There are no super-weapons between the nuclear bomb and false vacuum decay
Brute force is another matter: a civilization operating on astronomical scales could fling asteroids or planets, trigger supernovae, or build enormous lasers, and do immense damage
Yeah, flinging asteroids or making the Sun explode seems like they could also be classified as “superweapons”, so I am now finding this less reassuring w/r to whether physics allows for the destruction of the Earth. You also have things like the Great Oxydation event and just generally weird macroscale configurations...
In a previous post, I explain why the universe is probably not stable, but nevertheless unlikely to be intentionally destroyable even in the limit of advanced technology
You could have a von Neumann probe that changes matter into useless configurations/increases entropy on purpose, or that flings as much matter as it can into a massive black hole. This might also count as destroying vast swathes of the universe.
So to the extent I find this post less reassuring on reflection is that there is a gap between the detailed argument (no physical runway reaction, no vaccum decay for the universe) and the broader claim (no superweapon, universe not destructible).
I agree nothing rules out flinging asteroids at Earth or creating a fleet to manually disassemble the galaxy! They are “ruled-in” already, though there’s a question of practical offense-defense balance and they could be interesting to analyze further.
The false vacuum decay post is about destroying the universe via the only mechanism which exists within ordinary physics (though if you are sufficiently open-minded you could imagine weirder hypotheticals like triggering a bug in our source code or making God angry). This post is about exotic runaway reactions beyond nuclear physics. Self-replicating chemical systems (eg, living organisms, Von Neumann probes) could be very dangerous, but aren’t in scope and have different properties (inc. defendibility; playing by the ordinary rules of physics we know and love).
Yeah I don’t think we disagree, I’d just like to see a more general analysis in this style towards a larger supercategory (e.g., superweapons, destroying the universe) as opposed to the specifics (runway physics, inducing a vaccuum decay), and bring your attention towards the gap between the categories :)
Yeah, flinging asteroids or making the Sun explode seems like they could also be classified as “superweapons”, so I am now finding this less reassuring w/r to whether physics allows for the destruction of the Earth. You also have things like the Great Oxydation event and just generally weird macroscale configurations...
You could have a von Neumann probe that changes matter into useless configurations/increases entropy on purpose, or that flings as much matter as it can into a massive black hole. This might also count as destroying vast swathes of the universe.
So to the extent I find this post less reassuring on reflection is that there is a gap between the detailed argument (no physical runway reaction, no vaccum decay for the universe) and the broader claim (no superweapon, universe not destructible).
I agree nothing rules out flinging asteroids at Earth or creating a fleet to manually disassemble the galaxy! They are “ruled-in” already, though there’s a question of practical offense-defense balance and they could be interesting to analyze further.
The false vacuum decay post is about destroying the universe via the only mechanism which exists within ordinary physics (though if you are sufficiently open-minded you could imagine weirder hypotheticals like triggering a bug in our source code or making God angry). This post is about exotic runaway reactions beyond nuclear physics. Self-replicating chemical systems (eg, living organisms, Von Neumann probes) could be very dangerous, but aren’t in scope and have different properties (inc. defendibility; playing by the ordinary rules of physics we know and love).
Yeah I don’t think we disagree, I’d just like to see a more general analysis in this style towards a larger supercategory (e.g., superweapons, destroying the universe) as opposed to the specifics (runway physics, inducing a vaccuum decay), and bring your attention towards the gap between the categories :)