= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
wedrifid comments on Extraterrestrial paperclip maximizers - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (157)
I would weaken that claim to "all else being equal an alien civilization will prefer claiming resources from open space over raiding earth for resources". Mineral concentrations and the potential convenience of moderate gravity spring to mind as factors.
I agree with your general position.
You can catch asteroids by just grabbing them, while on earth you need all kinds of infrastructure just do dig stuff up. There would need to be some item with higher concentration, but even that i would expect to be easier available elsewhere. Not having a hostile biosphere is helpful for mining.
Existing living systems seem to prefer resources on earth to resources on asteroids. Aliens may do so too - for very similar reasons.
Alien species are unlikely to be able to live on Earth without terraforming or life support systems. They may want resources on Earth, but probably not for the reasons humans do.
"Alien species"? Like little green men? Come on! We are talking interstellar or intergalactic travel here, surely they'd have created their AGI by then. Let's not mix futurism and science fiction.
The reasons humans prefer reasons on Earth to resources on asteroids is because the (a) humans already live on Earth and (b) humans find it inconvenient to live elsewhere. Neither condition would be expected to apply to extrasolar species colonizing this solar system. timtyler's claim is therefore difficult to sustain.
My point is that the claim is irrelevant, because there can't be any biological aliens. We of course can discuss the fine points of theories about the origin of the blue tentacle, but it's not a reasonable activity.
I expect they could knock up some earth-friendly robots in under five minutes - and then download their brains into them. The Earth has gravity enough to hang on to its liquid water. It seems to be the most obvious place in the solar system for living systems to go for a party.
Gravity might not be something they actually want since gravity means you have gravity wells which you need to get out of.
Gravity makes it rather a lot easier to harvest things that are found in a gaseous or liquid form (at temperatures to which the source is ever exposed.)
Sure, gravity has both advantages and disadvantages and how much gravity matters a lot. If I had to make a naive guess I'd say that enough gravity to get most stuff to stick around but weak enough to allow easy escape would likely be ideal for most purposes, so a range of around Earth to Mars (maybe slightly lower) would be ideal, but that's highly speculative.
It would seem to depend on which resource was most desired.
My speculation is similar to yours. I can think of all sorts of reasons for and against mining earth before asteroids but for our purposes we don't really need to know. "All else being equal" instead of "no reason for any civilisation ever" conveys the desired message without confounding technicalities.