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Notes -
Some sci-fi shower thoughts:
I started reading "The Expanse" recently. The first book, written in 2011, already feels incredibly dated. I'm one hundred pages in and there hasn't been a single mention of AI.
In any case, there was a one-off observation that I thought was interesting. It went something like this:
Character 1 : "They say that ship could destroy a planet".
Character 2: "Any ship can destroy a planet from orbit just by dropping an anvil".
Obviously, that's an oversimplification, but not much. Given sufficiently advanced propulsion systems, a planet-killing relativistic weapon becomes possible. Imagine an object, the size of a bullet, traveling at 99.99999% (or whatever) the speed of light. It would have enough energy to destroy the Earth and it would be impossible to detect. Even if detection and deflection were theoretically possible, the bullet could be programmed to explode before impact, sterilizing the Earth in a shower of OMG particles.
As much as Musk thinks that a multiplanetary society is necessary to escape the Great Filter, it's probably not enough to be located on planets. A planet is a giant sitting duck. A truly robust society would need to be diffuse enough not to be wiped out by a handful of relativistic weapons.
But of course, this is all just silly to speculate about. There are no doubt even more ridiculously overpowered weapons out there that humanity has not even imagined. And getting to Mars is a good first step in any case.
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