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Comment by wing-_-nuts | Hacker News Reader

We always assume that civilizations expand into space without consideration for benefit, but I don't think that will be the case, honestly.

Should we want a colony on another planet? In another star system? Absolutely. It doesn't take much expansion for us to achieve the goal of having a 'redundant backup' for humanity.

Beyond that, there has to be some sort of economic incentive to drive it. Given there is little chance we can economically trade between planets, much less between star systems, I don't think that incentive is there.

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Absolutely agree. I think that once you've established your civilization over a few stars and planets your survival is pretty much guaranteed against astronomical destruction (if there's anything huge enough to destroy ALL the stars you've colonized, you probably can tell with billions of years in advance), the incentive changes and you now want to basically go on stealth mode to make sure you don't actually attract any nasty neighbour's attention, because that may be the only thing you can NOT see that may be dangerous.

And notice that people from different star systems in the same civilization will very likely only have extremely rare direct encounters due to the brutally long distances involved... it's highly likely the civilization will split up into completely separate "star nations", with their own internal issues to keep them busy and at some point may lose interest even in communicating with other star systems... without any incentive at all to expand further as the species survival is guaranteed... curiosity wouldn't be strong enough, probably, because after getting to know several star systems, you may decide they are look more or less the same, and to find anything really interesting might take multi-million year journeys and no one would be able to embark on something like that just for curiosity.

> if there's anything huge enough to destroy ALL the stars you've colonized, you probably can tell with billions of years in advance

I can't think of any phenomena that could come close to doing such a thing. But if there was one, why couldn't it be like gamma bursts?

I see no way a species that can technologically spread to a couple of star systems would stop expanding.

If you're scared of nasty aliens, the best defence is to conquer the whole galaxy before them.

There is no way to hide from an interstellar civilization.

Nasty or not, they could always produce self replicating probes and keep track of the whole galaxy.

Also, if you were able to colonize a couple of Star Systems, there's no way you are an anxious/scared species,

Exactly this. I was thinking about this the other day and using the web as a metaphor (bear with me).

It's easy to know where to go next when we only have one option to pursue (such as travelling to the next nearest planet or star). This is a lot like the early web when there were only a handful of interesting sites and discovering new cool sites was a goal in and of itself.

Today, I think we intuitively understand that there's no longer any value in trying to visit every website on the internet. Most sites offer zero value or even net negative value. The entire problem space pivots to one of knowing which 0.00001% of websites are valuable to a given situation.

When a civilization gains the ability to visit any planetary system, the problem shifts to one of filtering choices and information to minimize the amount of unnecessary travel or world-settling.

I assume this is a well-known concept. I'd love to read more if anybody knows what it's called.

One benefit is reduced risk of extinction by the various nasty ways the grand cosmos might annihilate a local-only civilisation.

Let's consider extinction mitigation as a luxury? I posit that sooner or later, as technology improves, the relative cost of such projects will go down to a point where some group of people think it is a good idea.

Again, you don't have to expand to more than a couple of self sustaining planets in a couple of solar systems to establish a reasonable redundant backup for mankind.

I don't think new discoveries suddenly change the physics of escaping gravity wells. I question whether interplanetary trade will ever move beyond intellectual property.

Basically, colonization will have to be altruistically funded without any expectation of economic return. We've proven we have limited capacity for that.

>We've proven we have limited capacity for that.

Currently.

In a system where resources are allocated not to cover the needs of all, but instead to ensure that the victor gets their spoils, this is true.

But IF a civilization makes it to a point where self-sustaining planet settlement is even a real possibility, I think you just have to assume they are post-scarcity and post-currency. Economic return isn't really a thing, if everyone can get what they want whenever they want it.

Therefore, any species with a natural propensity to exploration and curiosity as an individual is going to necessarily seek out new places as a whole. The individual will drive the societal, I guess is what I mean there. Because I want to see something new, and there is no scarcity of resources, society as a whole gets to see something new.

>I question whether interplanetary trade will ever move beyond intellectual property.

Honestly, I don't think so. Because, again, I'm of the firm belief that once a society is able to establish off-world colonies successfully, economics stops meaning anything at all, really.

> Because I want to see something new, and there is no scarcity of resources, society as a whole gets to see something new.

You might _explore_. You're less likely to _colonise_. The only way you get the sort of geometric expansion people love to talk about is if there's a very strong imperative to colonise, and it's just not clear that it exists.

I’ve heard it said that if humanity simply maintains its growth pace, there should be enough human bodies to pile up into the entire solar system just by waiting X number of years.

> if humanity simply maintains its growth pace

But humanity is not doing that. The current trend is world population will peak at just over 9 billion in about 30 years. Trends can change, but that is the current one.

Every growth curve is an S curve. Every time you see one of those studies where someone takes a system that is still in an early growth phase and projects it out to infinity at the current growth rate it is always nonsense.

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