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Just thinking of the logistics involved. Let's say an alien civilization picks up a 'WOW' signal from Earth, maybe something like Marconi's first trans Atlantic radio signal. Regardless they soon figure out where it's coming from and over time they learn a little more about us. 

Only problem is, Earth signals have taken couple hundred years to get.there. The only way to reach Earth is to use generational (maybe)ships that travel close to speed of light.

The first problem might be to predict how much more advanced we would be when they got here. There may even be a danger of us overtaking them in the technology department and thus they may suffer defeat or we might not even be here upon their arrival. There could even be a chance that we're on our way to conquer their planet.. I suppose they could monitor us just in case our advances mean they better turn around.

Now I'm kind of using this scenario to try and ascertain the futility or the risk involved for interstellar war. I think the wise decision would be to either not go at all or sincerely go in peace.  

Then again, an alien force may already be en route and if so, what kind of logistical problems would they need to overcome to ensure victory? What would the plan be?
If they were a polymorphic species like ants (minus the latter's various limitations), I occasionally slash recreationally wonder that they might only be "intelligent" in an engineering manner. Lacking acquired / inventive philosophy, impelled by only the inherent specialized skills of the various sub-types of their kind which evolution incrementally instilled in them. Members without mutable or unique personal individuality -- few if any creative prescribings and novel ideas outputted by psychological activity. No empathy for outsiders and no speculative thought-simulations about how different another extraterrestrial species might be (or quite devoid of capacity to be concerned and plan-oriented in that regard).

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(Aug 29, 2018 01:11 AM)C C Wrote: [ -> ]If they were a polymorphic species like ants (minus the latter's various limitations), I occasionally slash recreationally wonder that they might only be "intelligent" in an engineering manner. Lacking acquired / inventive philosophy, impelled by only the inherent specialized skills of the various sub-types of their kind which evolution incrementally instilled in them. Members without mutable or unique personal individuality -- few if any creative prescribings and novel ideas outputted by psychological activity. No empathy for outsiders and no speculative thought-simulations about how different another extraterrestrial species might be (or quite devoid of capacity to be concerned and plan-oriented in that regard).

Starship Troopers.vs Bugs.  Big Grin

What I was trying to do is to establish whether or not there is a specific rate for technological growth, a kind of number that is universal for such civilizations. . So if I was to invade Earth based on centuries old data,  set off for even a longer period then I would need to have some idea of what to expect in defence.
(Aug 29, 2018 01:56 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [ -> ]What I was trying to do is to establish whether or not there is a specific rate for technological growth, a kind of number that is universal for such civilizations. . So if I was to invade Earth based on centuries old data,  set off for even a longer period then I would need to have some idea of what to expect in defence.


There's the Kardashev scale, but it doesn't offer an algorithm for ascertaining when its civilization / technological stages would emerge. Any universal principle serving as a rate of measurement for when _X_ development would happen would be impossible due to all the contingent possibilities for space aliens and their heterogeneous mindsets and background environments (the particular unknowns). Despite skepticism about technological singularities or other bursts of acceleration, the very possibility of such also throws a massive monkey-wrench into futurology predictions even when you do have some information about the target species.

If ETs were really similar to us in mindset and technological potential, they wouldn't launch an invasion of living organisms that are difficult to keep alive and ripe for the slaughterhouse, anyway. Let intelligent spacefaring drones and automatons do the dirty work, as well as scouting and updating the situation and devising strategy and making re-design modifications upon arrival. If they're detected by patrol and wiped-out by fringe defenses before that happens, no loss with regard to something shipped off centuries before and forgotten by the home world, anyway.

The classic sci-fi tropes for invasion don't hold up. You don't attack a planet like Earth for water and other resources when any uninhabited solar system with comets and asteroids would do. You don't eat life-forms that don't share your biological make-up (either poisonous or inert). You don't need organic-based slave labor when you're technologically advanced. The daunting challenge of seeking and traveling to a rare, already habitable world for expansion purposes -- across light years and defeating it -- is surely no easier task than simply terraforming a planet.

So if they're similar to us, there doesn't actually seem to be a sensible reason for invasion, aside from an emotional driven paranoia of "get them before they get us". A passion which arguably has to fade under management in order for a civilization to survive and reach an interstellar pinnacle to begin with.

Nomadic "space wildlife" that splinters off from self-replicating machine explorers via mistake or mutation would seem a good prospect for executing something as devoid of purpose as invasion. They would be intelligent in certain narrow domains but otherwise "dumb" or inexplicable in behavior with regard to the rest. Like locusts congregating on a farmland of crops, their only reason is that it's there in their flight path and the only "plan" is to converge on it without concern of consequences. Their decision making may not extend to pondering resource options for reproduction material that is less troublesome to secure; or there may be no group judgments and evaluations at all -- no leader, no government. Just quasi-mindless swarm behavior.

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Z Wrote:The only way to reach Earth is to use generational (maybe)ships that travel close to speed of light.
No reason to suppose aliens can't be (effectively) immortal as a result of either technology or biology or a combination of both. Waiting, sleeping or 'off' for 10,000 years might mean nothing to an alien.
(Aug 30, 2018 01:09 PM)confused2 Wrote: [ -> ]
Z Wrote:The only way to reach Earth is to use generational (maybe)ships that travel close to speed of light.
No reason to suppose aliens can't be (effectively) immortal as a result of either technology or biology or a combination of both. Waiting, sleeping or 'off' for 10,000 years might mean nothing to an alien.

Well if I was immortal then I wouldn't really care too much about invading anybody but 10 thousand years is a long time and who knows, your foe might have a way to end that immortality by then. That's what I mean, how fast would our technology grow in 10000 years. There's no way of telling...huge risk for man or machine. Hell at the 5000 year mark we may be knocking at their ship's door.
(Aug 28, 2018 11:24 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [ -> ]Just thinking of the logistics involved. Let's say an alien civilization picks up a 'WOW' signal from Earth, maybe something like Marconi's first trans Atlantic radio signal. Regardless they soon figure out where it's coming from and over time they learn a little more about us. 

Only problem is, Earth signals have taken couple hundred years to get.there. The only way to reach Earth is to use generational (maybe)ships that travel close to speed of light.

The first problem might be to predict how much more advanced we would be when they got here. There may even be a danger of us overtaking them in the technology department and thus they may suffer defeat or we might not even be here upon their arrival. There could even be a chance that we're on our way to conquer their planet.. I suppose they could monitor us just in case our advances mean they better turn around.

Now I'm kind of using this scenario to try and ascertain the futility or the risk involved for interstellar war. I think the wise decision would be to either not go at all or sincerely go in peace.  

Then again, an alien force may already be en route and if so, what kind of logistical problems would they need to overcome to ensure victory? What would the plan be?

Quote:Now I'm kind of using this scenario to try and ascertain the futility or the risk involved for interstellar war.

i thought you were rasing a philisophical question. however, your question morphs a little.

"futility" is a subjective term.
"risk" is also subjective
the intermesh of these relative terms in an interstallar war is again, something quite different.

the subjectivity nature of the position of premise is important.
is one percieving it from an invaders point
or
a defenders point ?

walking it back to a far more non technical aspect of etherial emotional relationship, it tends toward a comparative nature of moral imperative.

is it better for the species to survive ?
is it better for the individual to survive ?


advanced species...
if a species were adequetely advanced they may not need to subjegate the species at all.
they may be capable of simply implanting thoughts and memorys to alter outcomes to a desired effect.
this would negate any war concept by its inception.
morally in a subjective human aspect this would be deemed an invasive process.
yet.. comparibly on a moral equity level to current human morality, this would be a peaceful event that does not cause war.

so... you are left with a question of the nature of the concept of "what is an interstallar war to a species that needs to be at war" ?
This question is more so a human question of self as a process of projecting the old model of human intellect into a modern world of old world morality.

this could be defined as an infection no different to a mental disease.

imagine for a moment that the cure is peace.
then what ?
(Aug 31, 2018 02:43 PM)RainbowUnicorn Wrote: [ -> ][...] advanced species... if a species were adequetely advanced they may not need to subjegate the species at all. [...]


Yes, that's why the whole idea of interstellar invasion seems like an urge that would have to fall out of either a species that was intelligent only in terms of engineering, or was a "herd" of nomadic, self-replicating machine "space wildlife". Rather than an overall rational civilization or an agency with a high toposophic rating. Any tendency for vast, myopic and emotionally driven, resource-devouring projects spurred by petty political aspirations would have had to finally become extinct just for _X_ to survive and achieve the grade of an interstellar player.

If something like psychohistory were possible, then advanced enough invaders could simulate the future progress of the conquest target via that (especially if a singularity or an archailect was involved). They would know what to expect with regard to humans / transhumans. But by the same context, if they were that advanced there would superficially seem to be no thinking-being's reason for the act in the first place. Again, the classic reasons outputted in science fiction for attacking Earth are ludicrous unless the invaders are philosophically juvenile or incoherent and running purely on instinct (gifted with only engineering skills, evolution-wise).

There's the remote possibility that an archailect "demi-god" might clandestinely manipulate lesser beings to invade as one step in the distant goal of carrying out a long "chess-game" with another technological sub-deity. Part of their "incomprehensible to humans" manner of reasoning. That might also be where an "intelligence" becomes so invincible and post-moral that most everything it pursued was for recreational purposes and satisfaction.

Singularity Levels ... SI:3 - The highest transapients below godhood; this state confers an even higher grade of toposophic intelligence, pretty much incomprehensible and indescribable to anything below this level. For this reason this level is called the Beyond (although the term is also used by baselines and other SI:<1 sophonts to refer to any SI: level of 1 or higher). Generally requires a huge support structure, known for its size as a "moon-node", or else multiple "asteroid nodes". Enables the creation of advanced transapientech devices, basic metric engineering, and crude wormholes


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entertainment colony . . . ... would seem like a possible reason
to set up earth for when they arrive some time in the future
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