[Enioch]

Valid alternative scenario. Just completely irrelevant to my argument.

You misunderstand me.

Here's the point:

The species never gets into space flight and just sits around on its planetary surface until extinction.

I am not saying that every species will leave their planet's surface until they go extinct.

What both TM and I are saying is that every species will go extinct if they don't leave their planet.

As in here:

Any intelligent species will sooner or later leave it's homeworld and spread among the stars. It HAS to to survive. Even something as big as a planet is rather fragile on a galactic scale.

If you don't want to leave your planet, fine.

But you will die on your planet. Or you will be killed. Sooner. Or. Later.

[General Battuta]

I don't misunderstand you at all, you just haven't presented any reasons why your common-sense point is in any way relevant to the topic at hand.

Trashman argues that the Shivans will kill everyone. I respond: no, they won't kill species that don't leave their planet. You say: well, species that don't leave their planet will go extinct on their planet.

So? The Shivan's don't give a ****. For all we know they'd rather have a lot of diverse species hanging out on their planets (or in their local neighborhoods) than a few, longer-lived species hegemonizing local space and driving other species extinct. Maybe the Shivans are there to provide an incentive for species to stay on their homeworld and learn sustainable practices rather than just taking their problems out into space. (Not that I necessarily would argue for that, but it's possible and a campaign could use it as a premise.)

We're dealing in possible scenarios here. The idea that all species are behaviorally driven to leave their homeworlds, and therefore the Shivans will destroy all species, is a totally unsupported one.

[The E]

This is totally tangential, but anyway:

And then there's the assumption that there is a form of handwavium that makes space colonization not only possible, but practical and even desirable.

Meh...

I think I'm with TM on this one. I'm not saying that every intelligent species will leave its home planet on its own, but that it will be forced to do so. Think about it. What will happen if it doesn't?

A) A big chunk o' meteor is bound to come around sooner or later and blow you to smithereens. That's a certainty. It's just a matter of time. A few million years? That's nothing on an evolutionary time scale. The dinosaurs were around for more than that. (and look what happened  )

B) To avoid (A) you must:

       i) have some way of blowing the rock away before it hits the surface. If that is the case, you've left your planet's surface, even with robotic probes, or missiles, or whatever. The tech to leave your planet is there. QED

No. We currently have the technology to send robots to Mars. But there are no Mars expeditions (except for some preliminary planning) and most definitely no plans to colonize other planets in our solar system. Always remember, Earth is right now the only place in reach that actually supports human life. Moon colonies need a steady supply of consumables, but at least we can get there in less than a week. Mars, on the other hand, is several months away, even under the best conditions, and to get there requires a ship capable of letting the human crew survive long enought to actually do something useful on the other end of the journey (Not to mention delivering them without irreparable damage to their reproductive organs). Ships like that are possible, but require an insane amount of infrastructure to build.

       ii) Figure out some way to survive after it hits and causes impact winter and so on and so forth. If that happens:

C) Sooner or later, an expanding stellar empire (like the Ancients or the GTVA) will come knocking on your door. Again, a certainty, just a matter of time. It might be i) friendly (in which case you get to be buddies and share techs) or b) hostile (in which case you need to develop space tech to defend yourself. If you don't, you're gonna get beaten to a pulp from orbit).

Fermi's paradoxon comes to mind.
Seriously, should we ever encounter a civilization advanced enough that interstellar travel is a viable way of life for them, chances are that we won't be able to stop them, even if we had a space infrastructure worth a damn. For further education, I recommend Babylon 5: Crusade Episode 12.

D) If you share techs and enter into some kind of alliance, in order to compete with the other species economically and politically, you will need to expand.

So, it's fly-where-no-man-has-gone-before...or die.

I think. 

If you can point out any flaws in the argument, I'd be glad to debate them...

Right.
There is no evidence for star-spanning empires.
There is currently no way to realistically solve the problems with getting a horde of canned monkeys into space, onto another planetary body, and allowing them to stay there without constant help and assistance from Earth.
Please explain how things like building up an extensive orbital infrastructure can be accomplished in a time span comparable to a human generation.
If you can do that without extensive use of handwavium, I congratulate you.

For reference for a far more eloquent (and better researched!) discussion of the problems associated with interstellar colonization, I refer you to Charles Stross' essay "The High Frontier, Redux".

[General Battuta]

Books like 'Manifold Space' and 'Manifold Time' also tackle these problems rather elegantly. Good reading.

[Enioch]

@ GB:

Hmmmm...good points.

I agree that the Shivans will not destroy every species. At least not directly.

But if a species does not leave its planet, it is doomed to go extinct at some point. And you could argue that, by attacking and destroying all space-faring species, the Shivans are pretty much forcing everybody to stay on their homeworlds and die off. Which means that the Shivans do destroy everybody: the spacefarers with beamz and the non-spacefarers...by letting them die off.

Let me present you with an analogy: you're sitting in a pool of acid that will slowly kill you (your planet) and there's a big guy with a bazooka guarding you (the shivans). If you step out of the pool, he blows you to pieces. If you don't, you're dead anyway.

If you stay on the acid pool, whom are you going to blame for your death? Yourself, for staying there, or the bazooka guy who's forcing you to stay in?

And as for the flaming part -if the letters got too big there, I apologize.  

@ The E:

If we're talking about the FreeSpace Universe, then everything you say is inaccurate, as the GTVA has already colonized 10+ systems. But you're talking about the real world, right? In that case:

The fact that we, humanity, cannot at this point colonize space, does not render my argument invalid. What I am saying is that if you don't manage to get off your planet, you're gonna be fried at some point -and not necessarily by nasty aliens. War. Famine. Evolution playing a joker and wiping us out in favor of a new dominant species (yes, I know that 'dominant species' is a stupid term, bear with me). Pollution causing the icecaps to melt.

I'm just saying that, if we don't get our eggs off this one basket (the Earth), we will go extinct at some point. We will probably go extinct anyway, but I believe our chances will be better if we go than if we (all) stay.

[The E]

I think it boils down to a category error we often make, in confusing our own self-interest in not experiencing personal extinction with the existence of a species-wide collective self-interest in not experiencing species extinction. But I'd be interested in hearing other explanations.

[General Battuta]

@ GB:

Hmmmm...good points.

I agree that the Shivans will not destroy every species. At least not directly.

But if a species does not leave its planet, it is doomed to go extinct at some point. And you could argue that, by attacking and destroying all space-faring species, the Shivans are pretty much forcing everybody to stay on their homeworlds and die off. Which means that the Shivans do destroy everybody: the spacefarers with beamz and the non-spacefarers...by letting them die off.

Let me present you with an analogy: you're sitting in a pool of acid that will slowly kill you (your planet) and there's a big guy with a bazooka guarding you (the shivans). If you step out of the pool, he blows you to pieces. If you don't, you're dead anyway.

If you stay on the acid pool, whom are you going to blame for your death? Yourself, for staying there, or the bazooka guy who's forcing you to stay in?

And as for the flaming part -if the letters got too big there, I apologize.  

Right, but then you're ignoring one of the very risk factors you brought up - part of the danger of staying on your homeworld is that another species will come along and butcher you.

If the Shivans prevent that, then it may be that more species live longer (as opposed to a single species living a really long time while everyone it runs into goes extinct.)

[TrashMan]

Pure, unsubstantiated fantasy. Evolution is a greedy search algorithm. It finds local optimae, not global optimae.

We're talking about INTELLIGENT life here. Builders and creators. Given that progress can't really be halted, any creative species will at one point advance it's science enough so that it can leave it's planet. Greed, curiosity or need - doesn't matter why - the species will begin to spread, sooner or later.
Pure logic here.

Trashman argues that the Shivans will kill everyone. I respond: no, they won't kill species that don't leave their planet. You say: well, species that don't leave their planet will go extinct on their planet.
So? The Shivan's don't give a ****. For all we know they'd rather have a lot of diverse species hanging out on their planets (or in their local neighborhoods) than a few, longer-lived species hegemonizing local space and driving other species extinct.

So how does that make hte Shivans benevolent in ANY way? It's like you being in your room that's slowly filling with water (and is water-tight). If you don't leave you'll drown. If you leave I'll shoot you cause you MIGHT do something I don't like once you're out. Yay, shivies are very benevolent.

The fact that we, humanity, cannot at this point colonize space, does not render my argument invalid.

Actually, according no NASA, we could begin terraforming Mars right now. But it would be hideously expensive and take a minimum of 100 years.

[General Battuta]

Pure, unsubstantiated fantasy. Evolution is a greedy search algorithm. It finds local optimae, not global optimae.

We're talking about INTELLIGENT life here. Builders and creators. Given that progress can't really be halted, any creative species will at one point advance it's science enough so that it can leave it's planet. Greed, curiosity or need - doesn't matter why - the species will begin to spread, sooner or later.
Pure logic here.

You talk about logic but don't evince a shred of it. Look outside the door: we have the capacity to leave the planet. Are we making any progress on it? Does the vast majority of humankind support space colonization even in the face of environmental collapse? Thought so.

Secondly, you constantly harp about how scientific and logical your thinking is, yet - just here - you've generalized from one example (human psychology) to a vast and unknowable populations (all possible xenopsychologies) without any evidence or rigor. You have no way of knowing how alien species 'must' act, particularly when many species here on Earth exhibit bizarre and sometimes apparently counterproductive attitudes with regard to their habitats.

Trashman argues that the Shivans will kill everyone. I respond: no, they won't kill species that don't leave their planet. You say: well, species that don't leave their planet will go extinct on their planet.
So? The Shivan's don't give a ****. For all we know they'd rather have a lot of diverse species hanging out on their planets (or in their local neighborhoods) than a few, longer-lived species hegemonizing local space and driving other species extinct.

So how does that make hte Shivans benevolent in ANY way? It's like you being in your room that's slowly filling with water (and is water-tight). If you don't leave you'll drown. If you leave I'll shoot you cause you MIGHT do something I don't like once you're out. Yay, shivies are very benevolent.

You don't just create your own strawmen, you actually believe in them. At no point in that argument did I assert that the Shivans were benevolent. I said that this was one possible explanation for their role as 'great preservers'. I never suggested that I agreed with or supported their methods. You do understand that people can argue points without personally investing in them, yes?

Even so, your counterattack against a point that was never made is still flawed. Your metaphor fails to mention that this man with a gun is keeping all the other people who want to kill you (much faster than the water would) from getting to you.

[The E]

We're talking about INTELLIGENT life here. Builders and creators. Given that progress can't really be halted, any creative species will at one point advance it's science enough so that it can leave it's planet. Greed, curiosity or need - doesn't matter why - the species will begin to spread, sooner or later.
Pure logic here.

Right. So every intelligent species out there will develop along similar lines to humans, use similar reasoning to humans, and arrive at the same conclusions? Why would they? Please consider that, prior to the european conquest, the australian aboriginees lived in an incredibly stable society that had an institutional continuity for a few thousand years WITHOUT developing things like steam power.

You're using one example to formulate a general rule. Please tell me where the logic is, I can't see it.

[TrashMan]

Right. So every intelligent species out there will develop along similar lines to humans, use similar reasoning to humans, and arrive at the same conclusions? Why would they? Please consider that, prior to the european conquest, the australian aboriginees lived in an incredibly stable society that had an institutional continuity for a few thousand years WITHOUT developing things like steam power.

You're using one example to formulate a general rule. Please tell me where the logic is, I can't see it.

So the aborigini developed very slowly. Just because they haven't invented steam power in 2000 years, doesn't mean they won't in 4000...or 5000. Progress and growth doesn't follow the same pace everywhere and for everyone.
But change is a necessity of life.
A species that doesn't change will eventually die.

You talk about logic but don't evince a shred of it. Look outside the door: we have the capacity to leave the planet. Are we making any progress on it? Does the vast majority of humankind support space colonization even in the face of environmental collapse? Thought so.

1. We are making progress, but not much. Funding for space exploration has diminished.
2. For a species to be space-fearing, it's not necessary for the majority to leave the planet. Even if only a few colonize a nearby planet for scientific purposes, it's still expansion - slow, minimalistic, but still expansion. A lot of people would love for humanity to expand and colonize the galaxy. The popularity of Sci-fi is a testament to that desire of humanity.
Enviromental collapse? It's still not that critical an issue for most. If word came that the Sun were to go nova (impossible, but humor me), people would be all over the streets demanding we pour our money into space colonization.

Secondly, you constantly harp about how scientific and logical your thinking is, yet - just here - you've generalized from one example (human psychology) to a vast and unknowable populations (all possible xenopsychologies) without any evidence or rigor. You have no way of knowing how alien species 'must' act, particularly when many species here on Earth exhibit bizarre and sometimes apparently counterproductive attitudes with regard to their habitats.

Well, isn't logic some sort of universal constant? Logic is logic, for me or an alien. It should be the same thing (more or less).

I wouldn't go that far to say that a species MUST act that way, but if it doesn't, it surely isn't intelligent. Some herbivores stuck on a island may eat and reproduce without any constraint, which will lead to it's extinction once all the vegetation is gone - but that's not exactly a advanced civilization/species, now is it? We are discussing species that have the capacity to develop advanced technology.

[The E]

Right. So every intelligent species out there will develop along similar lines to humans, use similar reasoning to humans, and arrive at the same conclusions? Why would they? Please consider that, prior to the european conquest, the australian aboriginees lived in an incredibly stable society that had an institutional continuity for a few thousand years WITHOUT developing things like steam power.

You're using one example to formulate a general rule. Please tell me where the logic is, I can't see it.

So the aborigini developed very slowly. Just because they haven't invented steam power in 2000 years, doesn't mean they won't in 4000...or 5000. Progress and growth doesn't follow the same pace everywhere and for everyone.
But change is a necessity of life.
A species that doesn't change will eventually die.

No. There is no such thing as a species that doesn't change.
But even assuming the aboriginees had been able to develop their own culture without outside interference, what makes you so damn sure they would have reached the same conclusions as the western culture did?

[SpardaSon21]

I personally hope humanity does develop viable interstellar travel.  One, we need to get our eggs in multiple baskets in case of catastrophe.  Two, if interstellar travel is viable for us, we might well stand a chance against any hostile aliens in outer space.  Three, competition from population pressure.  Either we get people off Earth fast, or WWIII happens over lack of resources and living room.

[azile0]

They'd likely send something larger than the Lucifer fleet, since we very well whooped that one, but smaller than the Sathanas fleet, because that one whooped us. Now, they don't really need a fleet. They just need a few Sathani to go in and rape us all. with big, sharp, nasty BFReds and LReds.

[General Battuta]

I personally hope humanity does develop viable interstellar travel.  One, we need to get our eggs in multiple baskets in case of catastrophe.  Two, if interstellar travel is viable for us, we might well stand a chance against any hostile aliens in outer space.  Three, competition from population pressure.  Either we get people off Earth fast, or WWIII happens over lack of resources and living room.

Population's due to level off soon by some projections.

In any case, I don't understand how people have started thinking that this is some kind of thread about the desirability of space travel. I think space colonization is a lovely idea.

We're just shooting down the absurd idea that we have any reason to think all species would reach the same conclusion. And Trashman's odd assumption that 'logic is universal' when human beings are incredibly far from logical.

[redsniper]

So let's say we do invent great space travel some day and colonize other planets and even solar systems. Our sun will still die one day, and so will all the other stars.

What do you do?

[Commander Zane]

Global exodus when it's necessary.

[General Battuta]

To where? He postulated all the other stars are dead.

[Flipside]

Well, I'll continue the 'space travel' theme for now, but I might need to split this lot out and move it general, I'll see how things go.

As far as travel is concerned, I think we need to do a lot more work on our environmental control before we start seriously thinking about moving to other worlds, there have been a few wild ideas for terroforming Mars, but nothing tried, even on a small scale. Even on Earth our terraforming skills are limited by the 'funds boundary', which is the inevitable fact that those countries with the least hospitable environs tend to be the ones with far too few funds to perform any real terraforming in theory or practice.

The environment is probably the single hardest factor to alter on a planet, because it is affected by everything from microbes to mountain ranges, and even humans only have quite a small 'survival area' when it comes to environments, and we are a lot more adaptable than many other species.

The thing is, it's almost certain that other races will face extremely similar problems to us. I'm not certain that logic is 100% constant, but chemistry is, a race would be very fortunate indeed to be evolved to cope with such a vast expanse of environments and atmospheres, and such a creature would likely be too complex to be biologically viable. That's why Terraforming should be such an important step towards the colonization of space.

As for the question about Entropy, we are talking hundreds of billions of years in the future, for all we know Asimov is right, and 'God' is the sum total of all the races in the previous universe, evolved to the point of being Creators and generating a new Universe when the last one collapses, thus we become our own Gods

[General Battuta]

It's more a matter of 'would every race have that drive to leave its homeworld'.