The Fermi Paradox: The Cronus Scenarios
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- Опубликовано: 6 апр 2024
- We often worry that the reason we hear nothing in our search for extraterrestrial intelligence is that travel to other stars is just too hard, but what if a civilization decides it’s just too dangerous to allow?
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The Fermi Paradox: The Cronus Scenarios
Episode 441; April 7, 2024
Produced, Written & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur
Editors: Briana Brownell
Graphics:
Jeremy Jozwik
Legiontech Studios
Mark O'Bannon
YD Visual
Udo Schroeter
Music Courtesy of
Epidemic Sound epidemicsound.com/creator
Stellardrone, "Red Giant", "Ultra Deep Field"
Sergey Cheremisinov, "Labyrinth", "Forgotten Stars" 
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The first Fermi paradox solution I’ve heard in a long time that I didn’t already know about.
Well he did say that he just came up with it, albeit with a lot of inspiration from others.
In my anecdotal experience you get maybe one new FP solution a year these days that actually brings something new to the game, and even then, like today, or it's companion episode Hermit SHoplifter and Interdiction 2.0 (next month) its more of re-look at an aspect folks have discussed before with some new twists or insights. Sort of like Hanson's Grabby Aliens a couple years back, they did some actual modeling on the classic Hart Conjecture concept and the result was on the surprisingly huge side for civilization size.
That's because all Fermi Paradox solutions are made up. Fiction. Anyone can come up with any solution. Here's mine: the aliens don't like orange juice.
@@isaacarthurSFIA fascinating insight!
It seems like a subset of the Berserker or the Dark Forest Hypothesis or the to me, and the Dark Forest Hypothesis itself is pretty much a subset of the idea behind the Berserker Hypothesis.
You forgot the biggest one "they came from the sea" this is exactly how after a long time, it's disgruntled children comes home to exact vengeance.
feels like im being spotted with this 👽🦊
Just ask Great Britain how it feels about its American colonies.
The SEA peoples
I think a good "burn the boats" example historically would be ancient China where the Hongxi Emperor banned maritime activities and trade. The Japanese also banned contact with the outside for a significant period as well.
The best solution to the Fermi Paradox that I've heard is 'The rare fire hypothesis.' Turns out it's very rare for a planet to have an atmosphere suitable for sustaining fire. Without fire we would never have been able to develop our modern technology, much less achieve spaceflight. Thus the universe may be teeming with intelligent life which is unable to develop the kinds of industrial technology required to become a technological species able to escape their world's gravity. Wouldn't matter how intelligent they were in other ways, they could be the greatest thinkers and philosophers in the universe, but without fire, they would be forever trapped on their own world.
The best solution is to combine all possible factors into a line of filters. But thanks for mentioning it, one more I know about now. Though it overlaps with ideas like squids in ocean worlds.
@@NoidoDev Yes, I agree. When you stack up one extremely difficult & improbable filter after another it really does add up to low odds of a technological species... At least "as we know it." I wonder though whether intelligent beings on other planets may figure out ingenious ways to develop high technogy that we haven't even contemplated. There is usually more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying goes...
@@realsatoshihashimoto
My current assumption is that they are very low in numbers. Only a few places with such civilizations came into existence. But they could spread using nano factories, moving in some fraction of the speed of light in a probe, building robots being able to nurture their children, and that way have a new colony.
@@realsatoshihashimoto Bio-technology for example. All done with chemicals and or genetic engineering via eugenic manipulation at first then advances later on, maybe learning how to shape or combine metals using solvents and chemicals entirely. It would take a very long time that way but you might get somewhere eventually. Or maybe some organisms just evolve the ability to program their own DNA to countless uses organically. This could be defined as a form of technology and I think that species could develop very far, very fast. In fact, I could envision a species like that, that had developed computers before it had even developed sentience itself and it's sentience came from it's computers.
@@NoidoDev That's a lot of assumptions. I think it's so difficult and rare that we might as well be the only ones
I love every Fermi Paradox video you release. Thank you
7:03am and the video uploaded 34sec ago, cant wait to watch when i finish work.
What's work? 😅
I called my boss and told him my son died so I can stay and watch it.
Ranching, calves being born all morning, hope I don't have to pull any today. Can't sit to watch the full video until later.
Sorry that you have to work on Sunday
@@jeffreyatlee8785 I keep the Shabbat.
I appreciate you getting that Cronus was a harvest deity not a time deity. Two different characters with similar names.
I read A World Out of Time by Larry Niven again the other day. It delves into the rebel colony scenario a bit in a couple of different ways. Good stuff!
if a civilisation tries to ban spaceflight even from (more or less) neighboring civilisations, this one must have developed a very decent form of space travel itself to prevent other civilisations from leaving their home worlds / solar systems. i would see this more in a case of someone not wanting to share the cake - no matter how big and vast it is - but can´t really afford to extinct other civilisations (for moral reasons or just because the common population wouldn´t like thsi).
Or you create a ideology that is so controlling and miserable that it makes those that follow it just spend entire lives in misery. Because they are miserable they then spread the ideology because others must join them in misery. People are too busy living miserable lives constantly watched by government and fed misery by the media to even care about space flight. Basically what the Soviets did during the Space Race, trying to spread communism everywhere.
They could just launch relativistic missiles at the colonies; or punitive missiles at the home world if they don't control their colony.
It's always interesting when SFIA, which is notoriously techno optimistic, talks about our colonies' rebelling. It's food for thought for sure. I really enjoy these episides! While colonizing Titan and indeed the wholr outward Bound series and the UNITY series are my all time favorite, i really enjoy these fermi paradox questions and i just relistened to "Extraglactic Sanctuary" last night and i think its just that i really enjoy Isaac's story series most of all! Top notch episode as always from everyone at SFIA! The art in this one was awesome too!
Fr, like, as weird as these vids are, considering that SFIA has arguably some of THE FUCKING WORST Asimov Blinders on YT, gotta agree, these are pretty refreshing...
A pretty consistent and logical solution to the Fermi Paradox. But not inevitable as you note.
An excellent Sci-Fi Sunday episode, Isaac.
B tier! Very rare! Logically consistent and convergent across iterations, but not inevitable for all life forms (A tier) under all scenarios and multiples of organism life spans of time (S tier)
The two best are the zoo theory and the early theory. Zoo says we are inside their ecological terrarium, early says we are first or near first.
That's not so much a solution as it is the whole problem (early)
Regarding classical mythology, the prophecy was that a son by the first wife of Zeus would be the one to overthrow him, so he ate her. She then gave birth to Athena inside him and gave him massive migraines by making a suit of armor for her daughter before Hephaestus cracked his skull open and released Athena.
Typically female.
Well. Grim indeed. This seems like an inevitable problem. Loss of control of colonies. Signal lag. Paranoia. Trying to ensure that all population centers have mutual respect for, and cooperation with each other is not possible on earth in the current day. It seems unlikely that it will change when trying to colonize beyond earth.
The Cronus Scenario sounds like a variation of the classic Thucydides Trap, especially when expanded to hypothetical alien civilizations which did not originate on Earth.
Swatting colonies before they get too big for their breeches sounds like an insane mode of operation, but even if it were never implemented, its mere theoretical existence might act as a disincentive for the mass colonization process spanning millennia as usually described here.
The cubic math you mention is pretty compelling actually. 10x the colonization radius gives 1000x as many colonies who each have the same ability to send a few dozen stealth RKMs at Earth. At a point it becomes less "why would they" and more "what are the odds and how many colonies do we have"
Is it possible to hide Earth's location form colonies and make sharing Earth's coordinates an RKM-able offense?
I imagine a civilization that regularly goes out and destroys its children that dont meet expectations. Like pruning a plant.
Do we get to capture Chronus's ship along a robot clone of ourselves and then use it with our alien symbiote infected father to blow up a sun?
yes.
We do. Kree!
Thank you I really enjoy listening to your talks during work.
As always, a great episode.
But I'm sticking with Niven's theory. The Thrintun wiped out all sentience in an attempt to put down the Tnuctipun rebellion.
Yeah, makes me want to dig out my copy of PRotector, problem is that still hits the 'hey, what about neghboring galaxies?" issue.
The Bandersnatchi survived, as they were specifically designed to be immune to telepathic control.
How did they get to Sirius, which is only a few hundred million years old? My guess is they traded ancient knowledge to the Outsiders in exchange for a lift.
@@isaacarthurSFIA
I'm going to go with light lag and signal degeneration over time/distance.
That's a bit weak, I know, since Dyson swarms might still be recognizable, but the alternative is that Larry Niven was wrong; and we can't have that.
😁
The key flaw here is that everyone in the empire has to agree. If even niche factions disagree with this strategy and are willing to to keep moving away from the core empire, it would at some point become crazy to send that many fleets out that far. It would take a special level of zeal to commit those resources to hunt down those niche factions for that long. I compare this to immigration/emigration in the current state of the world. During times of conflict, there are always those that manage to escape out militarized areas. In times of relative peace, even when walls, patrols, mines, and other methods are put in place, there are still niche groups that make it through. Back to the Cronus Scenario - if even one group makes it through and moves out of practical reach of their prior society, it can diverge from that society and grow in time to match the original. A fun example that I've enjoyed that followed this was the story of Battletech.
Great video Isaac keep it up, your videos are super informative and I like the way you present the information
Great to see you, Issac! Keep up the good work!😃😃😃😃
Thank you! Will do!
Great episode. In response to your invitation to comment I would like to share this thought;
I'm of the opinion from previous discussions of interstellar empires, and the history of empires in general that it doesn't work. For my part I think that future generations will come to the same conclusion and realize that the only way to unite people over vast gulfs of space and time is through principle.
If that can be accomplished then rebel colonies won't exist because there is no central authority to rebel against. And if the principles are so weak as to be easily discarded then they weren't the right ones to begin with.
So hopefully the Chronos scenario will never be considered. But this outlook may be just as overly optimistic as SFIA.
Glad to be a part of it!
Thanks.
Thank you for your work.
I listen to you every night before sleep and I do enjoy it thank you Thumbs up
I haven't watched this in almost 7 years. You said you were taking voice coaching before, it has paid off - your voice never bothered me but you sound great!
Hi Isaac, big fan here. Thanks for always posting these fascinating videos!
Given how governments act in the modern day, I propose a slightly modified version of the Cronus Scenarios in which civilizations don't even allow the colonies to be formed at all because of the fear that they wouldn't have 100% over them.
It is inevitable there would be wars. But wars mostly boil down for resources, or land for resources. Remove those and maybe religion and independence would be the only ones that truly make sense fighting over.
Or they will genetically engineer all future children not to be violent. That requires identifying the gene but the other part I am pretty certain China is trying. Using the Uighurs to test gene editing tech.
Inevitably someone breaks free and becomes a competing civilization that does permit it. Even if there's a one world government situation. Because then someone in power simply needs to break off from the hegemony, using their vested power. Example: musk with twitter, Milei in Argentina, Florida Man and Orange Man.
Your R's are so good now. Proud of the hard work you've done on that.
I miss his accent.
@@joshualewis6513thats not an accent
Vive la differènce!
I like to imagine this storyline has roots in the ancient past as our tribal ancestors wandered a relatively empty Earth. A tribe splits for some ideological or resource management reason. The new tribe may be only in the next valley over or a few miles up river but may as well be another world. Eventually the new tribe grows to rival or threaten the original. Perhaps this was an oral history that replayed enough it inspired the story of Cronus as a cautionary tale.
would think a military fleet with a fleet of oniel cylinders trading with each planet stated as part of the empire, and making sure they are still loyal, while waiting for a message from earth, for further orders. moving around, growing their own population, building more ships, the fleet could grow to host a larger population that earth does at that time. so, when they show up without relative warning, you now have an armed force larger than you population, looking for shore leave, if you are lucky.
We have been waiting for a Fermi paradox video . Since i started listening I think about the Fermi paradox at least 5 times a day
I’m going with us being first born. I know the mediocrity principle says we’re not but hey it’s gotta be someone.
Agreed. Why not us? We have no evidence to the contrary.
Honestly that's always been my guess. That a intelligent lifeform that wants to travel in space is very rare and that the universe is just young enough that not many have evolved so far. Mediocrity principle more says that the probability that any given lifeform is near the start or the end is rare. Not that it is impossible just that the odds are against it being the case.
15:35 Isn't the Solar System in the middle of a comparatively empty bubble?
This sounds like a step in the process of becoming a berserker civilization, or a phase civilizations go through before we get a fully realized dark forest scenario. Especially if two of these bump into each other.
I know we avoid modern politics and economics intentionally here (especially divisive conversations), but I can see some current day models that increase the likelihood of this outcome. It is not a big step to go from long lived, security minded people, with a small number of powerful elite; to a system that intentionally creates this outcome for the safety and security of wherever the power base exists.
Isaac, you may want to consider a possible future of mankind with the Chinese history of trading with the remainder of the world. For centuries they had the silk road which they could control. In the 14 century or so they had ocean going junks which traveled have the world. Then the emperor put a stop to that. Soon after the silk road was closed. And the "others" came and forced china to begin to trade with them.
Nice job Isaac
An exciting episode released on my birthday
probably a better system than strip mining everything to create a dead-zone, would be that thing you introduced me to a while ago where the star itself is turned into an engine, and the entire civilization moves from system to system, strip mining everything but Earth, and building a Matryoshka/birch world.
This requires me to make breakfast and a bucket of coffee. I understand there is also a 3 hour compendium video. How lucky I am to be available now for all that.
i suspect those who are truly worried about the slowing birth rate has less to do with the birth rate going down and more to do with who are giving birth.
Getting Revelation Space vibes
Come to think of it, I wrote the episode not long after getting to speak to Reynolds for the first time, and was relistening to some of his novels after, so it probably pushed it forward in my head more. Though he's been my favorite SF writer for a long while now so his influence is etched in all over the channel.
"too many unknown unknowns" is the tldr version of both Drake's equation and Fermi's paradox, and the "solution" to both.
For years now, I've been wondering about a dedicated video to this scenario both due to my own thoughts about it & partial references made to this in prior videos, such as the "Strip Mining the Galaxy" video. Personally, I'd say it's reasonable plausible, when combined with "rare Earth/life/intel/tech" to add upon compounding great filters. As though while I think in such a scenario, manned sub-light interstellar colonization would be little to none, I'd still expect automated drones to go & gather resources.
The less moving parts & at less logistically straining distances, the less chance of breakdown via rogue colony going full Helghast, making a berserker Von-Neumann swarm or RK missiles. I'm curious to the nature of the "Interdiction" Fermi Paradox video next month.
Awesome new outro music!
1) I liked the video very much, as it was once again one with a bit more storytelling. Isaac's storytelling is always a winner.
2) I also like the whole idea quite a lot as it seems that even simply encountering such a "fortress-bubble" might be sufficient motivation for the observing "civilisation-continuum" to at least consider similar strategy, thus increasing the probability of this strategy becomming wide-spread across the universe.
3) But what I liked the most is the fact that Isaac pretty much gave life to a new genre of vorarephilia - "space vore". 😂
4) Overall, thanks for yet another video, guys. ❤
Great episode! Eerily plausible, too...
Although I guess that "colonization" might start the way you described it possibly ending, since until then we'll have had many discussions on this topic, and I can't really imagine Earth sending out colonies to other stars, without a policy that will ensure that attacks won't happen.
(Unless they go similar to the Bobiverse route, and this is a bid for survival)
I think the only issue with this solution is hegemonic societies. To go to an extreme, some sort of devouring swarm (be it organic like Tyranids or self-replicating killbots) would just not care, and probably come to the conclusion that there would be others of its own kind already doing the same, and that the best time to start colonizing the galaxy was yesterday. No worries about rebels, just a fervent desire to expand faster in order to gain the upper hand when another civilization is encountered. This sort of assumes a hostile viewpoint on First Contact, but could be done with more human-like societies. I think on the Interstellar Empires episode you talked about how an Empire could use colonies to stomp out any rebel siblings instead of having to wait for a fleet from home to go all the way there, and with that sort of mutual destruction (if you rebel we all destroy you) you could have a large empire without the worries of losing grip on outer colonies.
One simple solution to the Fermi paradox:
What if only 1 in 10 civilizations ever expand to the stars, and for those that do, on average they only ever launch 4 colonies?
Due to the vast distances, each of those colonies is a new civilization - with that same 1 in 10 chance of further expansion.
Any civilization that does expand to the stars would average around 8 daughter civilizations - not enough to keep the chain reaction going.
I don't know what's the scariest scenario, being surrounded by advanced hostile alien civilizations. Or there's...nothing. Just more space expanding faster than we could possibly travel in all directions, forever...or as close to 'forever' as possible.
Thanks, as ever it's good!
10 yrs of SFIA thats wild. ❤❤❤
6 years of regular episodes though
Loved that Jon Meredith story!
opening moments giving me some serious and wonderful MechWarrior3 for pc flashbacks. God I miss that game. Maybe my favorite gaming I've ever done.
Awwww yeah, been watching for like six years and still my fav channel and the only one I watch each upload the hour it comes out. I dare say your content should actually be shown in schools, you could be the gen Z Bill Nye tbh
Ha!
Bill Nye wishes.
😁
Not quite. I suspect that at least a few high school and college teachers already utilize SFIA videos in their instruction. They are perfect for those education levels, since Isaac shares his thinking process and lets the viewer see how he explores and fleshes out ideas. Bill Nye, on the hand, engaged in what my supervisor at the children’s museum used to call “Gee whiz” science-activities and demonstrations designed to catch the attention of fidgety six year olds and encourage them to further explore science. Both levels of education are vital if a society, and the individuals it’s made up of, are to grow and develop-but they require different types of presentation.
I used them all the time when I taught HS science
With population growth numbers, the big issue is ecological.
We as a species are in the early stages of ecological succession. We got access to pletniful resources (chiefly fossil fuels) and expanded using it. As fossil fuels decrease and alternatives continue to fail to live up to expectations, population contraction is likely. You see it after a forest fire - pioneer species quickly explode in population at first, then contract to sustainable levels.
In many ways, contraction is inevitable. Most "developed" countries have sub-replacement birthrates, and the 1% growth cited in the video is driven by industrializing countries who also have declining birthrates.
By most estimates, Earth will have a declining human population in the next 20 to 50 years. This decline could be precipitous given the social, economic, and political challenges an old society could cause.
Of course, this assumes no miracle energy sources are discovered (anything that is fully dependent from fossil fuels while returning similar energy yields). Given trends over the past 150 years or so, I think this is a safe assumption.
The decline is sociocultural (feminism pushing women to careers) and not ecological. IOW there's no reason for the growth rate to be so low as far as carrying capacity is concerned
Okay Isaac I really really want a video on the wonders of civilizations that stack a galaxy’s worth of resources into a wondrous central capital! I really would love to see this now! Plundering the lions share of the resources into a hyper resource rich hyper populous central cluster birch world or no! And to what extent can you plunder! What about draining even the stars and gas giants and shipping them in a great stream to the capital to make resource nebulas? Or even pushing the stars into a ring around the core capital?!
Nothing on earth worth the effort for aliens.
Issac sometimes invents concepts but names then after someone else. I'd say we call this gerne paradox solution the Isaac-Solution: Spherical wastelands with super-K2 resource storage at the center (that hide in plain sight as a cluster of seemingly old metal poor stars)
Once a colony (or a child) becomes self-sufficient, it starts to bristle at mom and dad telling them what to do. The teenage years are almost always when they start to seek out their own identity and if the parent continues to stifle that, then comes rebellion. A mother (or even a mother country) needs to be damn careful how they deal with this.
Cool to know nobody has finished this video yet with out speeding up or skipping
Who watches a video without speeding up!?
@@LoganKearsleyunfortunately I have fallen into this. Isaac is better at 1.25X
@@vincentcleaver1925 What's unfortunate about it? I never listen to English at less than 2x.
The problem is we think like biolocal devices, even when we try to imply logic. The quality over quantity may be only in biological logic, not the real natural one. Why fear distance, if the Universe has limitlessness?
In an universe without FTL travel or communication and with the advance automation capabilities requiere for inter-stellar travel. Moving resources in a highly automated fashion back to the home system looks a lot more beneficial to that home system than making colonies. Colonies may be cool but they don't really give many upsides for the system that make them.
The upside is something for the inhabitants to do (go on an adventure)
I really like this idea, not as an inevitability, but as a fermi filter. It seems plausible enough after significant hardship that such pessimism may arise. But it is also possible that simply letting your neighbors go on their own path is less dangerous. And any dangerous neighbor is either shot down by you, or your million other neighbors who also see the danger to themselves. A kind of long term mutual self interest. The problem being once the available resources are spent and competition emerges. A good thought experiment.
Though I am curious, in a billion years, after untold changes to what once was man, what does a completely colonized galaxy look like and do when not an asteroid remains, and not a star is untapped, where all planets are used for mega structures, and humanity has expanded all we can in our own galaxy?
Thats when we revert back from postscarcity
That's when the great decline begins, with all the horror it implies.
So whatever exists at that time that could claim Man's heritage better have the ability to reverse entropy, flee the galaxy, or fight for what scraps may remain and be the last warrior left standing.
Given our population at that time, it seems we will have found reasons to fight long before that. Taking resources from other people will never go out of style; and given the scale of space and time we are talking about the difference between "a natural resource" and "The remains of a previous civilization" may be hard to see.
That is when we begin expansion into other galaxies!
Can you explain me, please, as for non native english speaker? where da subtitles are generated from in this video? can i rely only on subtitles and just mute the sound? By the way. propably the best option in this situation - use correction doctor to produce the right prounonced sounds of each letter then record sucessfull examples. and use AI to back loop your voice generation. So it will be still your (channel) voice by the judjing of consumer. but the quality of listning for consumers will drasticly improove.
So i see two ways to correct the audio track:
1 the channel starts to handle back loop voice generation before uploading it.
2 by all the means understanable reasons, consumers ( non native engl specially) by them selves will do the same - parsing the subtitles and generate with ai the voice summary or overdubbing over the video( in this case channel will save playback time)
3 In case if voice generation will use another platform, then the channel will start loosing ytube playback time.
really serarching the way to listnen. fills like this channel doing a great job writing the text of the content and prepare good videos/ But the same - if quality of consuming will not improove - we will find the vay to generate audio(foice and background) and video track just grabbin subtitles.
hope i was not rude in my explanation. wish i can handle tu understand this video without searching for a workaround.
Another fantastic video. I tend to agree with the notion that getting every individual on board for such a required amount of time is pretty unrealistic. Not that having everyone in agreement is any safer than pockets of a society all butthurt over some group or decision or historical event to sew chaos.
Personally I'm fascinated with what behaviors go hand in hand with advanced civilizations and intelligent life. Maybe traits of compassion, revenge, and cooperation are all part of the grab bag when things like concept of zero, tool use and farming change a sentience and their society over a long enough time period
So I had this nightmare years ago. The stars all started blinking out of the sky. Nobody was sure why. Somebody said in the dream, we never went out there and found out what they truly were. The sun started dimming soon after the night sky was blank. The false vacuum hypothesis does not fit, because we would have zero warning. I think it might be the galactic zoo no longer being profitable, or the simulation hypothesis where the computer encounters a glitch or crash. I don’t think it’s any new paradox solution, it was just really scary.
31:00 would love an new episode about birch planet. Type 2 civ get alot of love. But type 3 could use some attention.
And what to do after you build it.
(With or without ftl)
I had a similar theory of Necrosis on an interstellar scale, whether through intention resource depletion or accidental destruction I.e. greenfly.
Love this episode, I might steal the title for a novel. If they ever rewrite the Superman story this scenario makes the most sense. Long ago Krypton did have colonies- and there was a civil war. The colony was destroyed and space travel outlawed. The memory of those colonies were wiped out. Of course the losers left a gift at the planet's core.
Hey 👋 Sir Isaac Arthur and everyone in this lovely community. First, I want to say - thank you for the upload. Liked 👍!Now, about my opinion - yes, the Cronus scenarios might be an explanation of the Fermi Paradox, although not very likely IMHO. However - it is really hard for a not very smart middle aged guy like me, to see the link between the possible technologies (or the links between two or more of the said techs) that an Interstellar civilization might possess and the potential fear that one day it might die by the hands of its own seed. So - can we have an episode or at least a discussion about these links please? I'm very curios, how things like the interstellar speed travel or the technology of Nycoll - Dyson beams, or the technology of Shkadov trusters etc., etc. can increase or decrease the said fear and thus the likelihood of a Cronus Scenarios (or outright ban of interstellar colonization). Is it more likely the rich and powerful rulers of our poor planet to be worried that colonies might go rogue, if we are crawlonizing the nearby star systems (at
My guess is that fully operational Dyson-swarm civilization would fear nobody and therefore would colonize all the time. The huge distances, expenses and instability in the political systems of potential enemies during hundreds or thousands of years needed to run hostile interstellar operations would probably give peace of mind to the parent civilization. Also when technology is advanced to the point that allows to create easily repaired and replicated colony fleet with practically unlimited range stopping all the attempts would be waste of resources. And who can say that a home star system will ever be under one single government? Even sole government's policies can change. It is unlikely that any single government can keep the same policy for thousands of years.
Here is a great idea for a show, get into the day to day. Explore the life cycle of food say grown on a farming co-op of O'Neil cylinders. Possible food preservation systems and ways to avoid waste other build ups. And how there could be a possible side hustle of buying used ship air for the CO2.
Considering ethical factors is something that I think elevates a creature
We have kind of seen this happen with space travel already. We went from the first manned aircraft flight in 1903 to the first manned moon landing in 1969. Which is just 66 years. It's now been 52 years since the last manned moon landing. And this is basically all due to
1.) Space travel being tightly controlled and
2.) Space travel is very expensive and that is just within our solar system
We could add in that maybe technological civilizations just can't design automated systems that last a long time, or are never able to get feasible propulsion systems that can take you interstellar.
The Fermi paradox is very hard to solve with just our single data point.
It’s a more possible scenario.
I wonder if the rare trait is exploring everything. If instead a civilization is driven to solve for a growth rate that is sustainable for the resources it may never leave its home planet or system.
The scenario sounds plausible except it implies that no rogue group would ever form on the way out to strip a new system, and instead just continue onward beyond the buffer zone. And even if they adopted the same centralization strategy once established, one or more colonies would escape from it, too. And that's exactly what it would be seen as: escaping. That's a powerful motivator-at least in human psychology-that would inevitably cause this model to leak and spread across the entire galaxy just like the standard expansionist scenario, even though it might take 10 times as long to do the job.
Oooh what a nice surprise!
I think this is a plausible scenario, in the aftermath of a catastrophic system-wide or interstellar war. Though an authoritarian, centralized synchronization of minds at set intervals "or else" across aystems would be another way. I'm stubbornly individualistic. I think I'd lean toward space hermit.
Personally with you on the conclusion. I would imagine quite a few aliens would pursue star grabs, or even galactic cluster grabs, in which they towed stars many light years to create a local group or stars, planets and habitats. They could also migrate that to a void, or essentially create their own, for all the reasons you said.
Still, I'm not convinced that all aliens would go this route. It would also be difficult in many circumstances, given the scales and numbers we're operating, to stop everybody from jettisoning off and thinking they could do it better, or that a central authority didn't know best. Thousands of years ago humans were launching boats into waters hoping to find land, even though many of them will have sunk in open ocean. Why
I think there's a decent amount of precedent in history for the idea that civilizations tend to stagnate (not necessarily the right word/concept, but it's close) until one of their colonies picks up where they left off. I think if we ever colonize Mars it's pretty inevitable it eventually breaks off ala America and Britain or Carthage and the Phoenicians. That will probably not end great for Earth, but I'd bet it'll advance humankind in general.
to master a solar system as identity has become a talent to explore -for everyone alive and everyone to come alive for all of eternity
(human talents are infinite )
There are not-so-distant star systems where planet-forming disc seems to have disappeared, weird distribution of dust or other things which should have some mundane explanation. If not, automated mining could explain some of these phenomena. So I wouldn't be surprised if this scenario turned out to be true, at least to a degree.
one thing that gets me a little pessimistic about future iis that politicians tend to lookonly at projects they can get credit for a.i. less than 4 years in making long term projects require lifetime of concentration or multiple liifetimes in your case XD
Hey Isaac, regarding your question, "How likely is this?" My feeling is that a space-faring civilization must first have a robust set of values that are agreed upon by 95% of all the different cultures - before it is stable enough and long-term enough to BE a space-faring civilization. And I believe that would hold true for all the children civilizations you spawn in different parts of the galaxy. The Earth system might send out exploratory parties to the 1000 nearest systems with a half inhabitable planet, to see how all the children are coming along, and they might see that 50% of them are now dead, and 50% are doing fine. Why would that be so? Because the alive ones, again, have a consistent set of values agreed by everyone, no matter what strange faction or religion or philosophy they're party of (agreed on by at lest 95% of people there.) And the dead ones couldn't agree on good values (only 90% or less were agreed.) Hence fighting, economy chaos, leading to death of the system (other than, perhaps, remnants.) So, instead of the Sol system starting to get worried about all the new and alien philosophies burgeoning from their children, i.e. getting worried about having created enemies, Sol would actually be pleased to have created, hopefully, a number of friends. One of the philosophies would certainly be appreciation of diversity. But other agreed-on-widely values would be obvious stuff that everyone knows - it's good to try and be a good person, and that means being honest, trustworthy, hard-working, caring about things that have innate value like human dignity and the environment...
So, is this likely a valid Fermi Paradox solution? Not in my book. Because we never even get those children colonies in the first place until our civilization rests on almost universally agreed upon values. And, if that's true, it seems a) unlikely those values would be missing in the children colonies, and b) if they were missing, those children colonies would be their own downfall, without needing troops to be sent from home.
We always make stories about moon or Mars colony rebeling, will this actually prevent it from happening? or this is inevitable because everyone expecting it from the start? or paradoxical the overly preparation prevent it from happening? Or the base is design Tobe independent eventually?
In the early days, our colonies are going to be too dependent on us to even be thinking of creating their own government. That being said, once they are up and running and able to survive if Earth suddenly vanished, they would seek to govern themselves. The good thing is, you don't really need to directly control other nations if they are friendly and willing to trade. Basically, I think these colonies will be set up to eventually govern themselves anyway, so there will be no need to rebel against Earth.
Interesting idea. Overall though I still find any Fermi Paradox solution that relies on examining motivations unconvincing. If other civilisations exist, they will inevitably run the full gamut of possible motivations, and natural selection will favour those that expand and seek new horizons. And it only takes one to colonise entire galaxies in a geologic blink. If there are civilisations out there with the capacity to expand anywhere nearby, we would see them.
Any so called solution to the Fermi Paradox needs to have an explanation for why this scenario happened to all civilizations that emerged in detectable range. All it takes is for a single one to slip thru the filter and we would be seeing signs of their existence all over the galaxy by now.
Maybe I’m just hoping Cronus isn’t the correct Fermi Paradox solution, but here’s an alternate storyline which illustrates why I don’t think it works (kinda long, sorry):
Humanity sends out colonies to every star within ~25ly before one colony sends some missiles back to Sol. They are easily intercepted, but a fleet is sent from Sol to retake the system. This is detected by the rebels, some of whom flee on the ship they (and/or their ancestors) arrived in. Also, while the fleet is in route, the remainder of the rebel faction fully takes over the contested system and refuses to use their pushing lasers to slow down the invading fleet. With only maneuvering fuel left, the admiral orders each ship to quickly build magnetic sails for a never-before-attempted braking maneuver in the star’s corona. Some ships succeed, some are destroyed, and some miss and fly off into interstellar space in an unplanned-for direction.
We would now have at least one gardener ship and a few former fleet ships heading further into deep space. Let’s say Earth is now highly paranoid, so when the news reaches them they decide to send a barrage of RKMs to every known rocky planet within 100ly of Sol. However, the drifting fleet vessels may not run into a star system within that distance, and even if they did, RKMs are optimized for taking out planet-based settlements, or possibly fully-fledged Dyson swarms via Kessler Syndrome, not sparse colonies on a handful of asteroids. Already-settled colonies take casualties, but none had exclusively settled on planets and thus were not wiped out, and many survivors flee further into deep space. Colonists still in route detect this action before arriving, leading them to exclusively favor space habitats over planetary settlements for their own survival in case of another barrage. Colonies would also be able to harvest any debris from the RKM impact that remains in-system, since it would no longer be down a gravity well.
In this scenario, we would likely wind up with an expansion wave that expands at or near the max speed attainable by an interstellar colony ship as people flee the wrath of Earth. So, we might have hermit shoplifters fleeing from a Cronus scenario!
I've heard the theory before, it's called the "Prison Planet" theory, but the "why" can only be hypothesized as "our civilization is too young and violent"
I disagree; though this is an outstanding video!! I also really liked your more technical videos, your sky bridge / sky ring explanations are extremely good.
I think the Cronus Scenario reduces to the following ideas:
1) A singleton (almost always) eventually emerges. (Singleton = single government, overpowered AI or other similar entity governing the global decisions of the whole civilization and exerting a lot of control). Alternatively, it could be a mutual agreement strong enough to prevent expansion (but this is less plausible, because for example nuclear agreements seem to not prevent nations from covertly creating nuclear weapons).
2) A singleton never wants to self-replicate, and stellar distances prevent effective control. So it (almost always) decides against long-range colonization.
It is indeed a possible scenario; though (1) requires singleton emergence before we get viable von Neumann probes (possible, but not certain), and (2) is a very strong assumption on possible singletons, some might very well decide that their own existence costs less than the ability to self-replicate and populate the galaxy; case in point we typically don't make children to get back the resources they gather - we do it to create a version of self which will live on when we perish, the civilization very well might use the same logic - and not creating your copy even if you live forever leaves you vulnerable to a lot of stuff.
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I would also point out that it is possible that we get some sort of better cryptography which allows us to coordinate even over large distances (imagine humans or robots that can't lie, or can't break promises), this would nullify the betrayal issue.
The World at the End of Time has something like this, but with an element that our current understanding of physics forbids. In that book lifeforms like us used gravitational weapons to distort each others stars and both ended up destroyed. There is a general assumption, especially in the cold war era books, that offense will always grow faster than defense; and that our colonies will be able to destroy us even if they are weaker.
Thr large fleets in Helldivers 2 that liberate planets for SuperEarth are probabaly on the several trillions of population, that game has so many superdestroyers and soldiers theyre replaceable.
This has been my preferred solution for a long time. Never had the best name for it though!
Didn’t you call this Fermi paradox solution great old ones in a previous episodes? Basically a situation where there is a group that polices space travel, perhaps culling any civilization that gets advanced. Chronos kinda feels like a subset of that where you are your own old ones.
*"BE QUIET OR THEY WILL HEAR YOU."*
Isaac, what would the development of increased longevity or biological immortality do to your population calculations?
Hard to say, you have people often start families later when they have no expiration dates, but probably have more kids overall for that same reason. I think we'd see a net growth drop followed by a rise after then a gradual convergence to whatever was considered safe growth rates for a space-saving civilization
It would be nice if more people started with "hard to say.."
Aren't we looking farther back in time the farther out into the universe we look?