Why would you expect grabby aliens to expand faster than quiet expansionist ones? I didn’t readily find a reason in your linked piece, and I don’t see why loud vs. quiet per se should influence expansion speeds; both could presumably approach the ultimate limit of what is physically possible?
Just speculating here, but if you want to capture most of the energy of a star (e.g. by a Dyson swarm), this will be visible. And if you can only use a fraction of the energy available, this might reduce your expansion speeds.
Yeah so I was implicitly assuming that even the fastest civilizations don’t “easily” reach the absolute maximum physically possible speed such that what determines their speed is the ratio resources spent on spreading as fast as possible [1] : resources spent on other things (e.g., being careful and quiet).
I don’t remember thinking about whether this assumption is warranted however. If we expect all civs to reach this maximum physically possible speed without needing to dedicate 100% of their resources to this, this drastically dampens the grabby selection effect I mentioned above.
[1] which if maximized would make the civilization loud by default in absence of resources spent on avoiding this I assume. (harfe in this thread gives a good specific instance backing up this assumption)
In terms of potential tradeoffs between expansion speeds vs. spending resources on other things, it seems to me that one could argue in both directions regarding what the tradeoffs would ultimately favor. For example, spending resources on the creation of Dyson swarms/other clearly visible activity could presumably also divert resources away from maximally fast expansion. (There is also the complication of transmitting the resulting energy/resources to frontier scouts, who might be difficult to catch up with if they are at ~max speeds.)
By rough analogy, if a human army were to colonize a vast (initially) uninhabited territory at max speed, it seems plausible that the best way to do so is by having frontier scouts rush out there in a nimble fashion, not by devoting a lot of resources toward the creation of massive structures right away. (And if we consider factors beyond speed, perhaps not being clearly visible also has strategic advantages if we add uncertainty about whether the territory really is uninhabited — an uncertainty that would presumably be present to some extent in all realistic scenarios.)
Of course, one could likewise make analogies that point in the opposite direction, but my point is simply that it seems unclear, at least to me, whether these kinds of tradeoff considerations would overall favor “loud civ expansion speed > quiet civ expansion speed” (assuming that there are meaningful tradeoffs).
Besides, FWIW, it seems quite plausible to me that advanced civs would be able to expand at the maximum possible speed regardless of whether they opted to be loud or quiet (e.g. they might not be driven by star power, or their technology might otherwise be so advanced that these contrasting choices do not constrain them either way).
Thanks for your comment, Jim. :)
Why would you expect grabby aliens to expand faster than quiet expansionist ones? I didn’t readily find a reason in your linked piece, and I don’t see why loud vs. quiet per se should influence expansion speeds; both could presumably approach the ultimate limit of what is physically possible?
Just speculating here, but if you want to capture most of the energy of a star (e.g. by a Dyson swarm), this will be visible. And if you can only use a fraction of the energy available, this might reduce your expansion speeds.
Yeah so I was implicitly assuming that even the fastest civilizations don’t “easily” reach the absolute maximum physically possible speed such that what determines their speed is the ratio resources spent on spreading as fast as possible [1] : resources spent on other things (e.g., being careful and quiet).
I don’t remember thinking about whether this assumption is warranted however. If we expect all civs to reach this maximum physically possible speed without needing to dedicate 100% of their resources to this, this drastically dampens the grabby selection effect I mentioned above.
[1] which if maximized would make the civilization loud by default in absence of resources spent on avoiding this I assume. (harfe in this thread gives a good specific instance backing up this assumption)
I see, thanks for clarifying.
In terms of potential tradeoffs between expansion speeds vs. spending resources on other things, it seems to me that one could argue in both directions regarding what the tradeoffs would ultimately favor. For example, spending resources on the creation of Dyson swarms/other clearly visible activity could presumably also divert resources away from maximally fast expansion. (There is also the complication of transmitting the resulting energy/resources to frontier scouts, who might be difficult to catch up with if they are at ~max speeds.)
By rough analogy, if a human army were to colonize a vast (initially) uninhabited territory at max speed, it seems plausible that the best way to do so is by having frontier scouts rush out there in a nimble fashion, not by devoting a lot of resources toward the creation of massive structures right away. (And if we consider factors beyond speed, perhaps not being clearly visible also has strategic advantages if we add uncertainty about whether the territory really is uninhabited — an uncertainty that would presumably be present to some extent in all realistic scenarios.)
Of course, one could likewise make analogies that point in the opposite direction, but my point is simply that it seems unclear, at least to me, whether these kinds of tradeoff considerations would overall favor “loud civ expansion speed > quiet civ expansion speed” (assuming that there are meaningful tradeoffs).
Besides, FWIW, it seems quite plausible to me that advanced civs would be able to expand at the maximum possible speed regardless of whether they opted to be loud or quiet (e.g. they might not be driven by star power, or their technology might otherwise be so advanced that these contrasting choices do not constrain them either way).