What Hard SF Universe Could Beat the Federation?

[18-Till-I-Die]

A thought strikes me...

The HSF civilization (can we think of a name? typing "HSF civilization" over and over seems rather silly) anyway, they would have no way to detect something happening at extreme ranges as they're sensors are limited to relativistic speed. I dont know the exact terms but thats a clunky way of saying they have no FTL sensors.

So why wouldnt the UFP, upon realizing this, just have their ships grab asteroids and hurl them at this race's planets using tractor beams. They dont even need to be traveling very fast, really, if they get big ones. Or get small ones and accelerate them to a high speed. In fact they could, if they felt like it, use their time advantage to build a huge ass mass driver if it comes to that.

Tie a warp core onto this thing (it need not be more than a mass driver with an engine, and that assumes they NEED that, say if their ships are insufficient) and they can move around striking at the HSF Civilization with impunity from extreme range with unlimited asteroid ammo, and the HSF civilization wouldnt even be able to track them or tell where they are until well after each impact, as they can move to fire each time.

What i mean is, everyone is thinking about how the HSF guys would or may fight, why not think about possible tactics for the Feds. They have the advantage of speed, sensors and communication vastly faster than the HSF Civilization's wettest wet dream, why waste it on brute force attacks when they could use it to strike at targets across the HSF guys' civilization with impunity? Or maybe i'm oversimplifying it.

[Starglider]

We're already going by the idea that what is generally called hard science fiction isn't that hard at all.

The 'hard' refers to the laws of physics. Transhuman AI requires no new physics - in fact it arguably requires no new hardware, current supercomputers would probably be adequate if only we knew how to program them correctly.

You say it's a software problem, but if it's an unsolvable software problem

It's no more unsolvable than nuclear fusion or antimatter starships. We haven't done it yet, but we're getting there slowly. IMHO the fastest and most promising routes to general AI are also the ones most likely to create unfriendly-to-human ones that will make humanity extinct, but that's a seperate issue.

it's still a demonstration that in the real world, with many more choices and variables than a Go game, AI would fail miserably.

Your Go example has already been shown to be completely worthless, equivalent to saying 'we can't build interstellar starships with chemical rocketry!'. No shit sherlock.

People suggested reverse engineering. Reverse engineering kills, AI or no AI. If an AI does not explore all possible routes, at the very least it will explore dangerous routes unknown to it since it lacks the background knowledge,

It's true that a highly accelerated research program may well involve stuff blowing up. It's unlikely to kill anyone though; certainly if strong AIs and nanotech are available, robots will be doing all the work.

It is hard to imagine any civilization putting its fate in the hands of intelligent machines,

Because? Guess you must hate the Culture novels.

even the most stupid of stupid would want control and use machines as tools rather than overlords.

So? If you manage to successfully control transhuman AI, it's still available to do very rapid analysis and design.

I don't have to show that AI's are less inventive, sensible or intuitive than humans. I'm waiting to see why I should believe they can be more.

Because at the lower limit, they can be built exactly like the human brain but with elements switching 1,000,000 times faster (probably more). Beyond that, the human brain is full of sucky, stupid, kludgy design non-decisions (that evolution stumbled into) that no sensible AI would be lumbered with.

AI people may not like to admit it, but their field has failed to produce its holy veil of machine sentience

Of course. I doubt anyone sane would have a problem admitting that any more than a fusion researcher would have a problem admitting that there are no fusion power stations yet.

Why do you think universities scaled back on AI labs in the past two decades compared to its heyday?

Because it was overhyped, and because academic AI stalled hard in the late 80s due to serious pathologies in the way the field is structured and funded.

So explain to me why we can make a Mars colony now, with current day technology, if the political and economic factors were aligned,

Cost is just as an important a factor in technology as anything else. If it isn't economically feasible, you can't do it, that's that. The main drive in space technology is to /lower costs/, specifically costs of putting stuff in orbit, so that applications become feasible. Your proposed vast star-girdling economy is /not feasible/ with current technology, otherwise we'd already be building it.

I feel perfectly justified calling it wanking too, because all mind uploading does is preserve dying geniuses.

And let you clone them as many times as you like, and run them at much faster speeds, and give them direct access to digital libraries, and give them telepathic connections to each other - before you start doing any modification.

To hear mind uploaders they seem to think Einsteins will result as a result of uploading ordinary people.

That requires modifying the brain simulations with improvements. That comes next. Exactly how easy this will be is not known, but simply adding a lot more neural tissue may work quite well (very difficult in biology due to mass and life support constraints - though evolution has still been increasing the size of the human brain as fast as it can).

This just won't happen: best case scenario they'll continue to be selfish human or alien beings (assuming HSF isn't human) and demand a robot body and enjoy pleasures they could never dream of. Not work on problems to advance their civilization.

This is even more ridiculous. There are plenty of dedicated scientists and engineers motivated to save their nation. How do you think the Manhattan project ever managed to recruit anyone?

[Junghalli]

So what is a useful ballpark figure for how long the reverse-engineering would take, to get the science behind it? (remember, they already know Trek tech is possible, and they may have some observational data.) A crude estimate might be 325 years divided by a million. How long is that?
About three hours. And once the science is done actually making the stuff is trivial.

Other people have already ripped up this superintelligence-wanking pretty well. There's a lot more to science than just sitting there thinking of stuff. Superintelligence doesn't get you around the necessity of having to do experiments, or the practical difficulties of retooling your entire infrastructure.

[Darth Wong]

Because 'military equipment' and 'power gathering / redirection equipment' are synonymous in such a scenario. I've mentioned this already, is there some reason this would not be the case?

Why the fuck do I have to prove that they would NOT have it, when you have completely failed to explain why they WOULD have it except to simply declare it as fact? Why don't you explain how A leads to B in this case? Why should any HSF civilization be constantly prepared for attack from aliens that, so far as it knows, cannot possibly arrive in force?

Why would it need to? A near-type II civilization is handling hundreds of yottawatts of energy, using quadrillions to quintillions of components and millions to billions of entirely separate power distribution networks, which likely need to be able to switch targets relatively rapidly - if infrequently.

Wank all you like about the number of watts they can pump out. It's not as if they would have a huge population consuming all of this power, right? They just build all this capacity for no reason and then have it sitting around, right?

You need some seventy million rings of km-wide solar collectors / emitters in order to do this, each of which would contain at least as many individual devices. Is there something non-HSF about using advanced solar cells and FET lasers to this effect?

Why the fuck would you expect such a civilization to be able to shut down its entire infrastructure in order to transform it into a weapon?

How could such a network be constructed in the first place if it were not exceptionally robust? Robustness isn't a design -goal- here, it's a necessity of the swarm itself. Vulcan orbits are not perfectly stable, and the occasional extrasolar meteor needs to be accounted for.

Obviously, you don't understand a goddamned thing about engineering. You design it to be as robust as necessary for your mission requirements. You do NOT design it to be orders of magnitude more robust than it needs to be. So unless these people actually projected an attack from FTL aliens, they would not have designed their infrastructure to withstand one.

Above and well beyond that, no single point in the power network can be capable of handling more than an order of magnitude or so more energy than an individual collector. IF it -weren't- robust, then it would require the same sorts of magical materials that are commonplace in soft sci-fi.

So? You still have the ability to take out key codes at will; all this means is that there will be a lot of them. And why assume they can insta-replace any nodes you destroy? Why the fuck would they have this capacity built into the system, when each node is probably intended to last quite a long time and they had never conceived of FTL aliens taking out nodes at will? And then there's the fact that their industrial infrastructure would be dependent on slow-ass shipping that you could easily disrupt.

What sort of structure could possibly harness and distribute any significant fraction of a star's energy without being composed of millions to billions of largely independent subsystems, with each of those being composed of just as many subsystems of their own? What sort of focus point could possibly exist to handle more than a trillionth of the sun's total output?

And what possible use is any of this as a weapon? It's being used to power their civilization, genius. The number of people living in their civilization won't suddenly decrease when they need more power, so you can seriously disrupt their civilization by simply reducing the amount of power available to it, and the reliability of that power.

Even if you could concoct some super-magical material to do so, why would you?

You obviously don't get the whole point here: you can shut down their industrial infrastructure pretty easily with pinpoint strikes on shipping, manufacturing/refining facilities, and power distribution points. The fact that you can't take them all out in a short timeframe is irrelevant; you only need to seriously degrade their operation.

[Ariphaos]

Why the fuck do I have to prove that they would NOT have it, when you have completely failed to explain why they WOULD have it except to simply declare it as fact? Why don't you explain how A leads to B in this case? Why should any HSF civilization be constantly prepared for attack from aliens that, so far as it knows, cannot possibly arrive in force?

So, it has these individual solar collector cells / FET laser combos. They harness energy and redirect it, harnessing and spreading the Sun's energy throughout the system.

In order to do this, each of these needs to be fairly efficient, re-target rapidly, on a semi-routine basis - since the central nodes are all orbiting the Sun, they need to re-target simply to provide continuous power.

It's not a matter of having prepared, it's a function of the HSFC's power-distribution network itself.

Individually, they aren't much, but a few thousand of these are just as much of a weapon as a phaser. And there are quadrillions of them.

Wank all you like about the number of watts they can pump out. It's not as if they would have a huge population consuming all of this power, right? They just build all this capacity for no reason and then have it sitting around, right? :wanker:

Of course. Ideally, they would be a network of AIs living in their own virtual worlds doing whatever. Some magical restriction keeping them from downcycling or sleeping?

Oh yes, they'll be vulnerable and some will die. I'm not debating that. I'm debating that the numbers involved are beyond anything Star Trek has ever dreamed of.

The OP specified that it's an HSF Civilization, not exactly what form it needs to take.

Why the fuck would you expect such a civilization to be able to shut down its entire infrastructure in order to transform it into a weapon?

Where the fuck did I say entire?

For point defense, the numbers wouldn't add up to more than a fraction of a percent. Any offensive measure would likely not involve more than half and have far more coordination involved.

Obviously, you don't understand a goddamned thing about engineering. You design it to be as robust as necessary for your mission requirements. You do NOT design it to be orders of magnitude more robust than it needs to be.

I don't think you're getting what I'm saying.

Such a power distribution network is not robust just for the hell of it. It's robust because -that's the only way it can be-. It's several quintillion objects largely free-floating in space, not a ringworld or some absurd single construction. It might be because I'm seeing that this is a networking and coordination problem more than an engineering one, but the physical engineering ends with the infrastructure that built the array, not the actual array itself.

So unless these people actually projected an attack from FTL aliens, they would not have designed their infrastructure to withstand one.

The only limit I can think of is dealing with an assault coming from within the swarm proper, and/or a limit on how fast target switching can occur - which is assuming the swarm's interior is not going to be more resistant to phaser strikes. In the case of FET laser transmission, the latter doesn't seem to be a necessary limitation. The former may be a large nuisance to reconfigure for, but I don't see why it would be utterly impossible.

So? You still have the ability to take out key codes at will; all this means is that there will be a lot of them.

Of course they'll be able to. But the key words here are 'a lot'. Outside of the star-destroying missile, the Federation requires an immense amount of time to drop them all, during which the HSF civilization can orient a more defensive operation.

And why assume they can insta-replace any nodes you destroy?

I don't. Merely that procedures would be in place for replacing them. A small number of spares would likely be available to do so - but this really would be nothing in comparison to the number the Federation was destroying.

But destroying nodes would not linearly reduce the HSFC's capabilities, at least not initially. The Sun would have multiple overlapping shells around it.

Why the fuck would they have this capacity built into the system, when each node is probably intended to last quite a long time and they had never conceived of FTL aliens taking out nodes at will?

Extrasolar meteors will need to be accounted for. In addition to manufacturing faults that will inevitably take a few nodes out earlier than intended. And as I mentioned, the Vulcan orbits are not perfectly stable - they are the most efficient but that instability will need to be accounted for, either by better than average maneuvering, a continuous stream of replacements, or (more likely) both.

And then there's the fact that their industrial infrastructure would be dependent on slow-ass shipping that you could easily disrupt.

This is the main reason I'm not claiming the HSF civ could hold out forever. The infrastructure that's already in place, however, is going to take quite some time to deal with outside of the star-nuke.

And what possible use is any of this as a weapon? It's being used to power their civilization, genius. The number of people living in their civilization won't suddenly decrease when they need more power, so you can seriously disrupt their civilization by simply reducing the amount of power available to it, and the reliability of that power.

You're assuming such a civilization would have fleshy people as its constituents, each one making use of not much more power than they need. This is by no means required or even desirable for such a civilization.

You obviously don't get the whole point here: you can shut down their industrial infrastructure pretty easily with pinpoint strikes on shipping, manufacturing/refining facilities, and power distribution points. The fact that you can't take them all out in a short timeframe is irrelevant; you only need to seriously degrade their operation.

I'm not arguing any of that, I just believe they will be able to put up more of a defense than you give them credit for. Some of their industry will also lie within gas giants, which will be more favorable for the HSF civ in time, if not right at the start.

[Patrick Degan]

So, it has these individual solar collector cells / FET laser combos. They harness energy and redirect it, harnessing and spreading the Sun's energy throughout the system.

In order to do this, each of these needs to be fairly efficient, re-target rapidly, on a semi-routine basis - since the central nodes are all orbiting the Sun, they need to re-target simply to provide continuous power.

It's not a matter of having prepared, it's a function of the HSFC's power-distribution network itself.

So... solar collectors designed to make orientation adjustments for orbital positions of the planets and habitats in their system moving in wholly predictable paths at tens of kilometres per second at most can suddenly be utilised to cope with FTL objects? Or objects not only capable of high relativistic velocities but also rapid accelerations and changes of vector? Such as, say, Federation starships? Or warp missiles?

Individually, they aren't much, but a few thousand of these are just as much of a weapon as a phaser. And there are quadrillions of them.

Yes, and as has been pointed out in this thread multiple times those are being employed to power this civilisation —a function they can't be pulled away from for any appreciable length of time without causing severe consequences to the populations dependent upon that collection array.

And you have still not explained the basis for the assumption of this civilisation having "quadrillions" of these array. You only state it a priori over and over again.

[Starglider]

Individually, they aren't much, but a few thousand of these are just as much of a weapon as a phaser. And there are quadrillions of them.

What part of 'light-speed weapons spread over several light minutes of space are useless against FTL ships' are you failing to get? To make matters worse they are controlled by lightspeed command links driven by lightspeed sensors. They are nothing but a large set of fragile targets.

I don't think you're getting what I'm saying.

Such a power distribution network is not robust just for the hell of it. It's robust because -that's the only way it can be-. It's several quintillion objects largely free-floating in space,

Several quintillion objects with no special resistance to relativistic gravel. You could literally wipe these out by having a fleet make a few runs at high impulse spraying sand out of the shuttlebays. It'll impact the flimsy solar collectors like a massive barrage of tacnukes.

But destroying nodes would not linearly reduce the HSFC's capabilities, at least not initially. The Sun would have multiple overlapping shells around it.

I see you've turned the infrastructure wank level up to matrioska brain levels. There is no reason to think this would involve redirecting large amounts of energy around, which /inevitably/ reduces efficiency and increases construction costs. If you've got vast numbers of power-consuming AIs that can be switched off as needed, it is /far/ more likely that the CPUs are co-located on the solar array platforms. The /only/ time it makes sense to beam that much power around is if your industrial facilities are all clustered around matter sources (i.e. planets and asteroid belts) - and if you've transformed most of the mass in the system into a matrioska brain, this doesn't apply. In fact in such a situation the industrial capabilities may well have attrophied into virtually nothing, due to no need for production of anything but a few replacement solar-powered AI nodes.

The infrastructure that's already in place, however, is going to take quite some time to deal with outside of the star-nuke.

But you have to admitt that firing one of Sonan's trilithium torpedoes into the system star would be hilarious. All those solar power platforms would go up like ricepaper in a firestorm.

You're assuming such a civilization would have fleshy people as its constituents... Some of their industry will also lie within gas giants

Industry producing what if they're all lotus-eating AGIs?

[Ariphaos]

So... solar collectors designed to make orientation adjustments for orbital positions of the planets and habitats in their system moving in wholly predictable paths at tens of kilometres per second at most can suddenly be utilised to cope with FTL objects? Or objects not only capable of high relativistic velocities but also rapid accelerations and changes of vector? Such as, say, Federation starships? Or warp missiles?

The Federation has quite a tendency to engage at close ranges and STL speeds. And in order to punch out something meaningful - are there any numbers on the Federation actually making a significant number of warp missiles?

When power reallocation is desired they will want a fast-switching ability such as that provided by a FET laser, for optimum efficiency. The result is similar to TNG phasers, if not as dense. There's no reason for them not to have such a capability, even if it would take them several hours to come up with a proper reaction plan, they have years in any normal scenario.

Yes, and as has been pointed out in this thread multiple times those are being employed to power this civilisation —a function they can't be pulled away from for any appreciable length of time without causing severe consequences to the populations dependent upon that collection array.

As you failed to read in my post, there is no reason to assume such a civilization has that limitation.

And you have still not explained the basis for the assumption of this civilisation having "quadrillions" of these array. You only state it a priori over and over again.

Basic math for them being one kilometer wide and being placed within Vulcan orbits. For a Type II civilization based in our Solar System, a few quadrillion is the smallest possible number that could be used to cover the entire Sun.

What part of 'light-speed weapons spread over several light minutes of space are useless against FTL ships' are you failing to get? To make matters worse they are controlled by lightspeed command links driven by lightspeed sensors. They are nothing but a large set of fragile targets.

And yet, for some reason, the Federation routinely engages at STL and some ships makes use of entirely STL sensors when in combat.

We're not dealing with an uber-FTL civilization here. The Federation's abilities are disparate and inconsistent.

Several quintillion objects with no special resistance to relativistic gravel. You could literally wipe these out by having a fleet make a few runs at high impulse spraying sand out of the shuttlebays. It'll impact the flimsy solar collectors like a massive barrage of tacnukes.

That would be a superior means for attacking from within the swarm if it's resistant against phasers, yes.

Otherwise, or from the outside, a phaser sweep could cover just as much and probably more reliably.

I see you've turned the infrastructure wank level up to matrioska brain levels. There is no reason to think this would involve redirecting large amounts of energy around, which /inevitably/ reduces efficiency and increases construction costs. If you've got vast numbers of power-consuming AIs that can be switched off as needed, it is /far/ more likely that the CPUs are co-located on the solar array platforms. The /only/ time it makes sense to beam that much power around is if your industrial facilities are all clustered around matter sources (i.e. planets and asteroid belts) - and if you've transformed most of the mass in the system into a matrioska brain, this doesn't apply. In fact in such a situation the industrial capabilities may well have attrophied into virtually nothing, due to no need for production of anything but a few replacement solar-powered AI nodes.

There is at least one other use - building mass drivers to colonize and/or transport to nearby star systems with.

But otherwise I would concede that point.

But you have to admitt that firing one of Sonan's trilithium torpedoes into the system star would be hilarious. All those solar power platforms would go up like ricepaper in a firestorm.

The explosion is FTL too, isn't it?

FTL explosions are very interesting. Any subject would initially suspect that it was the center of such an explosion, if it somehow survived.

Industry producing what if they're all lotus-eating AGIs?

Not much, really. Deuterium refining and possibly other forms of filtration mining. This would be more active if mass drivers were being used.

[brianeyci]

Okay man, before we or I continue arguing the minutae can we all step back a minute and consider what a HSF civilization is?

I don't know how many of you followed the gun control threads a half year ago, but Gil put up an essay of the most likely American dictatorship. Not a possible dictatorship, but a plausible dictatorship. And people came to the conclusion, at least the reasonable people, that guns does not really stop the American government, at least its modern incarnation, from becoming tyrannical, because the same people who support guns would likely support a theocratic, religious Jesus bible thumping state.

Where am I going with this? If the Federation can defeat the most likely HSF, then the Federation wins. If it can't then we can talk about wanked out HSF all the time, huge power generation, an entire civilization dedicated to the destruction of another, etc., etc., but then the Federation wins. Since we're calling out most HSF in fiction as not really hard at all, we have to invent our own most likely form of HSF.

Likely this HSF will have fusion power and mastery of an entire solar system. Their transportation system will likely be geared towards slow, long-term sustainable travel and not quick reaction times. We're talking permanent asteroids shuttling thousands or tens of thousands or even millions of people between colonies in said solar system. The asteroids will be on L5 orbits spaced apart so an asteroid arrives every few months to the home system. Likely, robotic overlords will not be ruling said system. Truly evil or supressive governments discourage dissent and ingenuity, so the most likely result is the government would be enlightened and support human rights and therefore robotic rights. Likely artificial intelligences, even if they were possible to create, would not be slaves. Or, said civilization might even ban the construction of AI's thinking the creation of a slave underclass undesirable and only promote "dummy" AI's. Intelligent AI's shoehorned into research and development without their consent would likely be viewed as cruel and unusual torture. So there will likely be dumb AI's, as smart as necessary and no more, with a few extremely smart ones for critical applications, but always under the supervision of slow thinking slow reacting (in comparison) men.

The world would likely be under a single government if the premise of total solar system colonization is true, or if not under a single government then a single agency with overriding powers such as a beefed up UN. This single agency would be full of rational, intelligent men or at the very least men concerned with their own self-preservation. Each and every single citizen would have riches unimaginable, due to the amount of raw material available from asteroid belts. The amount of iron in a single asteroid could exceed all the iron ever mined on Earth! We're talking every single citizen living an immense quality of life, higher than Western first world. The amount of opulence would make the Federation brats seem like beggars. Mind uploading if possible would be done by every citizen afraid of information death, and citizens would enjoy all the manner of pleasure drugs, virtual realities, and sexual fantasies. It would be a true post-scarcity environment, with the resulting dulling of the blade of the civilization. Nearly all citizens would care about maintaining the status quo at all costs, and the few citizens who gave a shit about true discovery would be outnumbered and probably forced into arrangements where they enhance the pleasure of the vast majority of others, just like engineers in today's society are forced into working for corporations which make wasteful products. But this problem in a post-scarcity society would be many times worse over, with the smart paid the most to work in the entertainment and pleasure industry.

I am on the optimistic side, so I believe that any truly evil government would never truly have the ingenuity to colonize the entire solar system. A quasi-religious government probably stands the best chance of riling up the masses in a religious crusade. The entire system would be as stable and static as possible, and respond poorly to any external shocks which they have concluded is impossible. Most of their scientists and engineers would be devoted to making their citizens' lives better, through a quasi-religious belief of furthering their race's dominance of the solar system. In fact, most likely all sciences other than those related to leisure and pleasure would stagnate and new developments would not occur except in the area of medical science. Lifespans would go to several hundred years and people's method of thinking would literally change. They would become slow, long-term planners.

Now read that again. Does the above society sound like one which will respond well to any external shock? You don't even have to mention invasion. Sure you can invent any HSF whose sole purpose would be to shoot off a single shot and destroy a single planet, but come the fuck on. If the Federation can kill the most likely HSF, then they've won this thread.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Again, i ask is there ANY reason the Feds cant stand off at the far end of the HSF civilization's sensor range and fling asteroids at them?

What is the HSF civilzation gonna do? Shoot randomly at space and hope to hit something they cant see, that can pick the place and time of each attack with impunity? And who have an infinite ammunition supply and all the time in the universe on their hands?

[Darth Wong]

It seems to me that the pro-HSF argument has devolved to "well, the Feds could do all of these things, and they've even done them sparingly in the past so they're not just made-up wank tactics, but they ... won't. Ever. Not against the HSF civ".

[Shroom Man 777]

Woe comes the day when Wong sides with Trek on anything. I guess hard sci-fi isn't really as long, or strong, or haaard as it wants to be.

[Junghalli]

The explosion is FTL too, isn't it?

Or the Amagossa (sp?) Observatory just orbited within a few light minutes of the star.

What's really weird is that when Soran shoots the torpedo into Veridian III's sun the sky goes dark immediately. Which is very strange because if somebody extinguished the sun right now we'd still see it shining for 18 minutes due to light lag. The obvious conclusion is that Veridian III orbits within a few light seconds of its sun, but that brings up the question of how the hell it hasn't been tidally locked (not to mentioned fried if its star wasn't really dim). Even if the explosion propagated at FTL you should still see the sun shining normally before it arrived.

[Nova Andromeda]

If the Federation can defeat the most likely HSF, then the Federation wins.

-The OP didn't ask whether your average HSF civ (either in terms of what's normally written or what 'normally' exists) stands a chance. It asks if there is any HSF civ that stands a chance.

If this HSF civ has so expansively colonized its own system, it has almost certainly come to the conclusion that FTL travel is impossible, so it will not be attacked by fleets of alien warships. It would certainly not design defenses against something which appears to be impossible and which has never happened in its long history.

-I wasn't aware that we could exclude the possibility of FTL travel already (in real life). Why should we assume the HSF civ knows the answer and that the answer is no (as opposed to yes)? As a side note, what do you think about the idea that an HSF civ will be devoting a significant fraction of its resources to very expensive research (stuff gigantic particle accelerators in space).
-An HSF civ may be old, but wouldn't its planning consider much longer time scales?
-Isn't it reasonable for advanced HSF civ with super intelligences to have plans to maximize its survival? This includes plans to minimize the damage from large stellar events (such as gamma ray bursts, rouge asteroids, nearby supernova, etc.), but more importantly to ensure survival of the civ. Given the vast resources available to an HSF civ spanning many systems it could easily devote some to 'unlikely, but deadly' possibilities such as hostile aliens with FTL travel. The solution to those sorts of problems is probably 'run and/or hide before it happens with enough resources to start over.' Those types of assets and assets for surviving large stellar events could be adapted to survive a Federation onslaught.


-I still don't see anyone proposing a good counter to diplomatic options that involve bringing other Trek powers in the war on the HSF civ side or at least providing the HSF civ (knowingly or unknowingly through trade or whatever) with the FTL resources it needs to conduct effective information warfare against the Federation.
-In order to counter the information warfare capabilities of a Type II civ with super intelligences, one needs to prevent interference from other Trek entities AND the Federation needs to go doomsday immediately to avoid contact. Why should starting conditions so heavily tilted toward the Federation be assumed?


-I'd really like an SDnet spell checker! How much would one cost?

[brianeyci]

If the Federation can defeat the most likely HSF, then the Federation wins.

-The OP didn't ask whether your average HSF civ (either in terms of what's normally written or what 'normally' exists) stands a chance. It asks if there is any HSF civ that stands a chance.

That's right, who stands a chance? Go name one.

If it isn't as hard as the op dictates, then we invent the most likely one. Sorry, the op doesn't have to spell out the obvious.

Those types of assets and assets for surviving large stellar events could be adapted to survive a Federation onslaught.

Holy shit people are pulling out all the stops aren't they. What do you imagine this adaptation to be? I imagine generational or seed ships going from system to system, given oh I don't know, FTL violates physics. How do sleeper ships or seed ships change the outcome at all? What are you smoking man?

[Patrick Degan]

So... solar collectors designed to make orientation adjustments for orbital positions of the planets and habitats in their system moving in wholly predictable paths at tens of kilometres per second at most can suddenly be utilised to cope with FTL objects? Or objects not only capable of high relativistic velocities but also rapid accelerations and changes of vector? Such as, say, Federation starships? Or warp missiles?

The Federation has quite a tendency to engage at close ranges and STL speeds. And in order to punch out something meaningful - are there any numbers on the Federation actually making a significant number of warp missiles?

I have cited the warp missile as a weapon which can be far more easily developed and deployed in large numbers to execute a campaign of mass destruction without the Federation having to risk a single ship in an invasion attempt. The things are essentially unmanned warp shuttles with up to 2000kg of matter/antimatter in the nose.

When power reallocation is desired they will want a fast-switching ability such as that provided by a FET laser, for optimum efficiency. The result is similar to TNG phasers, if not as dense. There's no reason for them not to have such a capability, even if it would take them several hours to come up with a proper reaction plan, they have years in any normal scenario.

"Fast switching ability"? Are you seriously unable to grasp the problem of reorienting a very large focussing lens which has been designed and built to maintain orientation upon orbital objects proceeding along fixed pathways at velocities of tens of kilometres per second to track targets moving at many times that velocity and also capable of rapid changes of vector?

Yes, and as has been pointed out in this thread multiple times those are being employed to power this civilisation —a function they can't be pulled away from for any appreciable length of time without causing severe consequences to the populations dependent upon that collection array.

As you failed to read in my post, there is no reason to assume such a civilization has that limitation.

There is EVERY reason to assume such a civilisation has that limitation. What the fuck do you think that collection array was built for in the first place except to power said civilisation?!

And you have still not explained the basis for the assumption of this civilisation having "quadrillions" of these array. You only state it a priori over and over again.

Basic math for them being one kilometer wide and being placed within Vulcan orbits. For a Type II civilization based in our Solar System, a few quadrillion is the smallest possible number that could be used to cover the entire Sun.

And why would that many focussing lenses and mirrors be necessary in the first place? Why would an orbital habitat civilisation require anything more than isotropic collectors for each individual colony module? The only places requiring power being beamed over large distances would be habitats orbiting beyond the 1 A.U. radius and those would be few and far between —literally— in relatively "fixed" orbital locations, most likely around planets, which could be tracked effectively to maintain a beam focus on the local collection network without requiring more than several thousand lenses to provide a continual beam propagation to the outer colonies.

[Nova Andromeda]

If the Federation can defeat the most likely HSF, then the Federation wins.

-The OP didn't ask whether your average HSF civ (either in terms of what's normally written or what 'normally' exists) stands a chance. It asks if there is any HSF civ that stands a chance.

That's right, who stands a chance? Go name one.

-What do you think we've been doing for the last 8 pages if not describing features of a HSF civ that has a chance against the Federation?!?

Those types of assets and assets for surviving large stellar events could be adapted to survive a Federation onslaught.

Holy shit people are pulling out all the stops aren't they. What do you imagine this adaptation to be? I imagine generational or seed ships going from system to system, given oh I don't know, FTL violates physics. How do sleeper ships or seed ships change the outcome at all? What are you smoking man?

-Your imagination may be utterlly crippled, but everything I've suggested is well within the bounds of an HSF civ. Things like sleeper ships and seed ships give the HSF civ time before it's destroyed. In a fight where brute force is the only factor that won't matter, but in this fight the HSF civ's primary weapons seem to be information warfare and diplomacy.

[brianeyci]

-What do you think we've been doing for the last 8 pages if not describing features of a HSF civ that has a chance against the Federation?!?

Features of a non-existant HSF or a HSF that cannot be logically plausible. This is not genius stuff: when you communicate with people you require a common ground and apparently Mike and other people have been assuming a reasonable HSF and not a HSF whose entire purpose is to shoot off a single shot from their sun or other insane ideas. If you are going to semantic whore about the op (which by the way you and others have violated by whining about HSF not having FTL when clearly the intent is to compare physics violating civilizations wiht non-physics violating civilizations and you and others have violated by repeatedly bringing up the reverse engineering bullshit) you can expect no less from me: name one, not some bullshit you pulled out of your ass.

-Your imagination may be utterlly crippled, but everything I've suggested is well within the bounds of an HSF civ. Things like sleeper ships and seed ships give the HSF civ time before it's destroyed. In a fight where brute force is the only factor that won't matter, but in this fight the HSF civ's primary weapons seem to be information warfare and diplomacy.

I just don't imagine retarded shit. Sleeper ships and seed ships would not alter the outcome of a war assweed. That's like saying sleeper ships and seed ships would alter the outcome of a war with the Imperials between the Federation. Brute force is what matters because it can be quantified and more importantly that's the fucking premise (all out war). For someone who whines about me violating the op maybe you should see how many times you've tried to weasel your way around it.

As for "unfair" who the fuck said something has to be fair? War between the Federation and the Empire would involve Star Destroyers appearing in orbit of planets and demanding surrender, and all the whining about no prior contact with the Rebels doesn't change a whit. So whining about the HSF having no prior contact doesn't change a shit either. Weak hand, weak whining, do better and stop being lame.

[Darth Wong]

I can't believe that this idiotic "giant mirror array weapon" bullshit has actually gone on for so long. It is a plan designed by idiots, for idiots. There is no fucking way a civilization would be able to shut down its entire infrastructure for any reasonable length of time in order to try and destroy a planet orbiting a star many light-years away. Nor is there any conceivable reason why a civilization would dedicate so much of its industrial output to construct a vast infrastructure for fighting an enemy that, as far as they know, does not exist. The people arguing for this preposterous notion have been reduced to saying that you can't prove it's NOT true, thus cribbing a page from religious fundamentalists.

And the idea of targeting ships is even more preposterous. Anyone who can seriously suggest that a system designed for power collection would be easily and quickly adapted to tracking and hitting starships is a fucking moron, who obviously lacks even the slightest clue about basic things like moment of inertia or the most elementary fundamentals of engineering practice.

[Plushie]

Digging this out of it's four hour obscurity, I'd like to make a comment, or rather, a few comments:

[quote=]Imagine an AI "brain" with roughly equal complexity to a human one, but working at computer speeds. A reasonable estimate for the speed difference is a factor of a million - in fact it's probably more; a human brain works at about 20Hz whereas a computer works at maybe 3GHz. But let's be conservative and say a million. Let's also say that most of the development work in the HSF civilisation is done by AI - a bit like the Culture in this respect.[/quote]

[quote=]The 'hard' refers to the laws of physics. Transhuman AI requires no new physics - in fact it arguably requires no new hardware, current supercomputers would probably be adequate if only we knew how to program them correctly. [/quote]

Statements like the above are endemic amongst un-educated hard sci-fi enthusiasts. Especially transhumanists, singularity worshippers, and similar.

However, what they ignore is that this isn't a 'software' problem. Modern transistor computers can do calculations really, really fast. Problematically, this is all they can do. They can only do what they are told to do, and they must be step-by-step told how to do it. We're not exactly sure what causes sentience, but it's very likely not a brute force processing thing. Computers can only do what they are programmed to do. When presented with a situation they are not programmed for, they cannot respond.

As an aside, the human brain really isn't a computer, at least not in the conventional sense. It's a network which accomplishes the same job.

AI are already here. Pretty tricky AIs, too, and they will only get trickier in the future. However, they are still (and always will be) limited by what their programmer tells them how to do. In fact they can't even do that without the programmer first telling how to react.

To draw a little analogy, modern computers (and AI) are built from the top down. They must first be told how to recognize stimuli, then they must be told how to react and exactly what this reaction entails. Sentience, however, involves starting from first principles and going from there. Picking out seemingly un-related things and drawing them into a pattern.

To give an example, let's look at Einstein. I notice he was mentioned several times in the past of this thread. Well, how about his theory of General Relativity? His 'ball on a stretched linen sheet' analogy would make no sense to a computer programmed to still perfectly be able to compute with his mathematical theory! Even if you had an 'expert' system, ocmpletely able to work with and manipulate the mathematics of general relativity, it still could not understand the physical implications without having the framework programmed in to it first.

We don't know what causes sentience, but it's very likely it's not just piling enough micro-processors onto the stack.

[Starglider]

AI are already here. Pretty tricky AIs, too, and they will only get trickier in the future. However, they are still (and always will be) limited by what their programmer tells them how to do. In fact they can't even do that without the programmer first telling how to react.

You have no fucking clue what you're talking about. Neural networks are trained, not programmed. Genetic programming develops algorithms from a fitness metric without any human design. Back in 1981 Eurisko was already designing chips and winning strategy games using evolved code with minimal human input.

To draw a little analogy, modern computers (and AI) are built from the top down. They must first be told how to recognize stimuli, then they must be told how to react and exactly what this reaction entails. Sentience, however, involves starting from first principles and going from there.

I build AIs for a living, commercial ones that do useful revenue-generating things and research prototypes that try to capture new aspects of sentience, and I say you are bullshitting so hard it is coming out of every single one of your orificies.

To give an example, let's look at Einstein. I notice he was mentioned several times in the past of this thread. Well, how about his theory of General Relativity? His 'ball on a stretched linen sheet' analogy would make no sense to a computer programmed to still perfectly be able to compute with his mathematical theory!

Oh and you have no clue about physics either. Retard.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I can't believe that this idiotic "giant mirror array weapon" bullshit has actually gone on for so long. It is a plan designed by idiots, for idiots. There is no fucking way a civilization would be able to shut down its entire infrastructure for any reasonable length of time in order to try and destroy a planet orbiting a star many light-years away. Nor is there any conceivable reason why a civilization would dedicate so much of its industrial output to construct a vast infrastructure for fighting an enemy that, as far as they know, does not exist. The people arguing for this preposterous notion have been reduced to saying that you can't prove it's NOT true, thus cribbing a page from religious fundamentalists.

And the idea of targeting ships is even more preposterous. Anyone who can seriously suggest that a system designed for power collection would be easily and quickly adapted to tracking and hitting starships is a fucking moron, who obviously lacks even the slightest clue about basic things like moment of inertia or the most elementary fundamentals of engineering practice.

Way before THAT happened, the HSF civ's political system would produce collaborationists or assimilationists who'd parlay with the UFP (which is very politically soft) for integration and relatively peaceful transition, which the HSF stands to benefit from as well in the form of much more advanced technology. They sure as hell wouldn't make this suicide pact.

[Plushie]

You have no fucking clue what you're talking about. Neural networks are trained, not programmed. Genetic programming develops algorithms from a fitness metric without any human design. Back in 1981 Eurisko was already designing chips and winning strategy games using evolved code with minimal human input.

I wasn't talking about neural networks.

In fact, if I had been you'd be agreeing with me, because I probably would have said something similar to the above.

I was talking about transistor based processors. I tire of running across so-called 'futurists' who think their desktop is an ancestor of future AIs.

I build AIs for a living, commercial ones that do useful revenue-generating things and research prototypes that try to capture new aspects of sentience, and I say you are bullshitting so hard it is coming out of every single one of your orificies.

AI can generate un-expected results, but they are by no means 'new'. They cannot 'create', only compute. They can seem to create new things that their programmer didn't expect, but that's a result of the law of big numbers applied to a human and his computer, not genuine sentience.

Oh and you have no clue about physics either. Retard.

I tried programming for a while. I wasn't too good at it outside of theory, so I dropped it.

I went into physics.

If you want to put out something specific wrong with that paragraph, go ahead, but if you're just going to bluster and insult because it makes you feel good, then I'll take the liberty of pretending you're saying something useful but something that doesn't require my further input.

[Starglider]

I wasn't talking about neural networks.

In fact, if I had been you'd be agreeing with me, because I probably would have said something similar to the above. I was talking about transistor based processors.

You're riding the ignorance train right down to 'drooling imbecile' aren't you? You do realise that essentially ALL EXISTING ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS ARE IMPLEMENTED IN SOFTWARE USING CONVENTIONAL SERIAL CPUS? No of course you don't, because you are spouting a cocktail of fully original nonsense and half-remembered misunderstandings of popular science articles. I've written several pieces of software based on neual nets and you clearly haven't even read a decent article on them.

I tire of running across so-called 'futurists' who think their desktop is an ancestor of future AIs.

In hardware terms they're probably correct. Software on a Turing complete substrate almost always wins over fixed-function hardware, though it's possible that some very advanced technologies will make FPGA type substrates the medium of choice for general computing. Of course you have no idea what I just said.

AI can generate un-expected results, but they are by no means 'new'. They cannot 'create', only compute. They can seem to create new things that their programmer didn't expect, but that's a result of the law of big numbers applied to a human and his computer, not genuine sentience.

Desperately trying to redefine creativity as some mystical abstract thing that only fleshies can do will not make you any less stupid. Genetic programming is as creative as natural evolution. More advanced systems, such as Eurisko and the technology my company is working on, use pattern combination directed by abstract reasoning, constraint satisfaction and targetted multi-stage (via variable level of detail and subgoaling) trial and error to create genuinely new solutions to hard problems. But of course, you won't understand any of that either. So rather, what part of 'I am a professional who does this every day, you are getting even the most basic trivial things completely wrong' are you failing to comprehend.

but if you're just going to bluster and insult because it makes you feel good

Yes actually I am, because you deserve it for saying stuff one google search would've shown you to be completely wrong, and because one of the top ten SDN activities is making fun of stupid people for personal amusement.

[petesampras]

You have no fucking clue what you're talking about. Neural networks are trained, not programmed. Genetic programming develops algorithms from a fitness metric without any human design. Back in 1981 Eurisko was already designing chips and winning strategy games using evolved code with minimal human input.

I wasn't talking about neural networks.

In fact, if I had been you'd be agreeing with me, because I probably would have said something similar to the above.

I was talking about transistor based processors. I tire of running across so-called 'futurists' who think their desktop is an ancestor of future AIs.

You don't seem to grasp a fundamental aspect of computing and AI. The information processing of an algorithm ( and neural networks are algorithms ) is independant of the hardware that implements it. Provided a piece of hardware has the speed and memory it can implement *any* information processing task.

I would recommend the opening chapters of David Marrs Vision, for a lay friendly discussion on this.

I build AIs for a living, commercial ones that do useful revenue-generating things and research prototypes that try to capture new aspects of sentience, and I say you are bullshitting so hard it is coming out of every single one of your orificies.

AI can generate un-expected results, but they are by no means 'new'. They cannot 'create', only compute. They can seem to create new things that their programmer didn't expect, but that's a result of the law of big numbers applied to a human and his computer, not genuine sentience.

Define, precisely, what you mean by *new things* and give your reasoning for why computation cannot achieve this.