The main question is why they don’t wage visible wars with each other?
Visible to whom and how do you know?
Letting a lot of energy escape while destroying something is crude and inefficient. E.g. a nanobot swarm or an information system takeover would leave nothing you’d recognize as war. Plus, are you quite sure some types of (super)novas are not starkillers in action?
Letting a lot of energy escape while destroying something is crude and inefficient.
Scorched earth is the most effective defence, and I would expect to see evidence of civilizations destroying their physical resources on a massive scale. But perhaps the threat of that is what keeps wars from happening.
The rational reasons to go to war are to prevent a future competitor and to gain resources. Scorched Earth removes both of those reasons: if you can destroy your own resources AND inflict some damage on the enemy at the same time, then no-one has rational reasons to go to war. Because even a future competitor won’t be able to profit from fighting you.
If advanced civilisations have automated disagreement resolving processes, I expect them to quickly reach equilibrium solutions with semi-capable opponents.
What happens when the committed scorched-earth-defender meets the committed extortionist? Surely a strong precommitment to extortion by a powerful attacker can defeat a weak commitment to scorched earth by a defender?
It seems to me this bears a resemblence to Chicken or something, and that on a large scale we might reasonably expect to see both sets of outcomes.
No, it doesn’t. Invading you to force you to destroy your own resources is a good way “to prevent a future competitor”. You are not going to do it on your own, so you need to be pushed into this by war.
Not to mention that, historically speaking, reasons to go to war are not often “rational”. WW1 would be a classic example.
No problem. I explore a method to send images up to 1 billion light years (or more) in my article by drawing images from Dyson spheres on a galactic plane.
If your messages which take millions of years to arrive are relevant to a war, the war also goes on for millions of years. Why would you expect to see anything change over a mere century or so?
Intergalactic war may go for million of years. But humans now are naive civilization and the first who can affect it by ideas of a computer program will win it. Basically it would help to convert Earth in a remote fortress which will help to start colonization of our part of the universe. As a result, a territory of the message sender would grow .
Meh. For a war waged over millions of light years (and, necessarily, lasting millions of years) what can Earth offer? Some atoms? They are easily found elsewhere.
Visible to whom and how do you know?
Letting a lot of energy escape while destroying something is crude and inefficient. E.g. a nanobot swarm or an information system takeover would leave nothing you’d recognize as war. Plus, are you quite sure some types of (super)novas are not starkillers in action?
Scorched earth is the most effective defence, and I would expect to see evidence of civilizations destroying their physical resources on a massive scale. But perhaps the threat of that is what keeps wars from happening.
That doesn’t look true to me.
If you can pull it off, it works against any opponent no matter how powerful they are.
I don’t know to which extent “I’ll cut my throat and bleed on you” counts as an effective defense...
The rational reasons to go to war are to prevent a future competitor and to gain resources. Scorched Earth removes both of those reasons: if you can destroy your own resources AND inflict some damage on the enemy at the same time, then no-one has rational reasons to go to war. Because even a future competitor won’t be able to profit from fighting you.
If advanced civilisations have automated disagreement resolving processes, I expect them to quickly reach equilibrium solutions with semi-capable opponents.
What happens when the committed scorched-earth-defender meets the committed extortionist? Surely a strong precommitment to extortion by a powerful attacker can defeat a weak commitment to scorched earth by a defender?
It seems to me this bears a resemblence to Chicken or something, and that on a large scale we might reasonably expect to see both sets of outcomes.
No, it doesn’t. Invading you to force you to destroy your own resources is a good way “to prevent a future competitor”. You are not going to do it on your own, so you need to be pushed into this by war.
Not to mention that, historically speaking, reasons to go to war are not often “rational”. WW1 would be a classic example.
I think that in the case of star wars they may need allies in the remote parts of the universe and so will send SETI messages.
Messages sent at the speed of light..? To “remote parts of the universe”? Consider the time scale.
No problem. I explore a method to send images up to 1 billion light years (or more) in my article by drawing images from Dyson spheres on a galactic plane.
If your messages which take millions of years to arrive are relevant to a war, the war also goes on for millions of years. Why would you expect to see anything change over a mere century or so?
Intergalactic war may go for million of years. But humans now are naive civilization and the first who can affect it by ideas of a computer program will win it. Basically it would help to convert Earth in a remote fortress which will help to start colonization of our part of the universe. As a result, a territory of the message sender would grow .
Meh. For a war waged over millions of light years (and, necessarily, lasting millions of years) what can Earth offer? Some atoms? They are easily found elsewhere.
A new starting point to send probes with the half speed of light in all directions in the backland of the enemy.
Any star system will do for that purpose. All you need is star’s energy.
No, you need a traitor behind enemy lines to receive a message and start an attack. Star system without a civ can’t receive a message.
Ah, I see. You’re thinking, basically, about an information plague which, moving at c, leapfrogs physical probes.
See astronomer Fred Hoyle’s A For Andromeda for a fictional exploration of the idea (and a pretty good novel).
I was thinking more of Vernon Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep, but yeah, this is not a new idea.
Yes!