With occupational safety, just like anything else, you can hire professionals and set whatever objectives and deadlines your budget allows. Companies that embrace it get much better and faster results than companies that resist it.
Maybe it will lead to treating the oceans as more of an actively managed resource. So that's one possibly positive thing that could partially offset the inevitable negatives.
Personally, I'm also really interested in learning more about human prehistory because much of it was coastal and now submerged.
Is that really an old story? There's usually no memory allocation after initial startup in safety- and mission-critical systems. Rolling over past the max value of an integer data type is a thing though, and they do reboot for that.
The DFH doesn't claim that the aliens would be "god-like" per your definition. They just have a first-strike capability and motive to use it. Could be a low risk-tolerance for coexisting with other aliens. Or something else. Either way, you don't have to suspend disbelief because you're arguing with a strawman you created.
I don't think you actually considered the energies and timespans required (let alone the political will) to yeet a rock at an unseen planet on the other side of the galaxy.
At 1% the speed of light, it will take 10 million years just see if you hit anything on the other side of Milky Way. If you have to wait 10 million years, why do you even care? You'll be extinct, as will your target.
Even if you do decide chuck a dinosaur killing sized boulder (which, really is probably the smallest you'd want to use), you'd have expend 4.5 * 10^23 joules just to accelerate it. That's equivalent of all the solar radiation that hits the Earth over five days. That's a huge lift for even a supposed Kardashev I civilization. It's something more practical for a Kardashev II civilization. Although to be fair, the practical threshold is probably somewhere between I and II. And let's be clear here. If you're dismantling planets to build mirrors, you're Galacticus.
Anyway, how would the decision to throw a rock across the galaxy even work? A civilization obtains Kardashev II, and immediately starts looking for Kardashev Is or earlier, and starts tossing rocks at them, just in case they don't go extinct in 10 million years, and somehow don't also become a Kardashev II in the next 10 million years, because as soon as they do, they're going to hit you with a rock in 20 million years? To put that in perspective, 20 million years ago was when apes and monkeys split on the evolutionary tree. 10 million years ago was when humans and apes split. At this point, you might as well toss a rock at every planet that has a biosignature, because 10 million years is a long time. Better keep tossing rocks in that direction, in case something else evolves. Maybe you better toss a planet at it, just be sure. That's only 2.19 * 10^37 joules, or 200 years of the sun's output. Shit. You better be Kardashev III. Wait! We know there aren't any Kardashev IIIs in the observable universe! Double shit!
If this casually genocidal Kardashev II civilization exists on the far side of the Milky Way, and wanted kill humanity, they'd be looking at homo erectus. They'd have wait another 100,000 years just to get a radio signal, and then what? Throw the rock immediately, and hope that in the ensuing 10 million years humanity hasn't learned how to redirect a relativistic rock?
Or maybe they just threw the rock without even waiting for the radio signal, and it's on its way right now! Maybe the asteroid that hit 65 million years ago was a warning shot! Maybe they were trying to kill off a potential Silurian civilization before it even got really started, and ironically spawned us!
Replicator machines could outlive their creators. Then maybe most civilizations think it's safer not to risk being discovered by one, just in case it exists. That seems reasonable and doable.
You’ve gone from accusing me of a straw man argument, to postulating that not only do the Stargate Replicators exist, but every other advanced civilization knows they exist but somehow hide from them, even though by all conservative estimates, if Von Neuman probes did in fact exist, more than enough time has elapsed that the entire galaxy should have been converted to a grey goo by now.
Replicator machines “seem doable”?!?
Explain. Seriously. Explain what technologies and energy sources would create a complex autonomous machines from unrefined raw materials.
If it’s easier, explain how you’d make make a paper clip from first principles in the middle of a Greenland glacier. What are you going to do? Use electrolysis to split the water, and then have a fusion device fuse hydrogen into iron? Scrape across the surface to find trace atoms, and hope you find enough iron? Even if you have the iron, are you going smelt it, or what? How do you plan to forge it into steel, and then shape it? Are you going to use a tunneling electron microscope to place individual atoms? What’s the energy budget for this? How are you collecting and storing it? What’s the mass of this machine?
At this point, we’re talking about a World Devastator from Star Wars: Dark Empire.
“Seems doable”! Pshaw! EVERY ONE of these thought experiments from the 1940s are just magical premise to base a much simpler analysis on. In the case of Von Neuman proves, it’s determining a limit on how fast you could settle the galaxy. It’s not a serious technical proposal. It never was.
Still a strawman because I didn't say sci fi replicators. You could make an automated system that travels, mines, and manufactures. Like a 3D printer that prints copies of itself. That's not unbelievable.
The problem with von Neumann probes isn't the proverbial 3d printer. It's the filament. You have to build an entire supply chain for every individual component from first principles. That's why I asked how do you even make a single paper clip in Greenland. That's literally just a stainless steel wire. That's trivial compared to making an excavator, let alone an interstellar spacecraft.
Think about it. Mineral deposits aren't uniformly distributed. You're going to need to combine elements from thousands of kilometers away, and that's assuming their reachable from the surface with relative ease.
The only plausible way to build a "replicator" is actually to send entire premade factories, harvesters, and transports to a planet in a giant cooperative swarm, along with literally tons of preprocessed materials for repairs until you get a self sustaining supply chain running. And that implicitly assumes that all the requisite materials are even available. Land on a planet without plate tectonics, and your heavier elements may forever be locked under tens of kilometers of solid rock, or even better 60 kilometers of solid ice, liquid water, and rock. (Good luck with your Europan gold mine!)
Oh yeah, and it all of it has to work after a million years in hibernation.
So there's no benefit to collaborating because of distances and time scales. A system of machines is plausible, so there's a non-zero risk of encountering something like that. Civilizations decide to hide because only bad things could happen if they don't. And now you have a dark forest. The hunter doesn't have to exist. The prey just has to be fearful.
By keeping up with capabilities, features, and compatibility. The algorithm doesn't become wrong, but it and the implementation do get surpassed in utility.
> The Mercury-4 is the culmination of years of research
I'm imagining some researcher after years of investment and experimentation eventually accidentally discovering the solution: "you mean it just shuts _itself_ off?!?!".
It doesn't shut itself off. It just stops cutting. It's like using concrete as a kitchen cutting board: that knife isn't going to do any damage, regardless of whether or not you stop pushing.
If you want to laser through metals, you need a different type of laser. Just as getting through concrete needs a different tool (say, a hammer chisel).
That's already how the world works. The bridge design company takes out insurance reflecting their liability. If something happens, they pay. If their supplier messed up a component, they can turn around and sue the supplier. Licensed professional engineers are already personally responsible for their projects to some extent, which can be very big and complicated. They're covered by professional liability insurance. All of this has been around for a long time.
I have a copy. I wouldn't say it's "too light" because there's nowhere else to easily get this type of information, especially not all in one place. There's no "heavier" alternative. Most documentation doesn't include pictures, much less cross sections.
You're conflating drag with drag coefficient. The plot you linked doesn't say anything about drag. Drag is more strongly proportional to speed than drag coefficient. That type of proportionality analysis is what's usually in the first chapter of aero textbooks.
Computers are great for marginal gains and saving labor costs, but they can't give a 10x improvement unless there's already a 9x improvement in materials and techniques. Small nit, but CAE is simulations, while CAD is just drafting.
