What If?

What if Earth was able to defeat the Gbaba and is still there but was unable to let Operation Ark know because Earth didn't know the location of Safehold or no one that was cleared for the knowledge of Operation Ark survived?

MPCatchup wrote:What if Earth was able to defeat the Gbaba and is still there but was unable to let Operation Ark know because Earth didn't know the location of Safehold or no one that was cleared for the knowledge of Operation Ark survived?

Extremely unlikely. The main question - how? I could see three plausible reasons:

1) Some superweapon, able to nullify the Gbaba numerical and technological superirority, developed and fielded in very short time. This is highly unlikely; if the Federation have anything like that in developement, Langhorne would simply never started all this mess on Safehold. Remember; Langhorne and Archangels started all this only because they saw no avaliable means to beat the Gbaba, and were convinced that any technologically developed society would be detected and destroyed before this means could be created. If they knew, that it was possible to build the superweapon, capable of driving off Gbaba, they would probably aimed all Safeholdian resources on the goal of building such weapon.

2) Some other, third sentinent race come to the rescue at last moment, and was powerfull enough to defeat the Gbaba. It is possible, but such race would be more than capable to assis humans in search for the Safehold, even if all data about the colony location was erased on Earth.

3) Gbaba stopped their agression for some reason. It's seems unlikely, but remember - the Gbaba aren't rational beings, and some irrational reason may work with them. For example, Gbaba see the earth pinguin, and thought: "Oh no! It's the Sacred Holy Bird from our legend! Our gods would be angry, because we started the war against race, blessed by the Sacred Holy Bird! We must immediately surrender to the mercy of humans! As i say, it's possible, but the probability is comletely unpredictable.

And, if the humans on Earth were somehow able to drive off the Gbaba - their technology would already reach the singularity point. The human race would became immortal, almost omnipotent and would not have a problem with building a hundred billions of search drones with one goal - to find the Safehold.

Dilandu wrote:The human race would became immortal, almost omnipotent and would not have a problem with building a hundred billions of search drones with one goal - to find the Safehold.

True, but IMO very few people apart from Ark crew actually knew about Ark's existence, so if those few died, even if mankind survived by ways unknown, there's still nobody to know about Safehold.

Generally, if they don't know about Safehold and don't know where to find it, mankind's survival doesn't actually help Merlin all that much. They can't find Safehold, so they won't arrive and bring any aid whatsoever, so the situation doesn't change in the slightest. It's still Merlin vs CoGA.

Question: if mankind actually reached singularity those seven-eight hundred years ago, would they even recognize Safeholdians as humans, or would they consider them some alien race? Given that humanity's first contact was with bunch of genocidal xenos, they might not be all that friendly to non-humans, which spells "bad news" for Safehold if it's found.

Kakai wrote:
True, but IMO very few people apart from Ark crew actually knew about Ark's existence, so if those few died, even if mankind survived by ways unknown, there's still nobody to know about Safehold.

It's simply impossible. All Safehold operation took a lot of ships and resources, that must be produced and transported. There would be thousands, if not millions of peoples, that definitely knew about existence of the Ark fleet.

It may be possible, that some human coloines elsewhere may survive. After all, there was other Federation worlds; it is possible, that some other world also launched something like Ark mission. But obviously, even if they do something like that, they would not dare to report on Earth about that.

Question: if mankind actually reached singularity those seven-eight hundred years ago, would they even recognize Safeholdians as humans, or would they consider them some alien race? Given that humanity's first contact was with bunch of genocidal xenos, they might not be all that friendly to non-humans, which spells "bad news" for Safehold if it's found.

It would be very hard for the immortal transhuman beings to completely forgot that they were humans. After all, they would have absolute memory.

I'm feeling grumpy so I may be harsher than I intend.

First, we have "Word Of Weber" that Project Ark was an extremely top-secret matter. While there may have been thousands of people who "knew" something was going on, they would not know what was going on. It is very likely that after Project Ark left Earth that all records of it (computer & otherwise) were destroyed so that the Gbaba wouldn't find the records afterwards. Since we know that the Terra Federation had the ability to "wipe memories", it is also very possible that people in the "know" would have had their memories of Project Ark wiped.

Second, as for the Singularity, David Weber is on record as doubting that it is possible. Personally, I've enjoyed some authors who play with the Singularity idea but it annoys me to listen to people who think that the Singularity is a FACT and will happen if an intelligent species isn't destroyed.

Of course, YMMV.

Dilandu wrote:

Kakai wrote:
True, but IMO very few people apart from Ark crew actually knew about Ark's existence, so if those few died, even if mankind survived by ways unknown, there's still nobody to know about Safehold.

It's simply impossible. All Safehold operation took a lot of ships and resources, that must be produced and transported. There would be thousands, if not millions of peoples, that definitely knew about existence of the Ark fleet.

It may be possible, that some human coloines elsewhere may survive. After all, there was other Federation worlds; it is possible, that some other world also launched something like Ark mission. But obviously, even if they do something like that, they would not dare to report on Earth about that.

Question: if mankind actually reached singularity those seven-eight hundred years ago, would they even recognize Safeholdians as humans, or would they consider them some alien race? Given that humanity's first contact was with bunch of genocidal xenos, they might not be all that friendly to non-humans, which spells "bad news" for Safehold if it's found.

It would be very hard for the immortal transhuman beings to completely forgot that they were humans. After all, they would have absolute memory.

MPCatchup wrote:What if Earth was able to defeat the Gbaba and is still there but was unable to let Operation Ark know because Earth didn't know the location of Safehold or no one that was cleared for the knowledge of Operation Ark survived?

Spoiler from Safehold 07

Gbaba—a star-traveling, xenophobic species whose reaction to encounters with any possibly competing species is to exterminate it. The Gbaba completely destroyed the Terran Federation and, so far as is known, all human beings in the galaxy aside from the population of Safehold.

is the MWW/RFC telling us something

DrakBibliophile wrote:Second, as for the Singularity, David Weber is on record as doubting that it is possible. Personally, I've enjoyed some authors who play with the Singularity idea but it annoys me to listen to people who think that the Singularity is a FACT and will happen if an intelligent species isn't destroyed.

Well, as we already have textev that the human personality could be saved in VR system or PICA for prolonged period of time, that self-consciousness could be achieved even in military AI, that single production module have capabilites to replicate even the ultra-high-tech equipment - i failed to see how could they NOT reach singularity in this situation. IMHO, of course.

RFC Explained somewhere how Project Arc was organised, can't remember exactly where. There were obviously thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people who knew what was going on, but apart from the Cabinet and the Joint Chiefs, they were all sequestered in the very isolated base for the project before they were read in to the project and never allowed to leave. The base was organised with a very large nuclear bomb to be used when it was clear that Gbabba victory was imminent in order to destroy all trace. The Cabinet and Joint Chiefs had the means of committing suicide and no documentation whatever. So unless the 'rescue' was at the very, very last minute, there would have been people around who knew of the Project, but not how to find Safehold, of course.

Chief-CWH, I'm with you, but the OP is finding wriggle room in the 'so far as is known' in your quote. 'So far as is known' on Safehold the statement is true, but maybe ... However, I don't see a writer as accomplished as David pulling a Deus Ex Machina like that in a major series. (No, I don't think 'Out of the Dark' is a valid precedent. There are at least some hints from earlier in that book that there is something decidedly 'odd' about a certain character.)

It has also been established that personalities living in computers have limited (while long) lifespans.

They tend to reach a point where they either go catatonic or "get lost in dream land".

Of course such personalities "live" at computer speeds so they could reach their "end point" in a relatively short time compared the standard TF lifespan of a biological human.

I'd note that while fully sapient AIs existed in the Terra Federation we have no text evidence about their possible lifespan.

While OWL survived without problem for eight hundred years of continued activity, OWL only recently became sapient.

In addition, while David Weber has stated that the Terra Federation contained "emancipated" PICAs who were not bound by the ten-day rule, we have no evidence of how long such a PICA could live before its mind "gave up".

Of course, such PICAs were "human" in outlook and far from the "super minds" associated with the Singularity.

Dilandu wrote:

DrakBibliophile wrote:Second, as for the Singularity, David Weber is on record as doubting that it is possible. Personally, I've enjoyed some authors who play with the Singularity idea but it annoys me to listen to people who think that the Singularity is a FACT and will happen if an intelligent species isn't destroyed.

Well, as we already have textev that the human personality could be saved in VR system or PICA for prolonged period of time, that self-consciousness could be achieved even in military AI, that single production module have capabilites to replicate even the ultra-high-tech equipment - i failed to see how could they NOT reach singularity in this situation. IMHO, of course.

As I recall from the beginning of AOR, OWL was turned off for most of the time, and only came awake before Nimue/Merlin. Sorry, don't have the book handy or I would provide a reference. The point being is that we can't use OWL as a yardstick for the lifespan of an AI.