So Fermi Paradox, in a nutshell says, if there are ETs, then where are they? Even if you accept c as the speed limit, and just expanding to one solar system every thousand years, there has been enough time several times over for the galaxy to have visited and or exploited? Fermi Paradox is a pretty expansive and fun topic, and thats a very very TL;DR about it.
So why would there ever be gates on planets which weren't exploited? Why hasnt anything come out of Sols gate?
Where is that supposed Federation of Aliens that the Factor represent?
Welcome! These forums will be deactivated by the end of this year. The conversation continues in a new morph over on Discord! Please join us there for a more active conversation and the occasional opportunity to ask developers questions directly! Go to the PS+ Discord Server.
What does the Fermi Paradox say about Pandora Gates?
Thu, 2015-05-28 22:56
#1
MrWigggles
What does the Fermi Paradox say about Pandora Gates?
Thu, 2015-05-28 23:09
#2
ORCACommander
well there is the possibility
well there is the possibility that the gates are self propagating. that when you enter in a valid address it it somehow pushes a new portal into existence at those coordinates. however all such gates are inherently unstable hence you not be able to redial addresses some times.
the other thing is that most likely non terran type planets outnumber the terran ones. with their rarity so high i suspect they would not be exploited at the same rate as barrens. and I dread with horror and awe the civilization that requires more than a few dozen systems worth of planets in raw resources.
Thu, 2015-05-28 23:13
#3
MrWigggles
Well, yea, that'd be Type 4
Well, yea, that'd be Type 4 civilization right? Fuckin scary thing.
Fri, 2015-05-29 03:02
#4
Lazarus
ORCACommander wrote:well
Is this referenced somewhere or is it just a theory of your own? I'm only asking because I can't recall seeing that, but given the volume of material it is entirely possible that I missed it and if so I'd like the check out that section.
—
My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.
Fri, 2015-05-29 08:43
#5
ThatWhichNeverWas
Pandora Gates; Post-Singularity Smallpox Blankets.
Ignoring a second the Gm-Only RAW, there are a couple of quibbles to the Fermi paradox - life doesn't just need to be intelligent; it also needs to be recognizable, use EM radiation to communicate and/or actually have an interest in spacetravel for us to notice it.
It may well be that there are alien species out there, but we're the only ones who give an expletive about it.
Regarding the gates; As I've said on another thread, they make perfect probes, so exploitation isn't a given.
More dramatically - even if the gate creators are utterly benevolent, the network itself is a colossal danger - if a hostile alien civilization finds one gate, then they can wipe out everyone else with a connection.
And that's ignoring the risk from the spread of microbial life or invasive species.
—
In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few.
But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?
Fri, 2015-05-29 09:03
#6
ORCACommander
Lazarus a little bit of both.
Lazarus a little bit of both. The books mention how sometimes you can never redial a used address and more than few dozen expeditions have been lost this way.
there is also the old maxim and its schlock variant, there is a point where any sufficiently advanced technology becomes akin to magic and or a weapon.
Fri, 2015-05-29 11:13
#7
Lazarus
Right. I knew about the
Right. I knew about the occasional instability of gate addresses. I was just wondering about this idea that the gates were self propagating.
I didn't mean to make it sound as though I was saying you were wrong or that you couldn't say that they worked that way. I was mostly curious if I had missed something.
—
My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.
Sat, 2015-05-30 02:14
#8
jKaiser
Why've no aliens other than
Why've no aliens other than the factors contacted us or waltzed through the gates? This assumes that anything through the gate is in the same universe or real in the first place, which is a big assumption. But my read on it is threefold: one, the gates have only been confirmed to exist for a few years, and most of them had to be excavated to some degree even if they existed before the TITANs fled through them. So there's a set of mundane obstacles right there for any other gatehopping species to jump into Sol. Two, transhumanity has opened as many extrasolar gates as the GM wants, but it's still an industry less than a decade old, with addresses to each established exo project taking up thousands of hours of activation time. Even if all five gates pop open to constantly new stars, there are more than 100 billion stars in the milky way. Even with the most optimistic interpretations of the Fermi Paradox and assumption that the gates are weighted toward the tiny percentage where life of some kind can operate, that's a numbers game beyond compare. And Penrose and the Pulsar gate (name eludes me at the moment) kinda suggest that the gates aren't quite so magnimanious.
Third...well, they have. Sort of. Someone built Penrose. Someone built the dyson shell. Someone built that ship in Babylon and the ship heading back to Course. Thing is, there's a second numbers game: time. If what happened to humanity is anything like typical (i.e. if the Factors aren't spewing shit...well, figuratively, anyway), there's a finite and terribly small average window of time any given species has to hop through the gates. Evolving to sentience takes a long, long time; self destruction through singularity or ETI or whatever takes a comparative blink of an eye. Odds are, we've just missed a hundred other races by a cosmological minute, like the Itkomi.
...and I suppose, the fourth reason if you want a bit of paranoia, they've been gatecrashing longer than us, they know how to avoid being noticed till they're good and ready.
As for the alien federation the Factors talk about...odds are, it doesn't exist, at least not as they describe it. But if it does, humanity is a volatile race who just edged out extinction. If you spotted a nest of fire ants a badger nearly destroyed, wouldn't you hang back a bit till things seem calmer and the ants stop nuking each other?
Sat, 2015-05-30 12:12
#9
R.O.S.S.-128
Old Bones
One interesting point I notice in the description of gate locations is that artifacts turn up a lot. Remnants of dead civilizations have been found far more frequently than we would expect from the gates being randomly distributed, suggesting a strong bias toward locations that, although barren now, had some kind of intelligent race in the general area at some point.
Which makes sense, the gates are clearly not natural phenomena, so someone had to build them. So their distribution is going to be biased toward locations that someone found interesting.
So the Fermi Paradox takes on a different and less paradoxical meaning in this context. We're finding alien civilizations, we're finding them all over the place. The question is no longer "where are they?", it's "why are they all dead?" Which isn't a paradox so much as an autopsy.
Except the Factors of course. For some reason, the Factors aren't dead. Which then brings up the question, why are they the exception? Time is a possibility of course, maybe all the dead ones we found died long before our solar system even formed, and had a good long run before they went. Maybe the Factors are the exception because they just happen to be about as young as we are, by sheer coincidence.
If that's the case, maybe they're bluffing with their Federation and their warnings against AI and gates. Perhaps they don't know much more than we do, but poking around they have found nothing but old bones on the other side of the gates just like we have, and the only live civilization they've found was us. They didn't find us through the gates, so they concluded that gates only lead to dead civs.
Or maybe they actually do know something we don't, in which case maybe we should be worried. Though worried about what, the gates or the Factors? After all, we haven't necessarily seen any indication that they actually have our best interests in mind, and they could have some ulterior motive behind intimidating us with our recent AI trauma and disturbing gate discoveries to slow down our inquiry into those areas.
—
End of line.
Sat, 2015-05-30 20:10
#10
MrWigggles
So then lets toss in the
So then lets toss in the Drake Equation. Which for those that don't know, is a tool used to estimate the number of concurrent living sapient technologically advance civilization. It doesn't measure the total number of civilation, just any that happen to be round for a given time.
The xeno sites found so far, with my read through are on par or above transhumanity but also all those sites are very very old. They were in ruins when humanity was getting farming under their thumb.
Maybe the gates don't have a bias toward places with xeno sites, but they have a bias to gates that's been activated? That would explain why no other agency has gone through ours. Before ours or the Titan use our gates were selected against by other agencies using the gates.
As for the comment that the gates leading us to the same reality... I think thats more of a philo questions then one of astrological questions. In so far, every gate destination has worked as our understanding of reality shows it to work.
If the gates have been going to different realities (Which is might... thats how FTL works in Old Man's War, right?), then its amazingly been only going toward realities that our with our exact rules. Even though there a large number of realities that our exactly like ours, there is an infinitive amount of realities that aren't like ours. Depending on which version of the multiworld you like.
Sat, 2015-05-30 23:56
#11
jKaiser
Throwing in Drake's equation
Throwing in Drake's equation is...problematic, since with every passing year the low and high estimates keep getting more extreme. A quick wikiwalk gave me detectable civilization estimates "in the range of N being from a low of 2 to a high of 280,000,000."
As for it being our own universe, I didn't quite mean it that literally (though strictly speaking, that fits the multiverse theory without a hitch. Infinite universes and all.) In the books, there are theories that the whole thing is a huge simulation, the mother of all VR. Though your point stands, it's mostly academic, since with nearly the whole population digitized...well, so could the rest of reality at this point.
Given the near-GRIMDARK nature of EP, there's another possible outcome that is disturbingly likely: the other civilizations are dead. Or harvested. It's no less likely that whatever need the TITANs see for harvesting brains is shared by other post-singularity intelligences (PSI for simplicity here) than any other outcome. All you need is one other PSI with the same idea, but prioritizing that over slipping through/creating the Pandora Gates, and you have a whole civilization assimilated into a superbeing.* After all, someone built the gates. If not the TITANs, are they still around, or did they fall prey to something nastier? Who's to say there's an upper limit on the size of a pandora gate, considering how much they already wreck physics' shit already. For all we know, Zombieland or any chunk of Earth could be a the site of a much, much larger gate in progress.
Frankly, it's almost guaranteed that there are hostile PSIs out there, even if the ETI isn't one in your version of the setting. Assuming the Factors are authentic, there must be some impetus for them to warn so specifically against singularities and AGI, to say nothing of the gates. Bottom line is, that's gonna potentially take a huge chunk out of the Drake Equation's numbers.
*Serious Spoiler for Dead Space III here, since it made me think of it.
Spoiler: Highlight to view
Fractal Brethren Moons, anyone?
Sun, 2015-05-31 16:32
#12
consumerdestroyer
MrWigggles wrote:As for the
Actually, there's a sidebar in Gatecrashing about a degraded signal Firewall captured of an emergency egocast back to our solar system from a nearby(ish) extrasolar location, so we know it's actually the same reality (which says nothing about the reality of this reality, since as has been mentioned in this thread and in a few places in the books, there are questions not only about the reality of things beyond the gates but about whether what happens in the solar system is happening in a simulation or not).
I like leaving these kinds of things [i]wide[/i] open as a GM (unless a character is focused on these kinds of things), it heightens the senses of unreality and paranoia that I find essential to a good EP game.
"You're asking me if you're real because you're a reinstantiated person with no previous experience with this tech from your poverty-stricken pre-Fall life? Well, if you can multiply a negative by a negative and get a positive, maybe being a near-identical copy of the brain of a simulation's way-too-good copy of a biological entity is somehow more real than [i]not[/i] being a copy in a real reality! Does that help? Why are you crying?"
Sun, 2015-05-31 16:41
#13
jKaiser
Suddenly those brinkers who
Suddenly those brinkers who hijacked IOCC-226 Tyche seem like they had the right idea. Better the digital madness you're sure of in isolation than the one you aren't surrounded by assholes.
Sun, 2015-05-31 17:02
#14
consumerdestroyer
I wonder which network of
I wonder which network of predictive algorithms mapped out the precise way those brinkers would meet up and plan their completely monitored isolation (if EP's reality is a simulation) and I wonder if the brinkers would consider them assholes for violating their privacy ahead of time by knowing what they'd do and why before they even did it.
Woah, actually, that just gave me some great ideas for singularity seeker/exhuman threats, regardless of the answer to the simulation question.
Sun, 2015-05-31 17:47
#15
Lazarus
MrWigggles wrote:So then lets
While the Fermi paradox is not an actual response to the Drake equation it is a functional response. In the 1950's the physicist Enrico Fermi postulated the paradox based on the fact that there were so many stars out there that the odds of intelligent life seemed almost assured. He also postulated that it should take about 10,000 years for intelligent life to scout the entirety of the Milky Way galaxy. The paradox, of course, being 'where is it?'
The Drake Equation is really just a refinement of Fermi's estimate that 'life was almost assured'. It was designed to try and put a very rough estimate (something which is in fact called a Fermi calculation based on some mathematical work done by Fermi that says you can get estimated that can be seen as indicative of something even if you don't really know the proper values to use) of how many civilizations should be out there. I've got no idea if Drake based the idea off refining Fermi's estimation of the existence of intelligent life or if it's just an example of parallel creation, but essentially Drake's equation doesn't add much to the Fermi paradox beyond taking the estimation of 'intelligent life being almost assured' and changing that to 'there should be between X and Y intelligent civilizations'. In both cases they generate an answer of 'we should see this' when we don't.
It is fairly clear that the gates do not lead to alternate realities because I believe there have been incidents with people going through one gate in Sol to another gate in Sol. Also, QE communication works. It is possibly that some exceedingly strange system could be constructed so that the gates are sending people through alternate realities and QE communication is working but there's a basic scientific principle that says that if all tests indicate a certain set of circumstances that set of circumstances should be determined to be true until disproven, even if it is possible to create a complex theoretical under which an alternate theory could work. This isn't actually Occam's Razor but it's close (in essence, you could create a whole new theory of gravity that is completely different from the current theory of gravity but which still 'works'. However, unless your theory produces a measurably different result there's no reason for it to be used.
—
My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.
Sun, 2015-05-31 20:38
#16
jKaiser
consumerdestroyer wrote:I
I bet any sapient would resent that sort of control. Hell, look at any crop up of the free will/predestination argument in appropriate religious discussions. The issue with the simulation approach is that you can only predict so far. Hell, look at orbital mechanics; it's essentially impossible to predict the course of an object beyond a certain point when acted upon by the gravities of multiple bodies. See also the Trojans and Greeks.
Of course, if you have a PSI running the thing, that may no longer be true with a superintelligence, but at that point you're not so much as tumbling down the rabbit hole as you are installing a bullet train to China.
Probably worth starting a new topic on, but the Tycho has held onto my mind ever since I read about it. I've wanted to explore that little niche of EP so badly, the kind of people who would jump on there, what they've managed to do with the probe, etc.
Mon, 2015-06-01 15:48
#17
consumerdestroyer
Well, according to Firewall
Well, according to [i]Firewall[/i] (metaplot spoiler? maybe?):
Spoiler: Highlight to view
Invisible Word is a secret server. I'll let a proxy in that server speak for themself: "A simulation’s resolution must be less than that of the universe within which it’s running. We try to break the sim." (p. 93)
Tue, 2015-06-02 08:34
#18
ThatWhichNeverWas
Objectively Solopsist.
When you really get down to it, does it matter if reality is a simulation?
It's actually perfectly reasonable that the network would only access realities with physical laws identical (or near enough) to ours, because the target reality must by definition have laws which allow the creation of Pandora Gates. Another possibility is that the Gates “translate” entities into forms which are compatible with the target reality so that either the subjective perception of both origin and destination reality is uniform.
Assuming of course that the person who sent the source originated in this reality :P
If I might wax philosophical for a second, accepting the possibility of multiple realities opens up several extremely interesting possibilities, one of which applies directly here;
Assume there are infinite universes, of which a subset (a lesser infinity) is variations on “our” universe.
It follows that for any given “instant” of time A (i.e. a given configuration of all particles and energy values that exist), there are also universes whose configuration is almost identical, but positions are off by minuscule values – essentially, one that is instant A but one plank-time into the future or past.
If this is so, then Time as a dimension in a single universe becomes a redundant concept – instead, the passage of time can be modelled as travel between nearly identical universes. This also gives an interesting definition of energy, speed and distance as the values which dictate the properties of the universe travelled to “next”.
Applying this to Pandora gates means that every time you step into one you travel to another universe which is different to the one you were in, and the difference is relative to the distance “travelled”. If you're in-system, then the difference is so small as to be imperceptible (a single electron in Luyten 726-8 A has a different spin), but travel to the other side of the galaxy and you may end up in a reality where humanity never evolved.
This gives another solution to the Fermi Paradox apropos Pandora Gates – whilst alien civilisations may grow and thrive in “our” universe, there are nonetheless going to be an effectively infinite number of universes where that civilisation died out – so the chances of actually travelling to a reality where the civilisation survived is infinitely low.
This is partially what I was talking about above - thanks to the potentially infinite resources of the gate network, all it takes is one PSI to be hostile to screw over every other species in existance, even if it isn't the ETI.
This was actually a key element in Mass Effect;
Spoiler: Highlight to view
The Great Cycle was based around the concept that synthetic life would inevitably destroy biological life - it didn't matter if some or almost all AIs were created friendly, eventually one would arise that is hostile and that would be the end. Essentially:
10: Create AI.
20: IF (AI = "Friendly") THEN GoTo 10 ELSE GoTo 30
30: Become Extinct.
—
In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few.
But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?
Tue, 2015-06-02 15:12
#19
Lazarus
ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:. . .
This is what I was talking about earlier. In the scientific method Parsimony is usually regarded as an important component to a theory. It is essentially like Occam's razor except that where Occam's razor says that the simplest answer is probably the correct one Parsimony says that if both theories produce identical results you should favor the theory that has an economy of explanation.
In other words, is it possible that the degraded signal is coming from Firewall agents from an alternate reality who have entered our reality and who are so similar to existing missing Firewall agents who left to undertake a mission that Firewall wasn't horribly confused by the message that they sent and that when we pass through the Pandora gate we enter alternate realities with physics and star configurations identical to our own and then either return to our reality or else have copies of us from other realities return to our realities while we are returning to realities that are indistinguishable from our own? Sure, it is possible and we can't even really disprove it, but the question is 'what does it matter?'. If I create a new theory that replaces gravity with invisible lizards armed with mirrors that push things together and deflect photons according to certain, apparently immutable, rules we might as well stay with the current model of gravity since they both produce the same results and the current model is simpler.
—
My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.
Tue, 2015-06-02 20:04
#20
ORCACommander
ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:
IF i may expand on the first part perhaps those dead civilizations we come across are ours, a different time a technically different place
and the problem with that cycle is that it precludes human synthetic coalitions.
Wed, 2015-06-03 12:37
#21
consumerdestroyer
Lazarus wrote
Yeah, and QE communication working in-system and out-system just fine doesn't make sense unless the two entangled particles were actually entangled at some point. You couldn't QE communicate with any other communicator in any other universe than the one with the paired particle, because in the alternate realities scenario the "copy" of your fellow sentinel and the "copy" of their QE communicator would exist in such a way that when they used their QE communicator it could only communicate with the "copy" you in their version of our solar system, and not the you in our version of our solar system. Their copy QE comm particles would only be entangled with the other copy QE comm particles, and your fellow sentinel's QE comm particles would only link to your QE comm.
Wed, 2015-06-03 15:11
#22
Lazarus
Oh, you can come up with all
Oh, you can come up with all sorts of wackiness to make the QE communication work as well, but again, it requires lots of complex convolutions and you end up with it functioning no differently from people remaining in the same reality.
—
My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.
Fri, 2015-06-05 10:51
#23
ThatWhichNeverWas
"Strange is the night where black stars rise..."
Not really. Synthetic civilisations are capable of growth on a logarithmic scale given access to sufficient resources. Assuming the Tech level in ME, the amount of resources available to a given civilisation is theoretically infinite, defined by the size of the civilisation.
Friendly Synthetics, however, cannot fully utilise the available resources, as some portion must be reserved for Organics.
Put together; friendly synthetic civilisations grow at rate EXP(N), and hostile synthetic civilisations grow at rate EXP(N+A), where A is greater than 0.
Several reasons! :D
1: It's fun :P
2: Parsimony only applies when all results are identical, and so only applies tangentially when one is speculating. In this case, a specific scenario was suggested – that the Gates lead to alternate realities – and so the question wasn't “is this possible under the current model” but rather “are there any models in which this is possible”.
3: Considering outre models of reality is a wonderful source of inspiration. Even if the model ultimately fails for one reason or another, it can introduce considerations which may be incorporated into the current model... and when we're talking about horror sci-fi, truly fantastic Monsters who operate according how how the universe “could” be, rather than how it actually does.
Ultimately the point is that if the gates “can” lead to other universes, even if they don't normally, it opens up more possibilities for storylines.
No wackiness necessary. In a multiworld universe, faster than light travel implicitly allows timetravel with multiple timelines.
In other words, you already have the possibility of receiving messages that where never sent, because the act sending forked the timeline. The further the distance travelled, the greater the time difference, therefore the greater the chance of impossible messages.
Yay Paradoxes!
“I saw the heavens verminous with strange flying things, and beneath them a hellish black city of giant stone terraces with impious pyramids flung savagely to the moon, and devil-lights burning from unnumbered windows.
And swarming loathsomely on aerial galleries I saw the yellow, squint-eyed people of that city, robed horribly in orange and red, and dancing insanely to the pounding of fevered kettle-drums, the clatter of obscene crotala, and the maniacal moaning of muted horns whose ceaseless dirges rose and fell undulantly like the wave of an unhallowed ocean of bitumen.”
-H.P. Lovecraft - “He”.
—
In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few.
But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?
Wed, 2015-06-24 16:20
#24
nezumi.hebereke
The gates actually make Fermi
The gates actually make Fermi a lot more forgiving.
Right now, we assume that civilizations occupy at least most of one planet, more likely multiple planets, and communicate and travel between them using things like spaceships and radio waves; i.e., stuff we might be able to detect from afar. It also assumes that, if these spacefaring races get far enough, they can go out to other solar systems and thereby, eventually, reach us (and given the amount of time they've had, they should have already).
The gates remove those assumptions. No one needs starships because the gates seem to be cheaper and faster. Presumably if they work for people, they can work for communications, so interplanetary radio signals aren't worthwhile any more either. However, this means that for the most part, people won't explore a planet that doesn't have a gate, and they won't develop the technology to support that infrastructure if a gate permanently shuts down.
Throw in the question of how long gates last for, how recently our local gates appeared, and if there can be multiple, non-interconnected gate networks, and it's easy to justify how life may be common, but not yet detected by us.