Created Tuesday 23 November 2021
DIdn't realize they don't have a section yet.
Not my idea, really; it's from Sandberg, Armstrong, & Cirkovic (2017). That aliens are silent because they're waiting for things to get better. I simply added that they have elements that are keeping one eye open to see when things get better for them.
And that they're more like the Archea of the void. Adapted to a more extreme type of universe. But, hm. things aren't looking to get anything Big Bangy for, like, ever. So, I'm not sure what kind of universe I need to have them adapted to to be sensibly waiting. And that will affect what they're like, of course.
TBA.
Except for the Mycon, and nearly not even the Succubi, the Ghosts are the only ones that are adapted to survive for extended periods in the insterstellar medium.
Every other species is limited to, at very best, the Very Local Interstellar Medium; heck anything outside the interplanetary medium is soon too much for most. Species must hop in the meagerest ships they can (everything is harder in space; it will surely be true no matter what our future interstellar travel successes will be.
You think being limited to one carry-on for a redeye is tough? Try measuring your weight in grams (actually in micrograms to best estimate the jump and target hit) and counting the bill in megatons of matter sublimated into engery. Sure, that latter bit is my fabrication for this fantasy world, but it's going to be a loooooong time before humans get anywhere near not needing the resources either of whole ultra-prosperous nation states (that, really, is the legend of our ear for the futre: The time when nations lept into the heavens
(Maybe "when humans first lept into them," but I'm not that sanguine we can keep this up. We're a race just trying to survive long enough to get to our next hit. We got that little squeeze of heavenly juice
(the moon, Mars, the death of Pluto, the reach of the solar system, Voyager forging into the truly unknown hole left by the slow deaths of many gods and Allahs, vaccines, antibiotics (thanks, fungi!), internets, harnessing the atom, GMOs, really good drugs)
and just can't imagine a world in which they stop. That technology may still bring us a growing number of comnforts, but that it may somneday prove to be ineffective alone at fixing our problems. And, my friends
(and if ever this is read, it's got to be either someone who somehow befriended me in my own wilderness or got really fucking lost on the Internet),
I think we all know that time has come.
You know where society is headed when the conservatives get reactionary. Nowehere anyone wants to go. And them least of all; they are the ones who will run over you to the exits.
Telling it is how one reacts to this moment, but I do believe I am living through a moment in history where humans learn again to dread for their existence. It took us only 100 years---not more than three generations---to forget about that fucking Horseman of the Apocolypse. It wasn't that muct farther back---the Renaissance in Europe arguably being the earliest moment---when we left the Malthusian trap.
You see, the reason usuary in feudalism was so frowned upon is because there really was no yearly growth. The output and consumption of one year's economy was pretty much the same as any other years. There was no economic growth in the sense we take as part of our Zeitgeist; charging interest just made things worse in the zero-sum future of feudalism. Wealth then was in the land. A zero-sum realm that can't but encourage inequality.
But the ancient Greeks had a relatively-strong sense of equality. So, yeah, understanding Greece matters.
But the Ghosts are "extremophiles," or, well, an archaic organism that has shown mind-boggling ablities to survive on literally nothing for extended periods of time.
I mean, there are oodles of bacteria in every inch of soil that are thermophiles. They do things like only reproduce after a fire. Been a while since any block in Brooklyn between 3rd and Ridge in the upper 70s burned to the dirt.
One of the Ghosts is named Eleni.
O.K., I guess I can see what my students mean when they say I can get off topic.