I hope you’re right, I’m honestly scared of what a near infinite frontier would mean for a hypothetical capitalist society capable of making it to type 1 let alone type 2.
I firmly reject Dark Forest. Not everyone on earth was an imperialist psychopath, and looking at the vast galaxy and thinking "Oh yeah people are definitely going to throw rocks at us the second they know we exist" is capitalist bullshit. AFAIK pretty much every socialist agrees that we're a lot more likely to run in to other communists out there. And, like, that's no guarantee we'll be friends, or even able to meaningfully communicate, but colonization in space is such a ridiculous pipe dream of imperialist brain poisoning.
If you ever want to make a Game Theorist so mad they pee ask them to explain why people in the Prisoner's Dilemma keep choosing "Trust" at far higher rates than Game Theory predicts they should.
Fair! I'm not a fan of Three Body Problem. The bits about the cultural revolution were interesting because I've never really seen it depicted by a Chinese person, but the whole premise of the story relies on "technology" too absurd to even dignify with the word magic. Like I can suspend a lot of belief, but unfolding protons and etching circuits on them was too much. It'd have been more credible to just say "Yeah the three body aliens are wizards and they're going to fly here on space dragons".
The bits about the cultural revolution were interesting because I’ve never really seen it depicted by a Chinese person
Agreed, that was interesting. I had to switch to an epub because the audiobook version was a bit too sad though.
the whole premise of the story relies on “technology” too absurd to even dignify with the word magic
Yeah, i was a bit dissatisfied with that. My lack of hard science knowledge probably makes it a lot easier to enjoy these sorts of books tbh. Even then, fucking around with protons was far fetched.
Yeah. I've been reading semi-firm to hard sci-fi my whole life, so I can believe in some pretty wild concepts like wormhole traveler or turning gas giants in to fusion torch-ships, but even wormholes can at least exist in the math, albeit not anything like they're described in sci fi. One of the "rules" of scifi, especially hard sci-fi, is you should try to keep the scope of your made up technology limited enough to be comprehensible and believable to the reader. Like bruh, if you can turn individual protons in to space battleships what do you need a planet for? That implies a level of physical mastery over the universe beyond the wildest imaginings of most sci fi. Why not miniaturize your whole civilization in to little proton brains or something? It's just so out there that it opens up too many questions and possibilities.
Like when Herbert did Dune everything ran on the Holtzman effect, and it was responsible for folding space for FTL travel, shields, and anti-grav. And that was pretty much the limits of what it did - Two key conceits that made the story possible. Gundam's thing is Minovsky Particles, which they use for a bunch of stuff including justifying why mechs have to fight at knife-fighting distances in space with beam guns and swords instead of just launching high speed missiles from light seconds away. They use it to justify their compact fusion drives, some beam guns, and a few other things.
But both those cases sorta kinda make some kind of sense. Like yeah whatever space is wacky and everyone has at least heard of wormholes that connect two points in space that are otherwise very distant. And anti-gravity is weird, but Herbert is judicious about what it does - floating flashlights, personal shields that are just fancy bucklers for Errol-Flynn style sword fights, and weird schizo-tech like an anti-gravity cart drawn by oxen to highlight the deliberate technological stasis imposed by the LANSRAAD on their serfs to maintain control. Minovsky Particles mostly just justify having giant robots fighting at close range, and not being able to use guided missiles or precision long-range munitions.
But proton battleships with omniscient perfect knowledge of the entire planet? What does that even mean? What are the limits on that? If you could shrink people down so small they can inhabit a proton somehow, what do you need a wet planet for?
Never mind that "String Theory" is bupkiss that never produces anything...
For "Dark Forest" premises I consider much, much more compelling (One of them sent me in a three day long existential crisis and still gives me the willies) I'd suggest Peter Watt's Blindsight This is the existential crisis one. It is terrifying in a way nothing else I've ever encountered is. The story itself is scary, but the concepts invoke that kind of deep dread you get in the pit of your stomach when you're stuck an in earth quake and know you are totally, utterly powerless in the grip of forces beyond your control. The other series is Alastair Reynold's "Revelation Space". Both of them deal with some really weird transhumans, the Dark Forest (in two very different but equally frightening ways), a lot of weird speculative technologies, and some very memorable characters.
I had a funny memory. I forget what story it was, maybe one of the hitchhiker stories, but the FTL drive worked by blowing the ship up to truly immense proportions, vastly larger than the entire galaxy, moving a minute amount relative to the ship but vast distances relative to the galaxy, then shrinking it back down to something more reasonable. Easily most fun, silly spoofs on FTL I've run in to.
I thinks that’s a really good point. Coming up with a couple at most points of deviation that allow for new technologies.
The premise of the expanse, for example, hyper efficient ship propulsion. It’s not explained how, but this single change allowed for the solar system to be treated as a navigable setting. At least until the alien stuff.
Blindsight was amazing, I really loved that one. It’s not exactly the most sci-fi aspect of it, but I really enjoyed the horror of a human variant that was predatory towards other human variants as an explanation for the vampire myth. Like, imagine being in a cave tending the fire knowing a predator just as human as you could be out there. Shiver inducing.
I’ll check out “revaluation space”, being mentioned alongside “blindsight” is a strong recommendation.
I don’t know where it’s from, sounds almost like something Pratchett would write. I’m fairly certain the Hitchhiker FTL was based off probability.
had this saved for a year and only now read Blindsight. excellent. one of the many ideas it made me realise is that i should meditate more often and step out of my mind a bit more physically
I really really hope so, but the part of my brain that can’t stop thinking about how awesome humanity is at exploring horizons makes me think that maybe even the one of the dumbest possible systems can’t stop us.
where do you find these people? I can’t even find the words to describe it.
I knew some of the anti-Navi types in high school. Full on just coming up with ways to do a space genocide so the “good humans” could win. Independently arriving at 40k logic because they weren’t even nerdy usually.
I was more talking about how the concept of the frontier is a pressure valve for capitalism and space sure has a lot of frontier. It would be really bad if the current status quo could do dystopian sci-fi shit and just use space colonization to let off steam whenever the workers started getting spicy.
Without magic like very easy FTL travel space is just too big for any kind of meaningful capitalism. Your "return on investment" would be maybe getting some rocks back centuries or millenia later. Slowboating significant amounts of resources between star systems is a logistical challenge that I, at least, don't think is achievable under physics as we currently understand it. And admittedly I'm not a physicist, but I at least understand that you need exponentially more reaction mass the closer you get to C.
Like maybe you could send brains running on some kind of extremely durable machine system to other stars with all the stuff they'd need to start some kind of life there, but that'd be hundreds or thousands of years out in the deep black with no energy and no resources at all, getting bombarded with gamma radiation and hard x-rays and god knows what else. Just simple entropy would make surviving with any kind of systems intact a monumental achievement, let alone something that could wake up and still be meaningfully sentient.
Basically - There's no way you'd ever get a return on your investment. You could maybe send yourself to another star system for the promise of a few megaacres of cheap "land", but a lot of things would have to change pretty radically for a capitalist to invest resources in that.
Yeah, you’re right. I still think they’d at some point load up generation ships with serfs, a privileged security caste, and the would be nobility if they think it’s feasible.
It’s more of an existential dread “what if this never ends” “what if it just manages to shamble along until it becomes even slightly feasible”.
Like, mass deportation to a colony wouldn’t get the same blowback of mass murdering workers. If things are bad enough a lot might volunteer.
I probably need to just read less dystopian sci-fi and find something optimistic.
Back when I believed in that shit I dreamed of every person having radical bodily autonomy to the tune of "If you want to become your own interstellar space ship with a radically altered silicon brain capable of slow-boating between stars for the hell of it, you can!". Strong post scarcity, building stellar scale megastructures for fun, seeking out new life and new civilizations to trade media with them. The idea that people's idea of the singularity is mind controlled slaves and torturing their enemies for eternity is abhorrent in a way I don't really have words for.
I don't even understand how your idea of what would happen after creating an arbitrarily powerful boostrapping super-intelligence includes something as banal as a corporation. I just don't. The lack of imagination would be staggering even without the sadism.
I hope you’re right, I’m honestly scared of what a near infinite frontier would mean for a hypothetical capitalist society capable of making it to type 1 let alone type 2.
It means a near infinite border to defend from nickle iron asteroids spun up to a significant fraction of c and flung at their core worlds.
What? We were all thinking it.
Dark forest hours, who up?
I firmly reject Dark Forest. Not everyone on earth was an imperialist psychopath, and looking at the vast galaxy and thinking "Oh yeah people are definitely going to throw rocks at us the second they know we exist" is capitalist bullshit. AFAIK pretty much every socialist agrees that we're a lot more likely to run in to other communists out there. And, like, that's no guarantee we'll be friends, or even able to meaningfully communicate, but colonization in space is such a ridiculous pipe dream of imperialist brain poisoning.
If you ever want to make a Game Theorist so mad they pee ask them to explain why people in the Prisoner's Dilemma keep choosing "Trust" at far higher rates than Game Theory predicts they should.
I totally agree, I was just referencing the book.
I did not know about the game theory thing, going to keep that in my pocket.
Fair! I'm not a fan of Three Body Problem. The bits about the cultural revolution were interesting because I've never really seen it depicted by a Chinese person, but the whole premise of the story relies on "technology" too absurd to even dignify with the word magic. Like I can suspend a lot of belief, but unfolding protons and etching circuits on them was too much. It'd have been more credible to just say "Yeah the three body aliens are wizards and they're going to fly here on space dragons".
Agreed, that was interesting. I had to switch to an epub because the audiobook version was a bit too sad though.
Yeah, i was a bit dissatisfied with that. My lack of hard science knowledge probably makes it a lot easier to enjoy these sorts of books tbh. Even then, fucking around with protons was far fetched.
Yeah. I've been reading semi-firm to hard sci-fi my whole life, so I can believe in some pretty wild concepts like wormhole traveler or turning gas giants in to fusion torch-ships, but even wormholes can at least exist in the math, albeit not anything like they're described in sci fi. One of the "rules" of scifi, especially hard sci-fi, is you should try to keep the scope of your made up technology limited enough to be comprehensible and believable to the reader. Like bruh, if you can turn individual protons in to space battleships what do you need a planet for? That implies a level of physical mastery over the universe beyond the wildest imaginings of most sci fi. Why not miniaturize your whole civilization in to little proton brains or something? It's just so out there that it opens up too many questions and possibilities.
Like when Herbert did Dune everything ran on the Holtzman effect, and it was responsible for folding space for FTL travel, shields, and anti-grav. And that was pretty much the limits of what it did - Two key conceits that made the story possible. Gundam's thing is Minovsky Particles, which they use for a bunch of stuff including justifying why mechs have to fight at knife-fighting distances in space with beam guns and swords instead of just launching high speed missiles from light seconds away. They use it to justify their compact fusion drives, some beam guns, and a few other things.
But both those cases sorta kinda make some kind of sense. Like yeah whatever space is wacky and everyone has at least heard of wormholes that connect two points in space that are otherwise very distant. And anti-gravity is weird, but Herbert is judicious about what it does - floating flashlights, personal shields that are just fancy bucklers for Errol-Flynn style sword fights, and weird schizo-tech like an anti-gravity cart drawn by oxen to highlight the deliberate technological stasis imposed by the LANSRAAD on their serfs to maintain control. Minovsky Particles mostly just justify having giant robots fighting at close range, and not being able to use guided missiles or precision long-range munitions.
But proton battleships with omniscient perfect knowledge of the entire planet? What does that even mean? What are the limits on that? If you could shrink people down so small they can inhabit a proton somehow, what do you need a wet planet for?
Never mind that "String Theory" is bupkiss that never produces anything...
For "Dark Forest" premises I consider much, much more compelling (One of them sent me in a three day long existential crisis and still gives me the willies) I'd suggest Peter Watt's Blindsight This is the existential crisis one. It is terrifying in a way nothing else I've ever encountered is. The story itself is scary, but the concepts invoke that kind of deep dread you get in the pit of your stomach when you're stuck an in earth quake and know you are totally, utterly powerless in the grip of forces beyond your control. The other series is Alastair Reynold's "Revelation Space". Both of them deal with some really weird transhumans, the Dark Forest (in two very different but equally frightening ways), a lot of weird speculative technologies, and some very memorable characters.
I had a funny memory. I forget what story it was, maybe one of the hitchhiker stories, but the FTL drive worked by blowing the ship up to truly immense proportions, vastly larger than the entire galaxy, moving a minute amount relative to the ship but vast distances relative to the galaxy, then shrinking it back down to something more reasonable. Easily most fun, silly spoofs on FTL I've run in to.
I thinks that’s a really good point. Coming up with a couple at most points of deviation that allow for new technologies.
The premise of the expanse, for example, hyper efficient ship propulsion. It’s not explained how, but this single change allowed for the solar system to be treated as a navigable setting. At least until the alien stuff.
Blindsight was amazing, I really loved that one. It’s not exactly the most sci-fi aspect of it, but I really enjoyed the horror of a human variant that was predatory towards other human variants as an explanation for the vampire myth. Like, imagine being in a cave tending the fire knowing a predator just as human as you could be out there. Shiver inducing.
I’ll check out “revaluation space”, being mentioned alongside “blindsight” is a strong recommendation.
I don’t know where it’s from, sounds almost like something Pratchett would write. I’m fairly certain the Hitchhiker FTL was based off probability.
had this saved for a year and only now read Blindsight. excellent. one of the many ideas it made me realise is that i should meditate more often and step out of my mind a bit more physically
:salute
wouldn't worry about that as capitalism is clearly far too stupid and inefficient to get to that point
I really really hope so, but the part of my brain that can’t stop thinking about how awesome humanity is at exploring horizons makes me think that maybe even the one of the dumbest possible systems can’t stop us.
Space is really difficult to explore though it's expensive and any results are delayed massively
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where do you find these people? I can’t even find the words to describe it.
I knew some of the anti-Navi types in high school. Full on just coming up with ways to do a space genocide so the “good humans” could win. Independently arriving at 40k logic because they weren’t even nerdy usually.
I was more talking about how the concept of the frontier is a pressure valve for capitalism and space sure has a lot of frontier. It would be really bad if the current status quo could do dystopian sci-fi shit and just use space colonization to let off steam whenever the workers started getting spicy.
Without magic like very easy FTL travel space is just too big for any kind of meaningful capitalism. Your "return on investment" would be maybe getting some rocks back centuries or millenia later. Slowboating significant amounts of resources between star systems is a logistical challenge that I, at least, don't think is achievable under physics as we currently understand it. And admittedly I'm not a physicist, but I at least understand that you need exponentially more reaction mass the closer you get to C.
Like maybe you could send brains running on some kind of extremely durable machine system to other stars with all the stuff they'd need to start some kind of life there, but that'd be hundreds or thousands of years out in the deep black with no energy and no resources at all, getting bombarded with gamma radiation and hard x-rays and god knows what else. Just simple entropy would make surviving with any kind of systems intact a monumental achievement, let alone something that could wake up and still be meaningfully sentient.
Basically - There's no way you'd ever get a return on your investment. You could maybe send yourself to another star system for the promise of a few megaacres of cheap "land", but a lot of things would have to change pretty radically for a capitalist to invest resources in that.
Yeah, you’re right. I still think they’d at some point load up generation ships with serfs, a privileged security caste, and the would be nobility if they think it’s feasible.
It’s more of an existential dread “what if this never ends” “what if it just manages to shamble along until it becomes even slightly feasible”.
Like, mass deportation to a colony wouldn’t get the same blowback of mass murdering workers. If things are bad enough a lot might volunteer.
I probably need to just read less dystopian sci-fi and find something optimistic.
no that wouldn't provide a fast enough return on capital investment to justify the cost. It could happen under feuadalism but not capitalism
Good point, the tech feudalists are rich but not entirely in control.
Yeah, I feel that.
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Back when I believed in that shit I dreamed of every person having radical bodily autonomy to the tune of "If you want to become your own interstellar space ship with a radically altered silicon brain capable of slow-boating between stars for the hell of it, you can!". Strong post scarcity, building stellar scale megastructures for fun, seeking out new life and new civilizations to trade media with them. The idea that people's idea of the singularity is mind controlled slaves and torturing their enemies for eternity is abhorrent in a way I don't really have words for.
I don't even understand how your idea of what would happen after creating an arbitrarily powerful boostrapping super-intelligence includes something as banal as a corporation. I just don't. The lack of imagination would be staggering even without the sadism.