| We couldn't accomplish this. Theoretically speaking, yes we could, but "theoretocally" means "ignoring the half of the reality". We can't even travel to Moon now practically. To send a chunk of tungsten at a relativistic velocity would mean an effort for trillions of dollars. Don't forget that it is not enough to just get a chunk of tungsten moving, you want it to hit a moving target, and you'd better add some thrusters to it and a guidance system. Is there anyone willing to pay for that? Any civilization will need to concentrate a lot of efforts to fire a chunk of tungsten, but why might it do it? There are better ways to utilize that effort. Maybe it is a rational thing to go aggressive nevertheless, but the benefits will be in a far future while politicians needs to justify spending now. People and societies are not rational. There is no real examples of rational agents, but people still insist on treating rational agents as something real. Theoretically speaking AGI might become a rational agent, but I doubt it from a practical standpoint: AGI will be limited by a computational power and by its abilities to gather data. So it will use heuristics, and it will be not rational. It can be closer to a platonic ideal of a rational agent then human, but even that is not free of doubt. People surpisingly well do with all their heuristics and when they appear irrational it is mostly due to inability of observers to understand the real motivation of people. You need a much more advanced civilization to be as aggressive. A civilization that can do it by spending maybe 0.1% GDP for 10 years. At least looking at humanity, I'd say that any cost higher than that will not work definitely. Such unprovoked and costly agression having no observable results easily could end a lot of political careers. Theoretically speaking we can ignore all these difficulties and start with the assumption that it is possible to concentrate 100% GDP on a one task for years or even decades. Practically it is impossible. Maybe another civilization will have another structure and will be able to concentrate efforts on a larger scale then humanity? Maybe. But could you imagine such a hypothetical civilization and estimate chances of it to get to a sufficiently advanced level? I cant neither. So while I keep in mind this theoretical dreams of rational civilization purging each other, I do not assign any credibility to them. I keep myself in an uncertain state, the best state to have an open mind, to be ready to absorb any evidence or reasoning. |