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by amarant 33 days ago
Some sci fi author (I forget who) pointed out that in a space faring society, the most valuable materials are biological materials. Once you have access to comets and planets, you'll have, for all intents and purposes, an infinite supply of gold, diamond, ruby, etc.

Wood however... You're not gonna find a lot of wood in space.
1 comments
hgoel 33 days ago
There is absolutely no reason for alien life to have evolved the same biological materials that we have. But also, a space faring species that can build an AI probe capable of remaining functioning for the many years an interstellar journey takes, is also likely to be capable of building habitats that can grow their biological materials. It'd be much easier than shipping those materials over from another star.
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mapontosevenths 33 days ago
Yep. It's all about mass at those scales. There will never be a time when it makes sense to ship giant habitats full of water, and oxygen, and meat around.

Brains will be uploaded to machines, or human descended AI's will will be built and tasked with exploring the places it's unsafe or too time consuming for us to visit directly. The square jawed men with laser guns will have to stay at home and watch. Maybe those AI's will be built to start cloning humans once they find a good spot or something, but it's never going to make sense to ship squishy meat sacks and the metric tons of accoutrements required to keep them alive all over unless/until we find a way around the speed of light or perfect hibernation.

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amarant 33 days ago
Quite right! They probably wouldn't have wood, but we do!

They might want the wood though, and they might not know how to grow it. From there we can see 2 scenarios. The likelier one hopefully being trade: we could probably teach them to grow wood, and also provide them with seeds, perhaps on exchange for some of their space-faring tech.

Alternatively there's the pessimist scenario, where they're not interested in trading for it, we're not willing to give it freely, and so war ensues.

Personally I'd just give them a few pine-cones and explain basic horticulture as a gesture of good faith, I guess the end result is rather contingent on which human they talk to.

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hgoel 33 days ago
Why would they need our permission to take it? They can grab the seeds from anywhere on the planet, and they can just watch any farmer and/or forest for a couple of years and see how it works.

Of course this is putting aside any ideas of deciphering our books or tapping into the internet. Not much we'd be able to do to species that can travel the stars.

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