@nyrath @Hcobb @isaackuo @MeiLin Actually, while I contemplate cancer analogies for growth-for-growth's sake, it occurs to me that there are obvious modes of failure that apply to tumors which also apply to GFGS civilizations.

Necrosis, in which logistic problems starve the center; and cancer-gets-cancer, in which attacking your neighbors to expand into their territory provides better returns than trying to expand into the now-distant margin of the tumor/sphere.

@nyrath @Hcobb @isaackuo @MeiLin

Applying the same principles to growth-obsessed societies/peoples suggest to me that GFGS civs are acutely vulnerable to breaking down into civil resource wars - and, if you're using relativistic transports, probably the kind of civil resource wars that leave nothing behind except the Cancer Emulation Is Not A Viable Strategy Memorial Stellar Graveyard of 3162.

Follow

@nyrath @Hcobb @isaackuo @MeiLin

(You can patch this with some notions like "every colony sends out n expeditions of its own then suddenly gets permabored with the whole idea of expansion", but like you say, it only takes one defector to blow up the whole thing.)

Sign in to participate in the conversation
Mastodon

a Schelling point for those who seek one