Mastodawn

Charlie Stross Nov 1

Random Fermi Paradox solution of the day:

Nobody goes into space and colonizes the galaxy because only Moon Nazis want to do that, and after experiencing a few dozen genocides all sapient species learn the safest thing to do when you see a Moon Nazi is to murder them immediately, it's the only way to avoid the genocides.

Steve Leach Nov 1

@cstross Okay - what about a group that takes as given that neither they nor their descendants will be alive aim to establish a foundation/group/club/whatever that can wants to *eventually* build an ark to reach Proxima Centauri at it's closest approach in about 26,000 years.

The ideals, goals, ambition, institutional methods established by the "tree planting" generations just pitching designs and funding research, etc.

Presumably non-nazis.

Basically Long Now foundation + Centauri Dreams.

@stevenaleach You're describing a goal we only have—at best—two social structures capable of achieving: a religion, or a royal family. Both of these have undesirable failure modes. (Most human social structures disintegrate or lose track of their purpose over roughly the same duration as a human life expectancy.)

Steve Leach Nov 1

@cstross Yes! And I doubt it could be solved but it's fun to think about. Say a group wants to build a plasma sail vessel -- solar wind speed, so over 4k years to A.C now, shorter leaving at some point closer to A.C's closest approach. For slow enough of a ship, there's some ideal departure date many thousands of years from now to minimize the trip time. And that's an epoch cool timescale to think about that puts the epoch scale of getting to the nearest star into perspective.

Steve Leach Nov 1

@cstross And it turns the story into two engineering problems, both epoch: engineering multi-thousand year institutions based on an idea and that institution having the goal of building some mega-structure that has to be self-contained and survive a similar timescale and support a bottle civilization over a similar number of generations rivaling the time since the dawn of agriculture for both phases.

See - "moon nazis" wouldn't be into any of that or contribute thinking to it. Maybe.. ?

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫Nov 1

@stevenaleach @cstross
But nobody can express a practical and realistic reason why we should try to get to Proxima Centauri. Any motivation to try to do it is profoundly irrational, so although you might initially avoid actual Moon nazis, you still have to put enormous resources in the hands of people you *can't trust* to act in the interests of humanity, and hold it together for 1000s of years without Moon nazis or The Lunar Inquisition taking over at any future point.

Urban Hermit Nov 2

@stevenaleach @cstross
More importantly, if your civilization could engineer that feat of scope, energy transmission, and containment, why would anyone even get off the ship at the destination?

Or more importantly, why leave your solar system, or world at all if you have that kind of containment.

Fish Id Wardrobe ⁂Nov 1

@cstross @stevenaleach true for humans. insects, maybe?

@cstross
that's not quite true. It's true of literate societies.

Whether an illiterate society can go to the stars is left as an exercise to the reader ;)
@stevenaleach

MidgePhoto Nov 1

@cstross @stevenaleach
Universities hang around. Building a department which can sustain an area of study through many generations of graduate students, PhDs and professorships wouldn't be trivial.

#Anathem doesn't seem ridiculous on that.

The Long Range Foundation is even better named for this than the Long Now, albeit the latter is real.

Major Denis Bloodnok Nov 2

@Photo55 @cstross @stevenaleach Even if we count from the Great Schism, the Papacy is a longer-lasting institution than any university, I think?

The Nine Houses made it to ten thousand years but it probably helps if God's still around and can send you a note if you're doing it wrong. :-)

MidgePhoto Nov 2

Well, currently the Curia etc is an example of religious nature*, but perhaps not quite so continuous as people regard it, nor so devoted to a single aim, other than power, as might be needed to move anything between stars.

But yes, an old institution.

* I.E. one of the two structural approaches given above as persisting for long periods.
Vid Sup.

Major Denis Bloodnok Nov 2

@Photo55 Mmm, I'm just trying to think of anything older (and at least arguably seeking a similar goal to when it started).

Skjeggtroll Nov 1

@cstross @stevenaleach

One could argue that fandom represents a third. (Of course, that just means we'll be stuck because we won't be able to agree on what to name the starship -- 'Enterprise', 'Millenium Falcon', 'Liberator' ...)

Steve Leach Nov 1

@skjeggtroll @cstross Aren't religions just a specific type of fandom?

https://xkcd.com/3123/

Canon

xkcd

Skjeggtroll Nov 2

@stevenaleach @cstross

Fair enough, really. 😁