September 15, 2022, 05:48:48 pm
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Let's rule out parallel dimensions while we're at it.
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It doesn't.
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Drill to the c of the f moon
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=180318.0
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You've got to get Nature on board haven't you. We can't be allowed to be the only intelligent species; you need to cook up Dryads. Something to fight for the wildernesses.
That's the missing link in our global development. We keep killing everything. Our technology is balancing itself out, but we keep damaging the ecosystem.
You need something to specifically look after the wilds. Fight for it, repair it, preserve it.
Gene edit something together? Clone a million high IQ naturists and turn up their aggression?
Hmm... something more like maybe giving them 5% above the peak of human intelligence and giving them all the genes associated with a nature connection.
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Mankind wins by implementing and leveraging synergetic management solutions and maximizing shareholder value!
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We can still colonize the galaxy without FTL or even AI. It's much slower without FTL and much harder without AI, but it can be done. I guess that counts as winning, since there is no victory condition defined by the universe.
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We can still colonize the galaxy without FTL or even AI. It's much slower with FTL and much harder without AI, but it can be done. I guess that counts as winning, since there is no victory condition defined by the universe.
Yeah, this.
We're not in a 4X game, there's no "win".
Also these threads keep getting more and more inane.
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I think he wants us to go outside and punch trees and stuff, not really sure how that counts as a win for humanity though.
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We're not in a 4X game, there's no "win".
The problem is there's definitely a lose.
Hence the thread. There are alternatives to being killed by viruses, nukes, social chaos or AI in the dangerous decade (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/dangerous-decade-foreign-policy-world-crisis-richard-haass), and I'd like to hear them.
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Biological/mechanical enhancement to make human brains (Or some sort of organic brain, grown or already born) larger/better.
See, we can't make artificial intelligence, but there's nothing saying we can't manipulate genes and use drugs and nutrition to make already-intelligent things even moreso. And I don't think humanity's gonna be unable to crack that code given enough time.
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Counterquestion: "Does Humanity "win" with AI or FTL?"
Answer: No
Both technologies, at this stage of our evolution, are likely to just exasperate our existing problems rather than solving them.
Humanity must do what it always must do: Roll up its sleeves and clean up their own shit.
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You've got to get Nature on board haven't you.
Yea of course. Can you even imagine this place without Nature?
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We can still colonize the galaxy without FTL or even AI. It's much slower without FTL and much harder without AI, but it can be done. I guess that counts as winning, since there is no victory condition defined by the universe.
Sooorta.
By fundamentally changing our society and even our biology, perhaps. (Yes I'm taking the Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri approach here). I'm making the positive statement that our species, as it stands, will not colonize other star systems. We are not capable of it. We are too entrenched in personal interest to complete such a goal.
If I'm wrong, it would be via some sort of utopian society where all basic needs are met for practically everyone. Something which is materially available TODAY and yet, apparently out of reach. Politics and society are a complex web which, it seems, will drag us down.
Edit: Hence my sometimes-interest in an "abstract actor", such as an AI, to "lay down the law". But that has obvious problems. Even an AI with the goal of utopian colonization would need to kill a great number of people if introduced in the current day.
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I won't dispute that we're going to have to find some powerful incentives for anyone to invest in an interstellar spaceship, but I think we'll find the incentives. Don't forget, that includes things like the next generation of ultra-wealthy trillionaires who may want to own an entire solar system, and who may be willing to spend a stupid amount of money if it means they can do that. That's selfish and still leads to interstellar colonization. Even better, we've got evidence that such people can even recruit a bunch of true believers to be their colonists when they get there. It's also just one example, but I imagine there are others.
Of course, it does mean that most organizations won't have much incentive to lead interstellar colonization efforts. If you can't reach or even really talk with them, you can't control them and they'll no longer be part of you.
I guess we've got to survive until we develop the kind of technology that permits any of that in the first place though, and it's really hard to guess when that'll be. Probably not in the next hundred years.
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Hm, we're looking at the best-of-the-best to operate a generational colony ship, but what about the other end of the spectrum?
The consequences of a Generational Penal Colony Ship are far more interesting...
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Hm, we're looking at the best-of-the-best to operate a generational colony ship, but what about the other end of the spectrum?
The consequences of a Generational Penal Colony Ship are far more interesting...
Which has brief disinterested contact with an inscrutable alien race which declines to communicate. Humanity puts down roots, but one day there are these absurd rumors of mobile biomass cropping up on outlying colonies...
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I think the main rule for interstellar travel should be that if you find a derelict ship filled with eggs, you shouldn't fuck with it instead you should just blow it up.
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Biological/mechanical enhancement to make human brains (Or some sort of organic brain, grown or already born) larger/better.
See, we can't make artificial intelligence, but there's nothing saying we can't manipulate genes and use drugs and nutrition to make already-intelligent things even moreso. And I don't think humanity's gonna be unable to crack that code given enough time.
Yeah.
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Biological/mechanical enhancement to make human brains (Or some sort of organic brain, grown or already born) larger/better.
See, we can't make artificial intelligence, but there's nothing saying we can't manipulate genes and use drugs and nutrition to make already-intelligent things even moreso. And I don't think humanity's gonna be unable to crack that code given enough time.
Yeah.
Has to be done very secretly and rarely lest we all be fucked in the ass.
Edit: Hence my sometimes-interest in an "abstract actor", such as an AI, to "lay down the law".
Yeah, if we don't have some outside oversight we are going to burn down this jungle.
AI's too risky; IMO a gene-edited genius is too limited; you kind of have to get lucky with aliens honestly.
Maybe I shouldn't have ruled out alternate dimensions. Or maybe you do need FTL, just with some kind of planetary shielding against it.
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Has to be done very secretly and rarely lest we all be fucked in the ass.
Nah, go full transhumanist.
Maybe I shouldn't have ruled out alternate dimensions. Or maybe you do need FTL, just with some kind of planetary shielding against it.
FTL is, by all accounts, not possible at all. If you're talking about like, a sci-fi worldbuild then fair, but when making predictions about the future, bringing up FTL is kinda inane.
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Has to be done very secretly and rarely lest we all be fucked in the ass.
Nah, go full transhumanist.
You can't have widespread gene-editing without war.
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Pugs and tulips disagree.
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Has to be done very secretly and rarely lest we all be fucked in the ass.
Nah, go full transhumanist.
You can't have widespread gene-editing without war.
Unrest, sure. War, no. There will be pushback from the right wing. The solution is to ignore their whining and "concerns".
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FTL is, by all accounts, not possible at all. If you're talking about like, a sci-fi worldbuild then fair, but when making predictions about the future, bringing up FTL is kinda inane.
Well, our current ideas involve going FTL by effectively warping the universe in some way to not go FTL within our frame of reference, but FTL in someone else's. Wormholes, for example, are just shortcuts through space-time, and the Alcubierre drive warps space-time so that the object inside the bubble is stationary, but to those outside it the ship's moving at FTL speeds.
Obviously both of these fall at the big hurdle of "We don't have anything that lets us do this" but still, we're well aware of the universe's limitations. Also the Alcubierre drive picks up any dust and radiation while it's moving and releases them once the bubble collapses, so anything in front of, behind, or in the general vicinity of the ship (including the ship) gets obliterated.
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FTL is, by all accounts, not possible at all. If you're talking about like, a sci-fi worldbuild then fair, but when making predictions about the future, bringing up FTL is kinda inane.
Well, our current ideas involve going FTL by effectively warping the universe in some way to not go FTL within our frame of reference, but FTL in someone else's. Wormholes, for example, are just shortcuts through space-time, and the Alcubierre drive warps space-time so that the object inside the bubble is stationary, but to those outside it the ship's moving at FTL speeds.
Obviously both of these fall at the big hurdle of "We don't have anything that lets us do this" but still, we're well aware of the universe's limitations. Also the Alcubierre drive picks up any dust and radiation while it's moving and releases them once the bubble collapses, so anything in front of, behind, or in the general vicinity of the ship (including the ship) gets obliterated.
The Alcubierrie drive requires negative mass. We do not know how to produce negative mass. Much less in the Jupiter-sized amounts one would require. Wormholes have similar issues.
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We can still colonize the galaxy without FTL or even AI. It's much slower without FTL and much harder without AI, but it can be done. I guess that counts as winning, since there is no victory condition defined by the universe.
Imagine if there was. Some jerk in a faraway galaxy would win and then the rest of us could no longer do anything except for viewing the highscore list.
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It's worth mentioning that we also have no evidence that wormholes exist. Actually, I keep meaning to look this up, but I suspect that wormholes could lead to causality violations anyway, so in all likelihood they aren't possible despite the math theoretically working out for them.
Maybe I shouldn't have ruled out alternate dimensions. Or maybe you do need FTL, just with some kind of planetary shielding against it.
I'm not sure why you mention planetary shielding here, since... the planets aren't the things going faster than light. Unless you mean to defend against things like relativistic kill weapons launched at planets from deep space? But the thing there is that we have no idea what the energy levels of an FTL object would be since they're impossible under known physics, so for all we know an FTL impact may not even be that bad.
Worse, you don't need FTL to make civilization ending relativistic energy impactors. You just need to speed a big object up to 99% of the speed of light somehow and your target effectively can't defend against it. How to do that is left as an exercise to the reader, but it's at least possible under known physics.
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Has to be done very secretly and rarely lest we all be fucked in the ass.
Nah, go full transhumanist.
You can't have widespread gene-editing without war.
Unrest, sure. War, no. There will be pushback from the right wing. The solution is to ignore their whining and "concerns".
Locked in class systems? The question if you and your descendants will even be considered human if it's pushed far enough? War.
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Has to be done very secretly and rarely lest we all be fucked in the ass.
Nah, go full transhumanist.
You can't have widespread gene-editing without war.
Unrest, sure. War, no. There will be pushback from the right wing. The solution is to ignore their whining and "concerns".
You mean the left wing.
The right wing LOVES to get their chosen elite gene-edited, while lording their increased intelligence, lifespan, and health over the rest of us.
Ironically, it would be the Left Wing that would mobilize the masses to oppose that. Then use it mostly for their elite. Elites suck.
Has to be done very secretly and rarely lest we all be fucked in the ass.
Nah, go full transhumanist.
You can't have widespread gene-editing without war.
Unrest, sure. War, no. There will be pushback from the right wing. The solution is to ignore their whining and "concerns".
Locked in class systems? The question if you and your descendants will even be considered human if it's pushed far enough? War.
I've always preferred Bashir to Khan, myself.
The rogue-like Gearhead 1 (https://github.com/jwvhewitt/gearhead-1/releases) has fairly interesting ideas about genetic engineering.
Synopsis: It doesn't end well.
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Has to be done very secretly and rarely lest we all be fucked in the ass.
Nah, go full transhumanist.
You can't have widespread gene-editing without war.
Unrest, sure. War, no. There will be pushback from the right wing. The solution is to ignore their whining and "concerns".
Locked in class systems? The question if you and your descendants will even be considered human if it's pushed far enough? War.
This will not happen if gene-editing is accessible to everyone.
Has to be done very secretly and rarely lest we all be fucked in the ass.
Nah, go full transhumanist.
You can't have widespread gene-editing without war.
Unrest, sure. War, no. There will be pushback from the right wing. The solution is to ignore their whining and "concerns".
You mean the left wing.
The right wing LOVES to get their chosen elite gene-edited, while lording their increased intelligence, lifespan, and health over the rest of us.
Ironically, it would be the Left Wing that would mobilize the masses to oppose that. Then use it mostly for their elite. Elites suck.
"Elites suck", says the capitalism-supporter.
The solution to that is to simply make the technology accessible to literally everyone. The human body is an outdated and fragile piece of machinery. Only by abandoning it can humanity survive. The rich who try to make themselves superhuman must be countered by making everyone superhuman. If they try to stop that, then indeed it is war time. And I am fine with that. Long overdue anyways...
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Unrealistic to think it would be. We have a class system in the first place because people like having systemic advantages, and genes are that.
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I think there's a couple of issues with the keep it secret, keep it safe line of thought to gene editing. If this stuff is possible, it seems inevitable, and not just because some rich fucks want to enshrine a permanent caste system. Eventually people will gene edit their children even with the best of intentions and then the cat will be out of the bag. Even if you decide to kill everyone that does it, it won't be easy to do so since, well, the elites of society are the elites for a reason, and they already break laws all the time for all sorts of shit, they'll absolutely uplift their children if possible. Secondly the only people who are going to have the means and motive to keep gene editing secret are... going to be rich fucks who want to enshrine a permanent caste system. Not to mention that currently human society is too fractured to create rules stopping things from happening. What if, say, the EU makes laws restricting the creation of genetic supermen, that's all well and good for the EU, but then the elites of China and America go ahead and enhance themselves? Now you still have the problem of enhanced elites, but the side that at least is somewhat interested in equality is at a disadvantage. A hypothetical future society that can draw together to the point where they can totally stop elites from doing shady things is honestly a society that's so far more egalitarian and unified then our own that it probably can realistically uplift everyone and so should anyway.
Ultimately, I'm pessimistic about the future, and think that if it is possible to create genetic supermen, it will end up enshrining a caste of elites that lord it over everyone else. But I'd agree that the only way to prevent this from happening is to create a society where everyone can be uplifted. It even flips the calculus of relative advantages that parts of society have over each other, if the EU uplifts everyone, and china and america only uplift the elites, the EU will be way better off and in the long term should out compete the non egalitarian societies
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Unrealistic to think it would be. We have a class system in the first place because people like having systemic advantages, and genes are that.
I am a firm believer in democratic socialism. Also I feel taking the risk is better than the alternative of being stuck with inferior "natural" bodies.
Also yeah, what Criptfiend said. Once the tech for it is developed, if it is kept secret, all that will accomplish is empowering the rich with no counterplay, so to say. "Playing it safe" is a bad idea with such things and generally backfires.
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If everyone gets it; it's still a fucking doozy. You'll end up with lots of smart people who also have genetically scrambled brains, which to me does not sound like a recipe for social stability. So many ways for it to go horribly wrong.
It's one of those things where we have to see if the future manages to knock that ball out of play.
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If everyone gets it; it's still a fucking doozy. You'll end up with lots of smart people who also have genetically scrambled brains, which to me does not sound like a recipe for social stability. So many ways for it to go horribly wrong.
It's one of those things where we have to see if the future manages to knock that ball out of play.
Well no shit there will be societal upheaval. That comes with every major change. I'm fine with it, acceptable losses, bring it on.
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"Acceptable losses" isn't the way the world works anymore. This is what every prepper gets wrong. In reality, Mad Max ends with a virus released by some barbaric idiot who nevertheless respects that concept.
The world is perfectly suited to spiral into fuck all if you shake it hard enough these days.
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"Acceptable losses" isn't the way the world works anymore. This is what every prepper gets wrong. In reality, Mad Max ends with a virus released by some barbaric idiot who nevertheless respects that concept.
The world is perfectly suited to spiral into fuck-all if you shake it hard enough these days.
Meh. I disagree. Society is quite resilient.
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Eh, dunno about "resilient", it's certainly prone to major problems, but I think that it's not gonna completely collapse easily outside of something like major nuclear/biological/chemical warfare, which doesn't seem very likely.
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Add in gene editing and those odds go wayyyyy up.
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Eh, dunno about "resilient", it's certainly prone to major problems, but I think that it's not gonna completely collapse easily outside of something like major nuclear/biological/chemical warfare, which doesn't seem very likely.
Add in gene editing and those odds go wayyyyy up.
Of course, but do I look like I am afraid of taking risks? :P
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Answer to the original poster: like Boatmurdered did.
One way to achieve anything like a win is to go out in such in a legendary display of stupidity and heroism that our history becomes memetic amongst the Human Planet's player base.
That, or survive for so long and spread so far across the universe that even their computers cannot bear us anymore.
I figure that's got to be quite an achievement in and of itself.
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You'd think we've had enough examples by now re: why releasing arbitrary changes to organisms and ecosystems into the wild with no real controlled-environment testing or forethought is a bad fucking idea.
But yeah, sure, deep and broad alteration of the human genome and phenotype imposed on the general population from above sounds like a great fuckin' plan.
What's been largely overlooked in this thread anyways is that the motive to finally take some eggs out of the pale blue basket is not idealism or desire to discover, it's going to be base greed. Terrestrial material resources are going to continue to decline, which will eventually prompt the development of orbital infrastructure to support resource harvesting elsewhere in the system. Once there's enough orbital lift capacity and need for warm bodies in space things will start to spiral, and once there are genetically stable populations off of Earth the natural tendency to expand will take care of the rest.
The actual problems of living and working in space are mostly understood, if not always solved very efficiently. Even if FTL continues to be a physical impossibility, extension of the human lifespan and the ability to do calculations re: resource consumption and living space makes generation ships viable in the longer run. That said, we've got plenty of time to work on the problem of interstellar travel as long as we manage to avoid any fucky wuckies here on Earth before we have stable offworld populations.
Hence my opposition to stupid shit like widespread unplanned genemodding or handing over control of important systems to AI.
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Hell, we don't need life extension technology. If we work out how to cryogenically preserve people and bring them back with acceptable (To those being frozen, of course) levels of fatalities we can do a solid job.
Heck, do an Interstellar and do that but with loads of embryos and a handful of people.
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"Stable offworld populations" represents a new level of poverty. No one will ever want to spend their life off Earth without terraforming, and that's a 1000's years process.
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Space habitats are probably a more realistic option. You can build them from resources mined from asteroids, use spin gravity, and there's no need to terraform a planet that may not have enough gravity to maintain long term health.
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I never said it should be uncontrolled.
"Stable offworld populations" represents a new level of poverty. No one will ever want to spend their life off Earth without terraforming, and that's a 1000's years process.
You underestimate the amount of humans who are crazy enough to do exactly that.
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You know you could live in a little pod city while the terraforming process is happening.
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You know you could live in a little pod city while the terraforming process is happening.
This too. By necessity, an extraplanetary base won't be as cramped as current space installations, to prevent the crew from going insane.
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The idea behind this thread looks like a tower of incorrect assumptions stacked on top of each other.
The main problem of humanity is not a lack of AI (already achieved to a certain degree), and it certainly isn't a lack of FTL travel. The main problem is that there are strong incentives for individuals to do things that are bad for the collective.
Compare it with your own body cells. All of them act very strictly in the best interest of the whole organism (you). If some of them no longer do, that's called cancer and it will kill you. Now let's not be overly cynical. Most people act for the benefit of the group most of the time (call it group pressure, social norms, law and order or altruism - the result is the same). But not everybody and not always, of course. And it is difficult to do the right thing even if you try your best, because modern life got so complicated. If we want to get ahead (and "win", however you'd define it), this is the core problem we need to solve. The number one priority. If we manage to coexist for another 10.000 years without killing each other, we could make a technological leap beyond imagination.
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"Stable offworld populations" represents a new level of poverty. No one will ever want to spend their life off Earth without terraforming, and that's a 1000's years process.
You assume they'll have a choice.
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"Solar suicide bombers" is what everybody wants to hear in their defence meetings. Nah man, ain't happening.
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Regular bombs will be just as effective in space as they are on Earth, so no need for fancy space bombs.
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"Solar suicide bombers" is what everybody wants to hear in their defence meetings. Nah man, ain't happening.
It's a catchy phrase for some sci-fi.
"Solar suicide bombers"
It could mean so many different things!