![]() The only real exception is if there's a race that's not all that advanced, and is located very, very close to us, such as in the Alpha Centauri system, 4ly away, so that we're just close enough to make travel here feasible for them, but other habitable-zone planets are significantly farther so that it makes more sense for them to attack us rather than just find someplace else.īut as we're already figuring out now, a mere 4ly is already a really, really long distance with our technology. If some civilization has the technology to travel to our system (which is likely tens of light-years away if not much farther), then it'll also have the tech to go to many, many, many other systems other than ours, which also have habitable-zone planets, and are probably more conveniently-located. There's around a billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and even more in nearby Andromeda. > But while such a civilization would be energy rich, wouldn't planets in the habitable zone still be scarce? In Jules Ferry speech before the French Chamber of Deputies: But what about ideology? What if they deem us barbarians that need to be civilized? I would expect a civilization sufficiently advanced to build a Dyson sphere to have reached some sort of sustainability with regard to resources. The sense of "duty to civilize the inferior races" is also alive and maybe even stronger than ever, though expressed with less offensive words. So wars over resources still very much exist. Humanity still very much depends on various resources today: fossil fuels, uranium, metals, fish stocks, etc. They have the duty to civilize the inferior races" ). There were also ideological reasons involved in colonization ("I repeat, that the superior races have a right because they have a duty. Life is rare enough that we don't need to attack other life for resources, assuming we ever find any.Įuropean imperialism and colonization was pretty much not done in a post-scarcity area: we needed all these resources so we took them. We have enough pretty things and energy here on Earth and in unihabited places if need be. We wouldn't be conquering them with robot subs for their pretty coral jewellery or sub-surface oil or whatever. If we discovered a primitive species in the European seas we'd be tripping over ourselves to preserve them and study them and to make sure they never, ever get hurt by us (or a stray asteroid or anything we could prevent). Sadly, that approach sells ad impressions and schlocky futurist books and influences a lot of people to believe things that are pretty questionable. ![]() I think the 'hostile alien' scenario shouldn't be our default. Unless we're dismissing evolution as only a local phenomenon, we should expect similar beings to ourselves. The motivators we have been given through evolution will be the motivators they have as well. Sure, that makes for fun sci-fi stories, but real life is governed by fairly simplistic game theory rules, at least from a high-level perspective. If there are other advanced societies out there I seriously doubt war is their main motivator in space exploration, the same way Voyager and Curiosity are unarmed. This is like expecting Jesus to take your wallet or the Buddha to kick you down the stairs. I never understood the scarcity mentality we apply to hypothetical super-advanced civilizations. You're very much into post-scarcity territory and the traditional motivations for conflict are long gone. A trap for what exactly? By the time your society can do this to a star, you're not exactly fighting others for resources.
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