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Comment by aj7 | Hacker News Reader

It seems like it would be trivial for a civilization to have a policy of no electromagnetic emissions so no signature at all. 10km/second is absurdly slow. Who would want to make the trip, and condemn thousands of generations of her progeny to bizarre ship life and culture?

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You could load a ship up with frozen embryos and have an automated system that raises the first generation.

Though, honestly, humans are terrible galactic conquerors. The artificial life that we create will be the ones taking over the galaxy.

> The artificial life that we create will be the ones taking over the galaxy.

Exactly. A galactic version of "core wars". If we leave any trace at all it will be our machines. Future life will resemble 3D printers in search of raw materials, not GI tracts in search of food, spores that will survive billion year voyages with infinitesimal chances of success.

That's the premise of one of my favorite sci-fi stories, The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C Clarke. The stuff about what-do-people-do-when-the-apocalypse-is-coming-but-kind-of-a-ways-off was cool too.

(in case anyone scrolling by is looking for additions to their to-read list)

also a major plot in Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds

To be fair, we'd need to have an actual galactic history as a race to know if that's true.

> Who

Civilizations aware of imminent extinction-level events may choose to do that, similar to how shipwrecked sailors may fashion a raft and "risk it" in the off-chance they survive.

But why would they go off to a different system instead of just colonizing around their sun or even other planets close to them? If it’s their star is gonna blow why would they go any further than the nearest star?

Depends on the ELE. There are several which can swallow entire solar systems, and the nearby stars may not be hospitable. Maybe the endgame is to find a habitable planet?

> Who would want to make the trip, and condemn thousands of generations of her progeny

Presumably the people that do this do not think ship life will be that bizarre.

I’m frankly more concerned about the sustainability aspect than how daily life will work.

It wouldn't even be about colonization, because it would be infeasible to make a return trip or, unless communications technology changes (e.g. quantum entanglement magic), even phone home upon arrival. The only thing I can think of is survival of the species, survival and spread of life itself. It's not infeasible to believe that's how life on earth started - not as a spontaneous process, but a natural spread of life from elsewhere (panspermia) or a previous life form spreading the building blocks on purpose.

But life on earth has been going on for hundreds of millions of years so I don't think we'd find any traces of it.

Life on Earth is billions of years old.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_evolutionary_h...

Imagine that VR develops over the next few centuries. Millions of people engaged everyday, for 10-12-15 hours. At that point, what’s the difference between being on a ship or being on Earth?

The ability to get off and out. In practice this is already possible and many people's daily life.

If life is like that, then why bother going?

Why bother staying? Why bother anything? Because why not.

I didn’t say I was going to sign up :)

But I don’t think it’s too far fetched. Imagine a VR system that doesn’t require wearing a helmet and can be displayed in physical space. And/or a Matrix-style direct jack into the brain. Any environment you can think of, easily accessible. Doesn’t seem that bad to me.

Beyond that, A lot of people already spend 10+ hours staring at screens here on Earth...

Does it replicate smells, tastes and touch sensations as well as just sound and vision? I spend a lot of time staring at a screen, but it's the time I spend not staring at a screen and interacting with other beings that makes life worth living.

Obviously we are speculating here, but projecting current tech 300-400 years into the future, it doesn’t seem that absurd to me.

And don’t forget that you’d be in space with tons of other colonists too.

To build a Dyson sphere so that you have enough power to finally run VR Minecraft at 60 FPS! ;-)

e.g. because your star is about to blow up.

Because someone wants to

A machine intelligence. Just turn yourself off for the trip.

Generally I'd say that the notion of a Von Neumann machine is so obvious and so effective that there's something really wrong in our guesses on how widespread intelligence is.

Ship life would probably be better than the lives many people experience today, in first world countries. There's also probably some super advanced VR by that time.

All transmissions that are distinguishable from noise are energy loss.

If the ships are big enough, living on them approximates living on a continent / planet…

Who is to say life on a colony ship is undesirable? It could offer the best lifestyle possible and be culturally glorified.

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