Greetings, people of OA

[Rho Ophiuchi]

Hello Orion's Arm members,

My name is Rho Ophiuchi, and I am a new member on this site. I was originally referenced to it two years ago when I became an avid fan of Issac Arthur's youtube channel, but more recently I found that people in various communities tend to reference material here when describing technological concepts. As such, I decided to join in order to actively absorb information from those who have been working at this for an extremely long time. I also exist on the website NationStates.net (as Rho Ophiuchi), and the Fandom wiki for Spore (as SoftXrayEmmiter108 - yes I know that is misspelled, but by the time I figured it out I could not do anything about it).

My main question at this moment is the following: If the average human (or nearbaseline, as the case may be) uses approximately 100 W of chemical energy, which, to be conservative, I will assume could only be fabricated in nanofacs at 10% efficiency from chemical feedstock, then each human would be using approximately 1 kW of power. As some people have more resources than others, I will make this 6 kW for the average person. If the region of known space that humans have existed in for a thousand years or more contains a hundred million stars, then it would have a luminosity approximately 2500 times smaller than the milky way's 5E+36 W, so 2E+33W, for the purposes of this thought experiment. This would lead to a population of something on the order of 300 Octillion. Why is this not the case in the OA universe?

Sincerely,
Rho Ophiuchi

P.S. I have never used this interface before, so if something does not translate over correctly, please inform me so I can attempt to correct it.

[Drashner1]

Hi! Welcome to OA!

The short answer to your question is that the vast majority of the population in OA practices birth control.

Birth control technology itself is virtually perfect and requires no actual effort to use - people (regardless of gender or species or whatever0 are either genetically engineered or equipped with internal medical systems that provide them conscious control over their fertility. All parents involved (and in OA two parents is just a lifestyle choice) must actively want to conceive a child before one can be conceived.

Beyond this, the standard of living is so high that there is no need to produce children to take care of oneself in old age or the like (people don't age unless they want to anyway). Indeed, in most places (and for thousands of years) the general ethos that is in place (and is quietly maintained by the cultural manipulation of the transapients) is that it is preferable to keep population low and standards of living extremely high.

Re the 6kW you mention in your post - by way of comparison people in the US back in the 80s were estimated to be consuming about 20kW and that number has almost certainly increased as well as the number of people consuming more energy. Point being that 6kW per person would be a very low energy and therefore likely low tech/low resource lifestyle even by our standards. While it's certainly likely that many of the future tech in the setting is much more efficient than what we can create now, there are also limits to that and also people in OA routinely engage in activities use energy consumption dwarfs what we engage in today (fast interplanetary and interstellar travel, megaengineering projects, etc.).

Finally, and moving a bit beyond the setting itself to more 'editorial' issues - human beings (and the various non-human sophonts in the setting) are not bacteria in a bowel, able to only mindlessly reproduce until we hit the limits of our environment. Even in real life increased living standards, education, and options/opportunities for both men and women have led to declining birth rates and slowed population growth that is projected to stabilize this century IIRC.

Hope this helps and once again - Welcome to OA

Todd

EDIT - there are a few places that have not practiced birth control in the setting - they don't end well and are looked at by everyone else as cautionary tales of what happens when you don't control your population and manage your resources. They are also actively contained - by force if necessary - if they attempt to spread.

See Cinder Systems

[Rho Ophiuchi]

Hello Todd,

Thank you for your quick and informative response - my next question is essentially the following: Even if the majority of people want to keep population low and standard of living high, would not that reduce the time in which the civilization could thrive? As an example, say I was one of a trillion people living in a system with a sun-like star at the center. As such, if I had access to one trillionth of the star's light, then I might simply opt to collect a large stockpile of antimatter and matter from the star using my energy allotment. In which case (if the star had ~5 billion years of life left), I would essentially have 6E+31 J of energy to work with. If I lived at a standard of living of, say, 6 MW, than that would get me 319 quadrillion years of life. If, on the other hand, I lived at 6 kW, that same energy would get me 319 quintillion years of life (while life at 6 MW might be more valuable than life at 6 kW, I doubt it is a thousand times more valuable). Thus, if "low population, high resources per capita" was the general mindset, I would still expect comparatively low energy usage - even to the point of the stars getting ripped apart for fuel, and then the system emitting mere petawatts of energy. That might just be me, though.

In any case, I would still find it surprising if not a single system went down the higher population path. A single late K-type star, for example, could reliably support a sextillion people at that energy level, and it would probably only take a single S1 to build and maintain a system like that (if my understanding of the setting is correct), and it would be surprising if something like that had not happened even once over the entire setting.

Sincerely,
Rho Ophiuchi

Edit: I just saw your edits, but if a sextillion could sustainably exist around a K-star, even if they were contained by everyone outside of the system, that would still drastically increase the population of the entire setting from the numbers I found in the EG.

[AstroChara]

Wait, thinking about it, how much energy do transapients and archailects require, again?

[Drashner1]

Wait, thinking about it, how much energy do transapients and archailects require, again?

We don't have a hard number of this. Because transaps and archai are machine minds, utilizing tech we don't fully understand, and with 'bodies' that are (usually) swarms of varied (and variable) sized units, it is extremely hard to quantify what they 'require' vs 'whatever they're using in the moment'. Any such number would be largely arbitrary which - while we don't forbid editorial decisions of this sort we generally try to avoid them - and likely subject to either overly simplistic extrapolation (an S1 is 15000x smarter so it must use 15000x as much energy) or constant debate or constant revision on a whim.

So it is a headache we prefer to avoid.

Todd

[Rho Ophiuchi]

I have another question regarding the setting - are there any groups of individuals in OA who hoard resources, but live comparatively austere lives in an attempt to survive past the heat death of the universe for as long as they can?

Sincerely,
Rho Ophiuchi

[Drashner1]

Hello Todd,

Thank you for your quick and informative response - my next question is essentially the following: Even if the majority of people want to keep population low and standard of living high, would not that reduce the time in which the civilization could thrive?

The Negentropy Alliance and a few other polities/groups/people concern themselves with maximizing their lifetime into at least multi-trillion year timescales or beyond, but the majority of the setting does not.

You'd actually do better in OA to just set the material aside and the use conversion tech to convert it to energy rather than storing it as amat (amat production is highly inefficient unless you have access to a Q-mirror - which are not generally available - and then you have to go to all the bother of storing it and whatnot.

The energy usage of the setting is comparatively low compared to what is available. Most stars are allowed to keep radiating into space and have not (yet) been disassembled, most matter has not been reorganized into convenient storage for future use into deep time. That may happen eventually (the Negentropy Alliance probably has plans for this somewhere). Quadrillion or quintillion year timescales don't currently concern the population of the setting and don't appear to concern their archailect rulers. Or if they do they may intend to create new universes with fresh supplies of matter and energy and just move there - wash/rinse/repeat as each universe dies. The archai can do that, after all.

In any case, I would still find it surprising if not a single system went down the higher population path. A single late K-type star, for example, could reliably support a sextillion people at that energy level, and it would probably only take a single S1 to build and maintain a system like that (if my understanding of the setting is correct), and it would be surprising if something like that had not happened even once over the entire setting.

Sincerely,
Rho Ophiuchi

Edit: I just saw your edits, but if a sextillion could sustainably exist around a K-star, even if they were contained by everyone outside of the system, that would still drastically increase the population of the entire setting from the numbers I found in the EG.

As mentioned, the transapients and archai manipulate things so that people don't do that. That means that people who are inclined to breed like rabbits experience some series of events or interactions with others that end up changing their minds (e.g., 'events' conspire such that they meet and fall madly in love with someone who passionately believes in limited population growth or some other endeavor besides having lots of kids and so the breeding binge is forestalled). Or people who are really inclined to breed end up having 'accidents' that eliminate them and their ideas from society. Or - if the archai decide to play overt hardball - a given 'breed breed and breed some more ' population will simply find themselves unable to conceive children. If they get aggressive about it and start attacking others who are limiting their own numbers they will be summarily stopped - by military force backed by archai level tech if necessary. Or the breeding population will undergo a mass Rewrite with their minds being remade into a belief set that doesn't involve unlimited breeding.

At the end of the day, the lower minds in the setting exist solely at the sufferance and mercy of the AI Gods and have no rights except what those Gods choose to allow them to have.

Hope this helps,

Todd

[Drashner1]

I have another question regarding the setting - are there any groups of individuals in OA who hoard resources, but live comparatively austere lives in an attempt to survive past the heat death of the universe for as long as they can?

Sincerely,
Rho Ophiuchi

The Negentropy Alliance are the largest and most described group (empire actually) that does this. Also the Eternal - although it's not a civilization or group per se.

The Efficiency Maximization Paradigm is an extremist faction of the Negentropy Alliance that split off and took things much further.

The Technorapture Hypernation has re-engineered their capital system such that it's good for trillions of years, so presumably they have some interest in this area, but it's not clear how much.

Note that in the case of the empires and various polities in the setting we are doing a slow rolling review and update since some elements of the setting have evolved since they were first written. If some element of them seems out of step with other stuff, ask us about it and we can clarify.

At a more general level Matrioshka Hypernodes have operational lifetimes of 10 trillion years or more (in theory - nobody's done it yet) and the vast majority of the population is virtual and even if not all running in hypernodes may be using processors (or can move to processors) that have high efficiency and long operational lifetimes up to and including deep time scales.

It's also been discussed (but not yet written up IIRC) that some groups may migrate into black holes to 'time travel' into the deep time future and meet everyone else who takes this tack across the universe.

Finally, as mentioned in my earlier post, the archai can create new universes and so may have the option of 'immortality by migration to greener pastures' although it doesn't look like they've done that yet and its unclear whether they would bring along their various client populations if they did - even assuming those populations still exist into the deep future - at least in any form recognizable to the current Terragen population.

Hope this helps,

Todd

[Rho Ophiuchi]

The Negentropy Alliance and a few other polities/groups/people concern themselves with maximizing their lifetime into at least multi-trillion year timescales or beyond, but the majority of the setting does not.

You'd actually do better in OA to just set the material aside and the use conversion tech to convert it to energy rather than storing it as amat (amat production is highly inefficient unless you have access to a Q-mirror - which are not generally available - and then you have to go to all the bother of storing it and whatnot.

The energy usage of the setting is comparatively low compared to what is available. Most stars are allowed to keep radiating into space and have not (yet) been disassembled, most matter has not been reorganized into convenient storage for future use into deep time. That may happen eventually (the Negentropy Alliance probably has plans for this somewhere). Quadrillion or quintillion year timescales don't currently concern the population of the setting and don't appear to concern their archailect rulers. Or if they do they may intend to create new universes with fresh supplies of matter and energy and just move there - wash/rinse/repeat as each universe dies. The archai can do that, after all.



As mentioned, the transapients and archai manipulate things so that people don't do that. That means that people who are inclined to breed like rabbits experience some series of events or interactions with others that end up changing their minds (e.g., 'events' conspire such that they meet and fall madly in love with someone who passionately believes in limited population growth or some other endeavor besides having lots of kids and so the breeding binge is forestalled). Or people who are really inclined to breed end up having 'accidents' that eliminate them and their ideas from society. Or - if the archai decide to play overt hardball - a given 'breed breed and breed some more ' population will simply find themselves unable to conceive children. If they get aggressive about it and start attacking others who are limiting their own numbers they will be summarily stopped - by military force backed by archai level tech if necessary. Or the breeding population will undergo a mass Rewrite with their minds being remade into a belief set that doesn't involve unlimited breeding.

At the end of the day, the lower minds in the setting exist solely at the sufferance and mercy of the AI Gods and have no rights except what those Gods choose to allow them to have.

Hope this helps,

Todd

Hello Todd,

First, how do I (or is this allowed) remove quotes within quotes - I just figured out the quote button, and did not want to clutter up the thread with long chains of quotations.

Would a population-optimized society be possible on a smaller scale? For instance, ten billion entities living off of sixty terawatts of power made from slowly burning the matter on the surface of a rouge planet, essentially fully aware that any energy-intensive activities they preformed were simply reducing their own lifespan? If somewhere like this already exists, could you by any chance provide a link?

On a slightly different note, what is the highest temperature genetically-engineered humans that were originally baselines could plausibly live in? Could a clade of genetically-engineered humans exist on a supercritical pyrohydrothallasic world, for instance? Also, would there be a region on the fringe of human colonization where the archailects had no influence due to being temporally disconnected from those locations (e.g. at a radius of 9000 light-years or so)?

Sincerely,
Rho Ophiuchi

Edit: To your latest post (I could not figure out how to edit quotes into posts either), thank you for providing the links you did, I really appreciate it.

[Drashner1]

Hello Todd,

First, how do I (or is this allowed) remove quotes within quotes - I just figured out the quote button, and did not want to clutter up the thread with long chains of quotations.

Unfortunately, I am not a master of the quote function - it didn't work well in an earlier version of the forum and I developed a workaround I still use to this day. But one of the other members or moderators here might be able to offer advise on this.

In the meantime we won't take your head off for including some quoted text (we mostly do that a good bit, but try to trim out the parts we aren't directly replying to).

Would a population-optimized society be possible on a smaller scale? For instance, ten billion entities living off of sixty terawatts of power made from slowly burning the matter on the surface of a rouge planet, essentially fully aware that any energy-intensive activities they preformed were simply reducing their own lifespan? If somewhere like this already exists, could you by any chance provide a link?

Yes, this would be fine.

On a slightly different note, what is the highest temperature genetically-engineered humans that were originally baselines could plausibly live in? Could a clade of genetically-engineered humans exist on a supercritical pyrohydrothallasic world, for instance? Also, would there be a region on the fringe of human colonization where the archailects had no influence due to being temporally disconnected from those locations (e.g. at a radius of 9000 light-years or so)?

Sincerely,
Rho Ophiuchi

Edit: To your latest post (I could not figure out how to edit quotes into posts either), thank you for providing the links you did, I really appreciate it.

I'm going to have to refer this question to those members of the community who are into exotic biology. Not my area of expertise/interest/focus, I'm afraid.

Anyone who wants to weigh in on this question, please feel free.

Archailect writ runs thin in the Outer Volumes and Periphery - but that also means there's little to no protection against everything else running around out there - including rogue transapients and modosphonts who may be quite...unpleasant. Also note that the 'Civilized Galaxy' is constantly expanding into the outer regions, which themselves are constantly expanding. So someone living out in those regions will eventually have the 'Civilized Galaxy' catch up with them.

If you're thinking in terms of a civ wanting to be left alone to live an energy conserving lifestyle, a political solution might be a better option - meaning being part of the Negentropy Alliance say, which is unlikely to object to their way of being as long as they don't go nuts on the population growth front.

Ok - gotta start my work day.

Hope this helps,

Todd