Hacker News Reader

Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

The older I get, the more it strikes me that civilization is inherently unstable. It may be metastable, in the way that a predator-prey relationship is stable. A technological civilization like ours is not stable. It's a conflagration. It's subject to a number of exponential processes. Our economy is based on exponentiation. If progress is based on war, then that's just another nail in the coffin. This makes for a plausible "Great Filter" solution to the Fermi Paradox. Civilizations are so unstable, they can only progress through war, which makes them more likely to destroy themselves. Perhaps civilizations almost never stay organized at the point where they are capable of star travel.

View on HN

It's quite possible for civilization to be stable while any given civilization is unstable. Think about life itself. Life is subject to a number of exponential processes - cell division & decay, telomere shortening, growth of parasites, etc. - and as a result, we all die eventually. But life itself continues, because we're (usually) replaced by descendants.

So it goes with civilizations. Any given civilization will eventually break up and disintegrate, but the idea of civilization itself continues to progress.

So it goes with civilizations. Any given civilization will eventually break up and disintegrate, but the idea of civilization itself continues to progress.

Which doesn't preclude a circumstance where almost no civilization anywhere keeps its sh!t together long enough to send itself to the next star.

That's why I believe it's crucial to maintain the integrity of current technological civilization. We're close to many important breakthroughs, and if it collapses now, our descendants will face a lack of easily accessible, high-density energy sources they could use to jumpstart another industrial revolution.

That's basically what stcredzero is saying I think.

This is why it's critical to become starfaring as soon as possible. Every year we delay carries tremendous risk.

Do you think we can get rid of this once we leave the planet and go multi-planetary? We will bring our gray matter with us. May a few generations grow up and they will repeat our mistakes.

Possibly the only solution is to get way smarter by gene editing and preserve as much data as we can from our age.

Over time, populations adapt to their circumstances. In a society in which Malthusian pressures operate, and the thrifty and peaceful out-reproduce the violent and improvident, society will become more thrifty and peaceful over time -- and will eventually become prosperous and organized enough to escape the Malthusian trap. (The opposite pressures can also operate, but you need external sources of chaos for selection in favor of chaos to occur. Order is normally self-establishing, self-reinforcing, and stronger than chaos over time.)

A Farewell to Alms discusses this in great detail; England began the Industrial Revolution (i.e. broke out of the Malthusian trap) in the late 18th century, but if not for them, the Continent would have done it in the 19th; if not the Continent, then Japan in the late 19th or China sometime in the 20th.

The key word is "redundancy".

If you can get to another star in a reasonable amount of time, you are likely sewing the seeds of your own destruction. The amount of energy in a relativistic weapon makes nukes look weak.

Maybe the rise of the automatons will keep humanity in check.

I think the instability you're describing is only a result of human nature: aggression is by far the most universally motivating factor because everybody can get behind some camp and feel righteous. This means people can get enormously pumped up to achieve some goal (destroying the bad guys). This is much, much harder with intellectual factors because people need to understand justifications and consequences far more complicated than "they hit us, so we have to hit them in order to {grow,feed,protect,whatev}".

Latest example: Why go to a different planet? Personally, just for the heck of it. The financial problem is entirely artificial, because much larger sums than what Musk is talking about are being played with all the time. This amount of money could be in anybody's pocket tomorrow should the right people feel so inclined (say a couple very wealthy persons taking a fancy). I want to go for the heck of it because fascinating things can, and most probably will, come out of it. What exactly, I have no idea. It's the simple act of doing something new because, why not? What else is there to do except keep bashing each others' heads in?

This is extremely hard to convey to somebody who wasn't born with, wasn't taught, or whose sense of adventure was ripped out in the course of growing up.

My point is, humanity's many civilizations' instability caused by war is an artifact of evolution. Throughout mankind's history, bashing your foe's head in was the best way to survive, and humanity has yet to overcome this rather primitive and impulsive behaviour.

On a side note, not every species survives by war, but by symbiosis.

Let me share a more nature-based perspective(although, as with almost everything in nature, not generalizable to the whole of the ecosystem)

As you may know, chimpanzees wage wars, some being territorial, some more resource-targeted. They even pick fighting grounds, do all kinds of dirty tricks(set traps, prepare stones-to-throw etc) - but to the point. Whenever a "chimp tribe" is threatened, whether its by resource shortage or a competing tribe, they "pick"(as in "tolerate") the most aggressive, asocial, psychopathic chimp of their own to lead them since thats what increases their chances of survival. That chimp may and usually does commit, at wimp, all kinds of atrocities, towards enemies and even his own _but_ when the danger is over, when that tribe no longer competes for their territory, whenever there is enough resources - they simply get rid of him.

We are in a state of prosperity, technologically, environmentally, there is nothing hindering our civilization to live in peace .. except, we are suffering under the same hierarchical [] power-structure we know from medieval(or even much older) periods. Yes, they are still here(structure, not necessarily blood-lines whatever some may want to tell them selves) .. they are not visible, you may not feel their presence, but they are here, creepy version of Asimov's Foundation, there were here all the time(when incl. turbulences within their ranks), now largely consolidated, mostly united, metastasizing across the planet, leading humanity into its abyss, effectively into a 2 species society .. Pharaos as immortal gods, few layers of abstractions(with its own nobelity) and as much slaves as they need for whatever they need, kept in the dark, with no chance to revolt, ever ..

Now I wont be angry when this one gets flagged but I hope at least some of you young minds do get the chance to read and dismiss the claims above .. because they might come handy in the (near) future

China's lasted for thousand of years. War itself becomes refined; if it's an arms race of drone strikes, that could be eminently sustainable.

It still shocks me that no one person predicted the carnage of the American Civil War. It shocks me even more than in WWI, the Civil War was studied but not applied to the problem at hand.

Europe thought that WW1 would be a repeat of Sedan[1], not Petersburg[2].

The generals of the Civil War studied Clausewitz and Napoleon, and the troops went to war with smooth-bore bronze cannon and Napoleonic fire drill. They were largely tempered in the brief, not-too-bloody, and glorious Mexican-American War. It took them a few years and tens of thousands of casualties to learn what havoc accurate, long-range rifles, even if muzzle-loading, could do.

Militaries are eternally building themselves to fight the last war. When they do learn from their experience, quite often the lessons learned are the wrong ones.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sedan

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Petersburg

There exists other theories. http://johnsmilitaryhistory.com/cwarmy.html The main reason why the civil war was bloody was because it was fought by armies with no great military history or traditions. There were no hussars, no cuirasses. Neither army had experience fighting a modern enemy. Of course it became a bloodbath, like watching two drunks punch each other tired, no skill.

I'd say the weapons completely out matched anyone's ability to cope with them until quite late in the war. By that light, I'd say nobody alive had experience fighting a modern army.

The US has always had a charming dread of standing armies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com