Our world and dimensional travel

[sleepy hedgehog]

So I think a big part of it is how sustainable are livable dimensions.

At first I imagine that countries would send out people to colonize as much as possible.
If the tech is easy to replicate, places with more people would expand much faster than others.
I'd imaging China and India doing a lion's share of exploration VERY quickly.
However, countries power is also contingent on the number of people in them, so if too many people wanted to leave, they would clamp down on it.

The shorter the journeys, the more connected the colony is to it's parent country.
A 1 hour jump, is less than many people's drive to work.
But it's hard to retain control of a place that's more than a week away.
(I vaguely remember hearing that based on Alexander the Great's conquering of territory.)

For the longer term, it would come down to how fast new livable dimensions are found.
In general, if there are more livable dimensions than needed, things will end up being pretty boring.
Instead of fighting over things, people will just move.

However, total population is also growing way more exponential.
We have a population growth of around 1-2% per year.
And if we say that people prefer half the current Earth population.
We would need to discover about 4% new dimensions, of all currently filled dimensions.
Which, by raw counts, would be increasing by 4% every year.

If we can't do that than space and dimensions becomes a limited resource again, pretty much guaranteeing dimensional fighting will eventually break out.

[Paleomancer]

Ok. Here's the thing.

There are humanity on other worlds.

There are habitable worlds with no humanity.

Other humans know of dimensional travel, and have communications with the rest of the interdimensional community. Tech spreads, and this is no different for dimensional travel.

Right, but you said that most people in those dimensions are low tech. If a low tech society meets a high tech society, and the latter society doesn't believe in essential human rights, initial contact can be very rocky and horrible in a one-sided way. If the low-tech society manages to catch up, they will still remember said wrongs and likely retaliate, even if the high tech society has genuinally improved. Spread of industrial technology didn't stop war, it enhanced it. Humans are naturally clique-forming creatures - be it nations, sports teams... political parties... and we tend to stereotype both our own groups as positive and outsiders as negative, leading to conflict and strife. Interesting for a narrative, but horrifying in which to live.

[Accelerator]

Right, but you said that most people in those dimensions are low tech. If a low tech society meets a high tech society, and the latter society doesn't believe in essential human rights, initial contact can be very rocky and horrible in a one-sided way. If the low-tech society manages to catch up, they will still remember said wrongs and likely retaliate, even if the high tech society has genuinally improved. Spread of industrial technology didn't stop war, it enhanced it. Humans are naturally clique-forming creatures - be it nations, sports teams... political parties... and we tend to stereotype both our own groups as positive and outsiders as negative, leading to conflict and strife. Interesting for a narrative, but horrifying in which to live.

Since when did I say that most people in those dimensions are low tech?

[Paleomancer]

Since when did I say that most people in those dimensions are low tech?

You appear to imply as such in your original post:

Rules and laws:
Most laws don't touch us, since we're a sovereign nation. However, the standard for invasion is to 'begin bombardment' or 'teleport nukes into the offending person's house'. Invasion of any colony or home city brings the massive risk of reprisal. And the difference between earth and the other polities is like the difference between America's army and the Sentinelese.

The Sentinelese are hunter-gatherers who lack metal working and pottery, let alone industrial technology. They are horribly outmatched by any single nation on Earth, let alone the United States, and seem to recognize it, hence their fear of, and hostility to, outsiders. If this is genuinely your intended comparison... most other civilizations would indeed be low tech compared to your hypothetical Earth.

[Accelerator]

You appear to imply as such in your original post:



The Sentinelese are hunter-gatherers who lack metal working and pottery, let alone industrial technology. They are horribly outmatched by any single nation on Earth, let alone the United States, and seem to recognize it, hence their fear of, and hostility to, outsiders. If this is genuinely your intended comparison... most other civilizations would indeed be low tech compared to your hypothetical Earth.

Uh oh. Bad phrasing.

In this scenario, earth is the Sentinelese.

[Paleomancer]

Uh oh. Bad phrasing.

In this scenario, earth is the Sentinelese.

Ah, okay, that makes a lot more sense given your discussion to date. Thank you for clarifying that point. So, take a lot of what is said, and reverse it so we are instead at the mercy of the other polities. Those six superpowers you mentioned will essentially dictate terms of engagement across the official extradimensional community, though obviously there will be worlds no one has visited. How Earth responds to such overwhelming power will firstly depend on whether we realize it exists; it's entirely possible that the world of Gallifrey seems like its own independent nation of five billion, simply because a planet needs to be somewhat self-contained. Yet it might instead be the equivalent of a redneck farming community, one of thousands of worlds within the Time Lord Imperium, itself a polity under the Shadow Proclamation, a mutual defense compact of millions of worlds. Such a fact wouldn't necessarily be obvious to us, since we are used to much more local, planet-scale issues and geopolitics, and it would come as quite a shock when we did notice it. We might settle on an Earth, only to discover that it was someone else's home or sacred place, and they wanted blood, not apologies. Your greater six or so superpowers may genuinely not care at all that we are here, except if we get annoying, or they may seek to use us as pawns in their cold war power plays. I'd also suspect we might see a situation similar to what the real-life Sentinelese and similar tribal societies have now, which is the international community has agreed to leave them in peace until they are ready to make contact. Periodically, of course, they are afflicted by individuals or groups who violate that agreement for various reasons (examples include: ranchers, smugglers, poachers, criminals, farmers, missionaries, anthropologists, slavers, etc.) which often ends badly for the tribal society (disease, loss of land, or murder), and more rarely, members within the tribes will make contact out of interest or desperation.

I'd expect to see a variety of responses as the sheer size of the multiverse was uncovered. Some would try to hide from it, others would embrace the opportunity to make their own perfect world (with all the aspirations and pitfalls, therein), some might exploit it for profit, and others would seek to either maintain our independence or join an existing polity. A world where you could make your own ideological version of Rapture, an alternate source for a promised land, or a way to evict "undesirables..." anything might go. At first, there'd almost assuredly be chaos, and nations might actually collapse or fragment, depending on how easily people get access to the technology (especially if they steal it). Imagine if half the US population just left in a few weeks: our economy would probably grind to a halt. Imagine if (fill-in-extreme group of choice) found a safe haven to be "themselves," and sought to build up enough force to return later...

I will say, this makes your question even more interesting .

[Accelerator]

Ah, okay, that makes a lot more sense given your discussion to date. Thank you for clarifying that point. So, take a lot of what is said, and reverse it so we are instead at the mercy of the other polities. Those six superpowers you mentioned will essentially dictate terms of engagement across the official extradimensional community, though obviously there will be worlds no one has visited. How Earth responds to such overwhelming power will firstly depend on whether we realize it exists; it's entirely possible that the world of Gallifrey seems like its own independent nation of five billion, simply because a planet needs to be somewhat self-contained. Yet it might instead be the equivalent of a redneck farming community, one of thousands of worlds within the Time Lord Imperium, itself a polity under the Shadow Proclamation, a mutual defense compact of millions of worlds. Such a fact wouldn't necessarily be obvious to us, since we are used to much more local, planet-scale issues and geopolitics, and it would come as quite a shock when we did notice it. We might settle on an Earth, only to discover that it was someone else's home or sacred place, and they wanted blood, not apologies. Your greater six or so superpowers may genuinely not care at all that we are here, except if we get annoying, or they may seek to use us as pawns in their cold war power plays. I'd also suspect we might see a situation similar to what the real-life Sentinelese and similar tribal societies have now, which is the international community has agreed to leave them in peace until they are ready to make contact. Periodically, of course, they are afflicted by individuals or groups who violate that agreement for various reasons (examples include: ranchers, smugglers, poachers, criminals, farmers, missionaries, anthropologists, slavers, etc.) which often ends badly for the tribal society (disease, loss of land, or murder), and more rarely, members within the tribes will make contact out of interest or desperation.

I'd expect to see a variety of responses as the sheer size of the multiverse was uncovered. Some would try to hide from it, others would embrace the opportunity to make their own perfect world (with all the aspirations and pitfalls, therein), some might exploit it for profit, and others would seek to either maintain our independence or join an existing polity. A world where you could make your own ideological version of Rapture, an alternate source for a promised land, or a way to evict "undesirables..." anything might go. At first, there'd almost assuredly be chaos, and nations might actually collapse or fragment, depending on how easily people get access to the technology (especially if they steal it). Imagine if half the US population just left in a few weeks: our economy would probably grind to a halt. Imagine if (fill-in-extreme group of choice) found a safe haven to be "themselves," and sought to build up enough force to return later...

I will say, this makes your question even more interesting .

Yep. A few quotes from the thread that started this all:

Tee hee.

I would also point out once more that the TSAB has, in the past, seen what happens when First Contact happens with a magic-aware world that thought it was alone and didn't know about Dimensional Space. When handled badly, it leads to things like "Myedoan factories operated by small numbers of people start out-competing global megafirms, export-import ratios go crazy and **** up economies, some factions react with hostility and fear against the unknown, causing large-scale political shifts, people react in varying ways to a great number of their beliefs being suddenly and harshly invalidated, large amounts of the native economy collapse as optimised magic systems and foreign infrastructure outdo them and the culture risks dissolving without a trace into the melting pot of Dimensional Space".

These are actual things that have happened before. The TSAB are careful about First Contact for a reason - and on a world which doesn't even have magic... well, China is ****ed, for a start. All the cheap production and exports its economy relies on are suddenly outdone by tiny numbers of Myedoan magic-users with Construction Devices. You can probably guess other factors. Several of our global megafirms collapse as off-planet companies do what they do, only better. Imports start flooding in, our culture gets contaminated and overwhelmed... the Bureau aren't staying secret just because "nyah nyah nyah nyah, your forces can't help because they're not going to be able to get inside a dimensional barrier" (though the fact that dimensional barriers to contain the damage will automatically exclude most Earth-natives is another factor against them helping). They are at least in part protecting us. First Contact with offworld, non-Earth life at all is probably the single most paradigm-changing event in human history. First Contact with intelligent, cultured life which can break the laws of physics as we know them?

Does anyone seriously think that a discovery like that wouldn't cause global chaos? Or that our culture would survive the repercussions in anything like the same form as it is at the moment? The TSAB doesn't follow a Prime Directive - if we were at risk of destruction and it was a choice between "First Contact or sit and watch them die", they'd obviously go for the former. But in this case the threat can be handled without disturbing us, and we can't actually help that much anyway. They see it as irresponsible to throw our whole society into mayhem without good reason. Far better to let us discover Dimensional Space on our own, then offer us the hand of friendship. After we've got over the shock, and adapted to the new knowledge.

You have a fundamental misapprehension of Earth's place here. You seem to believe that if the TSAB is the US, Earth is something like Indonesia. It is not. The Indonesia-to-the-TSAB is a five major system, twenty three minor system polity called the Federated Republic of Canatallo, in the parts of once-Galean space furthest from Mid [2]. It has notable trade links with the TSAB, and its own internal security forces which if the TSAB had a gigadeath scenario believed to be happening in Canatalloan space, the TSAB would notify and offer full support.

Earth does not have that. Earth is more akin to Somalia, in that it simply cannot police such things within its own borders, except it is even lower than that, because even the Somalian government such as it is has armed forces who could make a difference in such a situation. To be quite honest, in the eyes of the TSAB officers on scene, Earth people kicking up a fuss about jurisdiction would be like a small child complaining that they weren't asked about a family decision.

If Earth could actually do... anything at all useful, then it might have the right to complain about a "violation of sovereignty". However, in a Dimensional Space context, Earth powers lack the necessary criteria to sovereign even under 97er schools of thought. It lacks the necessary 'exclusivity' and is not de facto, which sovereignty demands; individuals like Precia can do whatever the **** they feel like on Earth, and the local powers have no method to stop them. Hence, claiming 'sovereign' rights is futile, because it's simply not true.

https://forums.spacebattles.com/thre...9#post-8314228

It's the... idea, I think. Of suddenly realizing that not only you are a small fish that just got transferred from the pond into the ocean, but right beside you there are several great white sharks, all swimming around, who haven't quite noticed you exist yet.

Which reminds me.

Yes, there is a quarantine for worlds. Worlds that haven't seen dimensional space yet. Because holy ****, First Contact is one of the greatest events in history, with numerous books, studies, and entire essays on it. First contact, has the potential to literally destroy an entire world and send it into mayhem, or bring it to heights not seen since before.

Which means that First Contact has to be handled carefully. Thousands of agents. Years of studies. Tons of resources, brainpower, and thinking, before they even start subtly contacting the top governments of the world (they haven't even gotten a one world government yet? How barbaric), and letting them prepare their own societies for the coming upheavel.

And then some intrepid explorer, being an idiot, too stupid, or just plain ignorant, opened Pandora's box.

[noob]

(they haven't even gotten a one world government yet? How barbaric)

Not necessarily: having multiple governments and competition between them allows to prevent stagnation which is what happens when there is only one government: when there is a single government uniting a vast area and with low communication with other governments(ex: the barriers between it and the other governments are really huge) it gets happy with its current situation and then can go in stagnation (this happened in real life more than one time) then lag behind in technology and social progress.

[Accelerator]

Not necessarily: having multiple governments and competition between them allows to prevent stagnation which is what happens when there is only one government: when there is a single government uniting a vast area and with low communication with other governments(ex: the barriers between it and the other governments are really huge) it gets happy with its current situation and then can go in stagnation (this happened in real life more than one time) then lag behind in technology and social progress.

... That was half sarcastic.

They have lots of unified worlds. And unified systems.

It's a way to show different points of view.