That’s an interesting point. I’m a bit skeptical of modeling risk as constant per unit volume since almost all of the volume bordered by civilizations will be empty and not contributing to survival. I think a better model would just use the number of independent/​disconnected planets colonized. I also expect colonies on other planets to be more precarious than civilization on Earth since the basic condition of most planets is that they are uninhabitable. That said, I do take the point that an interstellar civilization should be more resilient than a non-interstellar one (all else equal).
Yeah, I was somewhat lazily referring to planets and similar as ‘units’. I wrote a lot more about this here.
I don’t think precariousness would be that much of an issue by the time we have the technology to travel between stars. Humans can be bioformed, made digital, replaced by AGI shards, or just master their environments enough to do brute force terraforming.
Even if you do think they’re more precarious, over a long enough expansion period the difference is going to be eclipsed by the difference in colony-count.
That’s an interesting point. I’m a bit skeptical of modeling risk as constant per unit volume since almost all of the volume bordered by civilizations will be empty and not contributing to survival. I think a better model would just use the number of independent/​disconnected planets colonized. I also expect colonies on other planets to be more precarious than civilization on Earth since the basic condition of most planets is that they are uninhabitable. That said, I do take the point that an interstellar civilization should be more resilient than a non-interstellar one (all else equal).
Yeah, I was somewhat lazily referring to planets and similar as ‘units’. I wrote a lot more about this here.
I don’t think precariousness would be that much of an issue by the time we have the technology to travel between stars. Humans can be bioformed, made digital, replaced by AGI shards, or just master their environments enough to do brute force terraforming.
Even if you do think they’re more precarious, over a long enough expansion period the difference is going to be eclipsed by the difference in colony-count.