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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   3254 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 29, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I'm not just talking about the in-universe justifications about the Three Body Problem, it certainly takes its liberties with physics or at least goes hard on the speculation aspect of hard scifi.

I'm talking mostly about our own universe, and to the extent that we have no real reason to think that most of the 3BP tech we see has any basis in reality, my explanation for why the Dark Forest Hypothesis doesn't work is grounded in reality ad we know it. While it's not a bad book, it certainly popularized the notion, and has many people taking it seriously as an explanation for the Fermi Paradox IRL, which it absolutely isn't.

I think it's useful in showing a deeply weird equilibrium which can only be explained by knowledge they don't yet have. The humans thought they were so smart with their fusion drives and railgun battleships...

We also observe a deeply weird equilibrium. Where are the grabby aliens??? Are we the first? I think we're not, I think we shouldn't extensively theorize on these issues till we understand dark matter and dark energy. It's no good getting all up in arms about the Fermi Paradox when we don't understand 95% of the universe.

What could a planetary scale superintelligence achieve in physics? What can stellar scale particle accelerators reveal? We're nowhere near the finish line and are not in a position to judge alien capabilities.

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