09:46:25 From Robert.Kennedy : principle from strategic studies: "national security i.e. survival has no price"

 

09:46:45 From Kelly Smith : Nice principle

 

09:49:58 From Kelly Smith : Don’t tread on us

 

09:50:19 From Kelly Smith : Those thoughts are independent - not endorsing the don’t tread principle…:)

 

09:52:04 From Ryan Fortenberry : What about the Maori of New Zealand?  They scared the Europeans off for a very long time.

 

09:52:51 From Kelly Smith : Aztecs?  They didn’t last that long…

 

09:53:16 From Kathryn Denning : The Aztecs won the first round against Cortes. Smallpox won the second.

 

09:53:19 From Ted Peters : The books, 1491 and 1493, nicely show how nature plays a decisive role in history.

 

09:53:56 From Robert.Kennedy : I commend: /The Fate of Rome/ by Kyle Harper; and /1491/ by Charles Mann

 

09:54:15 From Kathryn Denning : Stolen Continents by Ronald Wright. And What Is America? same author

 

09:55:20 From Chelsea Haramia : I think the larger worry re: William's question is that the asymmetry concerns (bigger/more powerful group vs. less powerful group) cuts both ways, and sometimes belligerence works out for the little guy and sometimes it doesn't. What I think would help your position is if there was a principled reason to opt for belligerence all else equal (beyond the point that it sometimes works out). Did you have a principle like that in mind?

 

09:55:58 From Kelly Smith : The three body problem problem

 

09:56:11 From John Traphagan : The Japanese were totally outgunned when the Americans arrived in the middle 19th Century and the US did not leave them alone.  Rather, they demanded treaties that opened Japanese ports and forced trade--neither of which the Japanese wanted. 09:56:42 From Carlos Mariscal : These situations always imagine ETI

acknowledging these as strategic situations. What about situations in which neither benefit nor threat are apparent? I might deal with a buncha trolls online, but I’m not going to drive to their house to fight them.

 

09:57:07 From Julia DeMarines : @sabine - our messages have been few and generally weak as compared to our louder radio beacons such as Arecibo planetary radar. Weak signals will not be detectable over longer distances (see the chart in our presentation). It’s that pesky inverse square law! So unless we transmit narrowband targeted signals (which groups like METI International and individuals such as Alexander Zaitzev of Russia) intend to do, our previous messages might be largely undetectable. Especially since we don’t send targeted, repetitive transmissions.

 

09:57:26 From John Traphagan : It would not have made much difference if the Japanese were aggressive or passive.  They were so outgunned, they didn't have much choice but to respond in some way.  And part of the result of contact was a civil war (a small one).

 

09:57:42 From David DeGraff (he/him) : From the Dark Forest: Biological growth is exponential, but resourcesces grow linearly. Therefore the only rational choice is to destroy all life.

 

09:57:44 From Robert.Kennedy : USDA is going to great lengths to find and destroy "Murder Hornets" which just showed up in the Pacific Northwest this January

 

09:58:08 From William Alba : Contemporary example in western US:  "murder hornets" -- we want to exterminate them.

 

09:58:16 From William Alba : Ah, Robert beat me to it

 

09:58:17 From Kathryn Denning : As an anthropologist/archaeologist who has worked on this stuff a long time, I honestly don't think that historical analogies are helpful, because of the plethora of scenarios and our incomplete/biased knowledge of what actually happened 

09:58:18 From Andrew Kennedy : almost all cultures we came across in those early days had internal divisions

 

09:59:00 From Lucas Mix : The exponential/linear argument is straight up Malthus, both disproven biologically and shunned theologically. I'm sympathetic to the Dark Forrest argument, but not Malthus.

 

09:59:22 From William Alba : @Andrew, fortunately, we don't have any internal divisions anymore...

 

09:59:31 From Kelly Smith : Thank goodness…

 

09:59:54 From Abhik Gupta : Is it likely or a must that patterns of aggression occurring in human history during the colonial times repeat in interactions among much more advanced civilizations? Even human attitudes have changed over the years.

 

10:03:51 From Dr Sheri Wells-Jensen : I'm not sure I have a question, but this is fascinating.

 

10:05:07 From Ted Peters : BACK on Carlos' discussion. I'm not a sociobiologist, yet I believe we should consider the possibility that human violence has a genetic component. Yes, violence is virtually ubiquitous at the level of survival. Yet, gratuitous  violence--conquering & exploiting-- dominates human males between the ages of 15 and 35. Biologically driven? This is the group that goes to war, perhaps every generation.  This leads to the following question: how would the equivalent of genetic inheritance--rather than eusociality--influence whether a given ETI civilization would be aggressive or passive?

 

10:06:00 From Lucas Mix : I like the accurate perception/mere adaptation distinction. I think Mary Midgley would distinguish between mere adaptation (a biological reduction) and mere convention (a social reduction).

 

10:07:55 From Ted Peters : Right, Neil, convergent evolution hints that ETI values would be evolution-specific yet almost universal.

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10:09:12 From Nick Nielsen : Franz de Wahl interprets Darwin that any sufficiently complex social species must evolve something like a moral system for interacting in a stable way.

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10:09:51 From Daniela de Paulis : perhaps morality is a tool for survival after all

 

10:09:52 From Neil A. Manson : de Waal spoke here at the start of this year - I highly recommend him on this topic.