"Now, the really interesting question is: How much is there an attacker-versus-defender advantage in this kind of advanced future?

Right now, if somebody's sitting on Mars and you're going to war against them, it's very hard to hit them. You don't have a weapon that can hit them very well. But in theory, if you fire a missile, after a few months, it's going to arrive and maybe hit them, but they have a few months to move away. Distance actually makes you safer: if you spread out in space, it's actually very hard to hit you.

So it seems like you get a defence-dominant situation if you spread out sufficiently far. But if you're in Earth orbit, everything is close, and the lasers and missiles and the debris are a terrible danger, and everything is moving very fast.

So my general conclusion has been that war looks unlikely on some size scales but not on others." — Anders Sandberg

In today’s episode, host Rob Wiblin speaks with repeat guest and audience favourite Anders Sandberg about the most impressive things that could be achieved in our universe given the laws of physics.

Links to learn more, summary and full transcript.

They cover:

The epic new book Anders is working on, and whether he’ll ever finish it
Whether there's a best possible world or we can just keep improving forever
What wars might look like if the galaxy is mostly settled
The impediments to AI or humans making it to other stars
How the universe will end a million trillion years in the future
Whether it’s useful to wonder about whether we’re living in a simulation
The grabby aliens theory
Whether civilizations get more likely to fail the older they get
The best way to generate energy that could ever exist
Black hole bombs
Whether superintelligence is necessary to get a lot of value
The likelihood that life from elsewhere has already visited Earth
And plenty more.

Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
Audio Engineering Lead: Ben Cordell
Technical editing: Simon Monsour and Milo McGuire
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

#165 – Anders Sandberg on war in space, whether civilisations age, and the best things possible in our universe

80,000 Hours Podcast