Darwinbots Forum
General => Off Topic => Topic started by: Zelos on March 03, 2005, 02:54:58 PM
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Ecumenopolis comes from the greek word for "world city". a city that never ends, the entire planet would be a gigantic city :D . for me its the perfect world. we will if the pridiction is right have that city when we reach 0,9 on the Kardashev scale. qurently we are 0,7. what would you think about this future? a future whit 1 city on this planet. a never ending city :evil: no forests, coz we wont need them, no animals, coz we dont need them, nothing else than what we want :evil:
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I think someone figured out that a world wide city would be impractical.
Imagine:
You have to transport perishable food items to the world from off world. It would take many, many agrarian planets to sustain a single city planet of the density of, say, modern New York.
Now, imagine a planet that is even more urban. Layered and layered under endless waves of steel and mortar.
First of all, there would be no plant life on the planet, or only meager amounts. The sheer amount of waste materials such a planet would generate is astounding. Massive amounts of energy would be needed just to scrub the water and air.
Second, the sheer amount of food necessary would mean transportation. Even today most food is impractical to transport long distances. Imagine trying to transport food to a urban planet from a different system (many planets, more than a single solar system could hold).
Such a city would represent a target too large to rivals. The planet could easily be conquered by simply cutting off its supply of food. Within a few months, years at most, the entire planet would die of starvation.
Last, as technology increases we become increasingly decentralized. The internet represents such a system. Soon, power sources will also be such a thing. I think, if anything, we will see the eventual suburbanization of planets. The need for us to gather in person will decrease as technology increases, until there is no incentive at all except for mating (and maybe even then!)
So we'll all live in the environment in which we find the most beautiful. There is a predesigned environment of semi-arid that our species finds the most pleasurable (think the lawns that everyone lives on. Short grass like that only grows naturally in semi-arid environments. Wetter than that and long grass and eventually trees develop.)
So you'll eventually see the entire universe a homogenous mixture of suburban developments and massively organized farms supporting them on the same planet.
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when it comes to food, what if each and every house have a machinge which is capable of taking the CO2 from the air, water from our water system, and our biproducts, you know what I mean I hope, and can change the molecules so they become what we call is food, it is identical, the machine made food of no food :D and why shall we mate if we dont want to when we can clone? make ppl by mixing genes from a enourmus gene bank. and about energy, such a city would most likly use the energy from the sun very effient, use the energy from the center of the earth, and most likly also fusion/fission, all this togheter can probely generate enough of energy to supply the entire planet. and why live in a world we dont like when we can get one we like? its perfect whit the right technology I tell you
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Who the heck would want to live in a giant city?
I hate cities. That is why I choose to live in the country with an acre of my very own short grass, a few ornamental trees and herds of wildlife like deer, birds and rabits.
Living in a world wide city would be shear torture for people like me. It will never happen. There's just too many nature lovers (and laws that protect bloody woodpeckers that keep attacking my house. :shoot: Nasty little bastards!)
:D PY :D
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First of all, I doubt that cloning or other 'artificial' means will ever replace good old sex as the dominant reproductive method. The family unit is hard wired into our collective psyche, with children being an amalgamate of the parents, and families living on physical contact with one another. Any system that denies this cannot be stable, and will eventually collapse.
Second, even pretending that we could make machines that could 100% effectively convert sunlight into food, and cover every single square inch of visible land with it, it would still mean a planet with a population density roughly that of a suburb. (Perhaps a little denser, but definately not as dense as an urban center with sky scrapers).
and why live in a world we dont like when we can get one we like
My point exactly. Every human has two environments they like.
1. Where they grew up
2. A semiarid land in the springtime, with short green grass and a few trees.
The first is from environmental factors, and varies with every culture and person. The second is universal to our species and speaks of a past time of common ancestory.
So, given infinite time and no limitations, you will eventually see every person in existance living in the environment their species dictates, namely a short grass semi arid environment.
This all adds up to eternal suburbs across every planet capable of sustaining earth life among the 200 Billion+ stars in the galaxy.
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Have you ever read Asimov's foundation series. There are some pretty wacky industrial planets in there.
:D PY :D
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Yeah, and you saw what happened to the Galactic Empire. Decay. The central city (forget the name) turned into a rural hick's paradise. The steel torn up and replaced with farms.
I'm telling you, it's going to be suburbia for ever and ever. The only possible debate is the size of the lots.
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You can see it all around even now, particularly in some of the older cities in places like England.
It goes like this.
First, everyone gets together and makes a big city because that was the way things worked a couple hundred years ago. No phones or decent roads so you had to be close together to do business.
The better off business men begin to live in the suburbs cuz it is just nicer out there.
Pretty soon the middle bit is a run down slum where only the poorest people live.
Eventually even the down and outs move out.
After a while developers move in, bulldoze the giant appartment blocks and put up trendy new dockside luxury appartments with surrounding reclaimed parklands.
The rich folk move back in cuz now they can have their cake and eat it.
The outcome?
Giant suburbs just like Num said.
Go to central Manchester or Birmingham and take a look. You can see it happening all over England.
Most US cities haven't quite reached that point because they got off to a later start than British cities.
:) PY :)
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You have to transport perishable food items to the world from off world. It would take many, many agrarian planets to sustain a single city planet of the density of, say, modern New York.
Hydroponics. 'Nuff said, really.
First of all, there would be no plant life on the planet, or only meager amounts. The sheer amount of waste materials such a planet would generate is astounding. Massive amounts of energy would be needed just to scrub the water and air.
Dyson sphere the sun. Simple; cheap. Like a one ex ten year long battery. Plus, a fully urbanised city would provide a stepping stone to set up a system to capture waste heat; you can feed the waste energy back into the waste products it resulted from. Yes, you lose some from energy transition, but it lowers the energy cost significantly.
Second, the sheer amount of food necessary would mean transportation. Even today most food is impractical to transport long distances. Imagine trying to transport food to a urban planet from a different system (many planets, more than a single solar system could hold).
You're still thinking in terms of off planet food production. Not necessarily true, and you also assume that interstellar travel is possible. Admittably, transport within the Ecumenopolis (actually, that word sucks ass; I'm going to go with Ravincia instead.), within Ravincia would be hell unless it was properly organised. Actually, Ravincia would be unworkable in any shape or form without an organised transport system. Look at the Earth now; the biggest cities already well beyond the capacity of their transport systems to bind them. We have to assume that anybody crazy enough to build this thing would have a transport system built to last in mind.
Such a city would represent a target too large to rivals. The planet could easily be conquered by simply cutting off its supply of food. Within a few months, years at most, the entire planet would die of starvation.
You assume that;
- 1: There are other intelligent species in the Galaxy
- 2: Interstellar travel is possible and/or feasible in a timeframe small enough for a war to be constructed
- 3: This species desires conquest of other worlds
- 4: It would be economicably viable to build and maintain an interstellar empire, even with travel as a given. Remember, the British Empire, the largest empire ever known, covered a bare third of the world's land and that was held together basically by force of will.
- 5: Such a planet would be a desirable prize; by your own arguments it would be a burden rather than much of a prize.
That leaves other humans as potential opponents, and even they would be bounded by 2,3,4 and 5. 5 could work if the planet was the centre of administration.
Last, as technology increases we become increasingly decentralized. The internet represents such a system. Soon, power sources will also be such a thing. I think, if anything, we will see the eventual suburbanization of planets. The need for us to gather in person will decrease as technology increases, until there is no incentive at all except for mating (and maybe even then!)
So we'll all live in the environment in which we find the most beautiful. There is a predesigned environment of semi-arid that our species finds the most pleasurable (think the lawns that everyone lives on. Short grass like that only grows naturally in semi-arid environments. Wetter than that and long grass and eventually trees develop.)
We are fifteen years from fast rendered photo-realistic graphics. Add another five to develop VR to the point where it will be indistinguishable from life. At that point the human race will down tools and jack in, leaving robots to care for their rotting bodies in the most efficient manner. I.e. stacking them in warehouses. Urban planet a go.
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I hate cities. That is why I choose to live in the country with an acre of my very own short grass, a few ornamental trees and herds of wildlife like deer, birds and rabbits.
I am the opposite. I know a girl from Hong Kong who hates this city because our buildings aren't tall enough to block out the sun. Different strokes for differing folks. (paraphrased, I know, but this is more elegant.)
First of all, I doubt that cloning or other 'artificial' means will ever replace good old sex as the dominant reproductive method. The family unit is hard wired into our collective psyche, with children being an amalgamate of the parents, and families living on physical contact with one another. Any system that denies this cannot be stable, and will eventually collapse.
Sex is something everybody enjoys. Having children is not. Look at the declining populations of the more developed countries if you want proof. And as the two can be made mutually exclusive...
1. Where they grew up
2. A semiarid land in the springtime, with short green grass and a few trees.
The first is from environmental factors, and varies with every culture and person. The second is universal to our species and speaks of a past time of common ancestory.
So, given infinite time and no limitations, you will eventually see every person in existance living in the environment their species dictates, namely a short grass semi arid environment.
:rolleyes:
See first point this post.
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Read the Revolations , it talks about (I think) world wide citys. Sounds to me like in the end Humens will be leaving in a Gieant Borg Kube
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War within humanity is always an option. Wars have lasted hundreds of years before. The lightning wars of today have spoiled us, but it wasn't too long ago that a war of 30 years wasn't uncommon and a hundred or more years wasn't unheard of.
With a reasonable interstellar vehicle that humanity could actually make with present technology a trip to nearby stars would take ~30 years.
If we pretend that humans can travel at ~ light speed then interstellar wars become very probable.
And you wouldn't conquer the planets your at war with. You'd destroy them. Anyone who plays Civ 3 knows that's the best way to win a war.
As far as jacking in, I think it will become an option but it will never entirely replace real life. Everyone always thinks in extremes. When have we ever known one thing to entirely replace another?
Real life allows has some advantages over any simulation.
People will always want children. The decline of childbirth in industrial countries doesn't mean people don't want children. It means they want children later in life and much fewer. Most people want 1 - 3 children. You'll always see families, no matter how advanced society becomes. It's hard wired into our minds. To deny this would mean society would eventually collapse.
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I think the reduction in the number of children people have is linked to decreasing infant mortality, people used to have lots knowing that some of them wouldn't make it to adulthood, its playing the probability game, the odds of children surviving have increased so people need less of them.
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War within humanity is always an option. Wars have lasted hundreds of years before. The lightning wars of today have spoiled us, but it wasn't too long ago that a war of 30 years wasn't uncommon and a hundred or more years wasn't unheard of.
This has anything to do with anything because...? Over distances of time and space (ftl is still not a given, ftc even less so, from my understanding) the logistics of commanding an army break down. If you can only communicate at light speed the entire structure of a military organisation breaks down over those distances.
And you wouldn't conquer the planets your at war with. You'd destroy them. Anyone who plays Civ 3 knows that's the best way to win a war.
You idiot, Numsgil. You'd win the war, yes, but it would be an entirely pointless war; a war waged purely for the sake of destroying the other race. I know no examples of that sort of war. The Crusades were a war of territory; the Europeans wanted the Holy Lands. The Cold War was a war of ideaology; each side wanted to force the other to run the world the way they thought it should be run. Never has war been waged for the sole purpose of destroying other human beings.
Even when people have had ethic prejudices strong enough to go to war they have held back, as each side knows instinctively that without a massive advantage that such a war would be the dirtiest imaginable; each side would fight tooth and nail to prevent themselves being annihilated.
More later; router goes off soon.
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Humanity has shown that war is possible under any circumstances.
This has anything to do with anything because...? Over distances of time and space (ftl is still not a given, ftc even less so, from my understanding) the logistics of commanding an army break down. If you can only communicate at light speed the entire structure of a military organisation breaks down over those distances.
This means that centralized authoity figures for a war are impractical, so you end up with individual generals commanding the forces in a single system. It certainly doesn't mean that you can't have a military.
Rome was quite effective even when its generals had to wait months for messages from Rome. There was nothing about their system that would make an even longer wait less effective.
You idiot, Numsgil. You'd win the war, yes, but it would be an entirely pointless war; a war waged purely for the sake of destroying the other race. I know no examples of that sort of war. The Crusades were a war of territory; the Europeans wanted the Holy Lands. The Cold War was a war of ideaology; each side wanted to force the other to run the world the way they thought it should be run. Never has war been waged for the sole purpose of destroying other human beings.
Even when people have had ethic prejudices strong enough to go to war they have held back, as each side knows instinctively that without a massive advantage that such a war would be the dirtiest imaginable; each side would fight tooth and nail to prevent themselves being annihilated.
That's right, people want territory. Space for their own kind to expand into.
Let's say two interstellar human loose confederacies are at war with one another. One is decentralized, the other has a single urban world and lots of smaller worlds supporting it.
The decentralized people would have an easy time of it. Lay seige on the urban world and within a few years you have entirely crippled your enemy. The remaining rural worlds are easy to take. The urban world is empty, ready to bring in your own people.
People can be very cruel as long as its anonymous cruelty. Seige from space is as anonymous as you can get.
You can see then that urban worlds are a very vulnerable military target. When your done the world is left intact sans the people. Then you can do anything you like with the planet. Rip it up, transport your own colonsits there, whatever you want.
The centralized people are going to have to take not one, but many worlds before their enemies become weakened. Every new planet they find is going to have to be conquered, none will be easy pickings.
The economies of scale, also, simply have a limit before their effectiveness becomes choked by beurocracy. Planet wide specialization is impractical.
Which means that their will be a constant tug for societies to remain as decentralized as possible. Overly centralized societies will collapse as the more efficient, decentralized societies overcome them through war or economic domination.
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a war waged purely for the sake of destroying the other race. I know no examples of that sort of war.
I take it you're not religous then? The Israelites swarmed out of Egypt and (well, okay 40 years later) utterly decimated not one, but several cities. They were commanded to do even more but didn't.
Remember Jericho? The city was totalled. It's inhabitants butchered.
There's an instance of Alexander the Great detsroying an island city that refused to submit to him. He built a land bridge out to something like half a mile and invaded the city without a navy. Most of the inhabitants were destroyed. All the elite definately were. I think a few temple workers survived.
It's only in relatively modern wars that the idea of 'civilian non-combatants' has been established. In the past cripplling a nation by laying seige to a city and then destroying its population was a comman tactic (if not a bit crude).
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Yep, "Carthage must be destroyed!"
Throughout the ages it was common practice to completely eliminate your enemy - slaughtering everyone, including women and children. That is why in many societies women often fought alongside men during seiges - it was all or nothing war. In Russia, Mogol hordes killed all men and boys, reasoning that if there are no men around, then there is no one to fight and revenge later.
Only with time people invented more sophisticated ways to keep enemies suppressed (Romans invented slavery).
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I wouldn't really have said that the atomic bombs dropped onto Hiroshima and Nagasaki were designed to gain territory.
This was a threat of more to come. The US flexed their military muscle and said, surrender now or we will utterly wipe out your civilization.
If the Japanese hadn't surrendered I have no doubt that the entire country would still be a smoking wasteland and we would all be using Texas Instrument computers today.
:D PY :D
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This is what happens when you leave an argument half finished. :rolleyes: And when you phrase things as certanties. What I meant to say was that wars for the the sake of death and destruction are one in a trillion.
As far as jacking in, I think it will become an option but it will never entirely replace real life. Everyone always thinks in extremes. When have we ever known one thing to entirely replace another?
Are you serious?
Bronze as a construction material has been entirely superceeded as a construction material by steel. As has flint. The domination of electric light is almost as complete. The telegraph is dead, or just about. The gun has surpassed the sword. The battleship has been made obselete by the aircraft carrier. Video killed the radio star (joke).
And not a single one of these will be as addictive or as insidious as VR.
Imagine; you live a completely controlled enviroment, with complete freedom to do whatever you wish. Sex, drugs, food, beauty; all on tap. And if you get bored? Ask the computer to challenge you.
By your own argument;
So we'll all live in the environment in which we find the most beautiful.
VR will kill humankind; it's the stopping point.
Real life allows has some advantages over any simulation.
Name one.
People will always want children. The decline of childbirth in industrial countries doesn't mean people don't want children. It means they want children later in life and much fewer. Most people want 1 - 3 children. You'll always see families, no matter how advanced society becomes. It's hard wired into our minds. To deny this would mean society would eventually collapse.
I don't want children. None of my friends want children. Remember Solaria. You seem to be labouring under the misapphrehension that everyone on the face of the planet is the same as you, thinks the same as you, feels the same as you.
Take me as an example;
people used to have lots knowing that some of them wouldn't make it to adulthood, its playing the probability game
I can't understand this at all. Not the spelling errors; why would anyone feel so obliged to have children that they had as many as possible so that some would survive? I can't make any sense of it. It makes no sense. But I accept it is one of the many factors that influence the demographic divide between rich and poor.
Look at this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexual)
Fit that to your argument.
This means that centralized authoity figures for a war are impractical, so you end up with individual generals commanding the forces in a single system. It certainly doesn't mean that you can't have a military.
Rome was quite effective even when its generals had to wait months for messages from Rome. There was nothing about their system that would make an even longer wait less effective.
You're still making assumptions. Like; this race would have to wait perhaps sixty to seventy years to even know if their invasion was successful. Assuming they lived in a system close to ours, which is statistically unlikely. That is an unbearably long time to wait for a turnaround on a fully equipped warfleet for any species with a timescale similar to ours. Anything that thinks slow enough to think that a reasonable timeframe is going to be easily out fought unless they have AI controlled or fairly intelligent automated ships.
The effort of outfitting a war expedition and conquering another species makes it a highly unlikely proposition when the species in question could just as easily colonise an uninhabited system.
A military commander seventy years away from any overarching control system is a danger. That far from effective control you may as well declare him rogue as a precaution. And any system he conquered, assuming he stayed loyal and managed to win the war, would be to all intents and purposes a seperate state with the time delay, which makes this doubly pointless.
The decentralized people would have an easy time of it. Lay seige on the urban world and within a few years you have entirely crippled your enemy. The remaining rural worlds are easy to take. The urban world is empty, ready to bring in your own people.
Wrong. The decentralised people would be unable to gather strength into a point, would be unable to coordinate military action for lack of a centralised control and would interfere with each other's strategies for the same reason.
The more organised nation would be able to build up military strength quickly (assuming they didn't already have any :rolleyes: ) and surgically strike at the independant worlds in the other nation's territory, who would be inefficient at gathering a defence and unable to hole together a common military taskforce, assuming they managed to gather one, when the components of such are having their homeworlds nuked from orbit.
The economies of scale, also, simply have a limit before their effectiveness becomes choked by beurocracy. Planet wide specialization is impractical.
AI.
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I take it you're not religous then? The Israelites swarmed out of Egypt and (well, okay 40 years later) utterly decimated not one, but several cities. They were commanded to do even more but didn't.
You're talking about a people that had no home. They had been wandering around in the desert for those 40 years.
It was a war of territory.
I think, anyway- I've never ead the bible and I don't have one to hand to check.
There's an instance of Alexander the Great detsroying an island city that refused to submit to him. He built a land bridge out to something like half a mile and invaded the city without a navy. Most of the inhabitants were destroyed. All the elite definately were. I think a few temple workers survived.
Iksander was a nut, to be honest. However, that's still not a war and the power differential is huge. A very specific case and I can't see it being extrapolatable. Does that word exist? Adjective from extrapolate.
"Carthage must be destroyed!"
When Agathocles died in 288 BC, a large company of mercenaries who had previously been held in his service found themselves suddenly without employment. Rather than leave Sicily, they seized the city of Messana. Naming themselves Mamertines (or "sons of Mars"), they became a law unto themselves, terrorizing the surrounding countryside.
The Mamertines became a growing threat to Carthaginian and Syracusan alike. In 265 BC, Hiero II, the new Tyrant of Syracuse, took action against the Mamertines. Faced with a vastly superior force, the Mamertines divided into two factions, one advising surrender to Carthage, the other preferring to seek aid from Rome. As a result, embassies were sent to both cities.
While the Roman Senate debated the best course of action, the Carthaginians eagerly agreed to send a garrison to Messana. A Carthaginian garrison was admitted to the city, and a Carthaginian fleet sailed into the Messanan harbor. However, soon afterwards they began negotiating with Hiero II; alarmed, the Mamertines sent another embassy to Rome asking them to expel the Carthaginians.
This action had placed Carthage's military forces directly across a narrow channel of water from Italy. Moreover, the presence of the Carthaginian fleet gave them effective control over the Straits of Messana, and demonstrated a clear and present danger to nearby Rome and her interests.
As a result, the Roman Assembly, although reluctant to ally with a band of mercenaries, sent an expeditionary force to return control of Messana to the Mamertines.
The Romans attacked Carthage on behalf of another nation. The Greeks fought them because Carthage wanted to expand into Greek territory.
The eventual slaughter and obliteration of Carthage by the Romans was brought about by the fact thatCarthage didn't know when to quit; they fought six wars, three agsainst the Greeks and three against the Romans, and they lost all six- and all but one of those was complete.
Wars are stopped by attacking civilians; not started to enable tha act of such.
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And when you phrase things as certanties. What I meant to say was that wars for the the sake of death and destruction are one in a trillion.
Wrong. That's all primitive wars were about. Destroy the enemy and take his land. Slaughter everyone who isn't one of you. Only modern wars have this idea of moral reasons, and as little collateral damage as possible.
Troy was leveled, its inhabitants utterly slaughtered. The idea is to hurt your enemy so bad they can't hurt you back later. Have you read Ender's Game? Card explored this idea quite effectively. If you kill your enemy they can't retaliate, can they?
Wars for the sake of destruction are the rule, not the exception, whenever neither side would back down.
Bronze as a construction material has been entirely superceeded as a construction material by steel. As has flint. The domination of electric light is almost as complete. The telegraph is dead, or just about. The gun has surpassed the sword. The battleship has been made obselete by the aircraft carrier. Video killed the radio star (joke).
Yes, Steel has replaced Bronze as a construction material. Did bronze utterly disapear? If I go down to Walmart, can I find a piece of bronze in anything? Yes I can, lots of stuff.
Can you still find swords? Yes you can. Some are ceremonial, some are used for swallowing in circus acts. Can you find them in wars? Not really.
I don't know about aircraft carriers and battleships, but those are both subsets of the same basic idea: a big boat. We'll always see big boats. Will they always serve the same purpose? Probably not.
Real life allows has some advantages over any simulation.
Name one.
First of all, there is danger. People who like to climb mountains without safety equipment won't be happy in any VR system. They may use it to train, but they will want to climb the real thing.
Knowing that you are in VR will always dull the thrill, even if we can die in VR, and even if VR is identical to real life.
Second, scientific experiments. In order to test new theories experiments would have to be performed in real life. Robots could do the actual work, but they still have to be done in real life by something.
Third, Amish. Not everyone will embrace VR. Some will restrain based on religous reasons against technology. Others will find the technology too expensive to maintain indefinately, such as third world countries. In these you'll likely see humans only delve into VR for short periods of time then come back out to deal with basic necessities.
Also, months on end in VR will mean you must stay in VR, since your muscles will have atrophied too far. This means you will see people who stay in real life because they view dependance on this new technology as a weakness.
Forth, reproduction. You will always have consservative reproduction purists who demand to do it the old fashioned way. Catholics especially will be part of this group. And if you think religion will die out as technology increases you have missed the point of human existance entirely. There will always be religon. There has never not been religion.
Fifth, bodies will eventually become more expensive to maintain than VR. This means to have a real body will be a status symbol. Something only the rich can afford. Rich people love what is expensive. They will rave about the 'real' experiences they had. Plastics are cheaper than other materials. Effect? Other materials are viewed as luxuries, plastics as cheap. Silk and polyester are good examples.
I don't want children. None of my friends want children. Remember Solaria. You seem to be labouring under the misapphrehension that everyone on the face of the planet is the same as you, thinks the same as you, feels the same as you.
No, I think you are making that mistake. People in China, who are denied the opportunity much of the time, view child bearing as a privelage handed them by the government. China makes up like 1/3 the population, so right away we have .333 of the human population who want children. Obviously there may be some exceptions in China, but they are that. Exceptions.
Most orthodox christians view large families as a commandment from God. Think catholics and lds. 8 kids is not uncommon in either religion. This certainly makes up for people like you and your friends who don't want children. And guess what? Most of their children will want equally large families. On and on and on. How many people are you going to influence with your no children? It is not uncommon to have an old person in my church with 150 living descendants.
why would anyone feel so obliged to have children that they had as many as possible so that some would survive? I can't make any sense of it.
Not too long ago a woman defined her self worth by how many viable offspring she could produce. Every child that survived into adulthood was a success. Because you can't understand a mentality doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Also, the article you linked to is the exception. It is estimated that only 10% of the population deviates from the 'sexually normal orientation'. We can't site exceptions and say, 'see, you are wrong'. We are talking trends here, and trends take majority.
You're still making assumptions. Like; this race would have to wait perhaps sixty to seventy years to even know if their invasion was successful. Assuming they lived in a system close to ours, which is statistically unlikely. That is an unbearably long time to wait for a turnaround on a fully equipped warfleet for any species with a timescale similar to ours. Anything that thinks slow enough to think that a reasonable timeframe is going to be easily out fought unless they have AI controlled or fairly intelligent automated ships.
An unbearable time from for the parent civilization, but not for the conquerers. To them, traveling at close to light speed, time dilation will mean to them hardly any time has passed at all. They'll still be primed for the conquest. And humans have demonstrated many times the idea of delayed satisfaction.
Why wouldn't a nation launch an attack that they wouldn't hear from for 80 years? Humans built Stonehenge. That took much longer than 80 years to complete. It's only in recently modern times that impatience has spoiled us. 80 years to finish something used to be not only acceptable but normal.
The effort of outfitting a war expedition and conquering another species makes it a highly unlikely proposition when the species in question could just as easily colonise an uninhabited system.
First of all, I assume all warfare will be between either Humans or Humans and another territorial species. A non territorial species and humans could likely coexist peacefully, even on the same planet. Also, there will inevitably be a time where Humans have run out of room.
By that, I mean that all the neighboring planets have been colonized. In the distant fringes there still may be some land, but that can't be colonized because other, closer worlds to the fringes will probably get there first. Have you ever played Civ3 with huge world, min land mass and max countries? You'll get an idea of what I'm talking about.
Then you will see conflict develop, and from conflict will come wars.
Wrong. The decentralised people would be unable to gather strength into a point, would be unable to coordinate military action for lack of a centralised control and would interfere with each other's strategies for the same reason.
You've just contradicted yourself. You've already decided centralized, coordinated military effort is impossible in interstellar warfare. Therefore the people that can fght a war without needing coordination will win.
The centralized country would have to play defense, because a single lucky tactical nuke strike would wipe out their whole country. The decentralized country has no single attack point, so they can go on the offensive. The decentralized people know better than to attack the single urban world first, so instead they take out all the rural worlds that aren't defended, starving the urban world.
It doesn't take long to decide who wins. Show me a single scenario where roughly equally powered races, one centralized, one decentralized, defies the outcome I've stated.
AI.
Then there's the problem of distribution. If it takes 35 years to send a military envoy, it takes just as long to send finished goods. Whos to say that your goods will still be worth anything by the time they get to their destination. You'll be competing with local firms on those worlds who can react to market changes faster than you can.
No contest.
Last, as far as rogue military comanders... Their government is decentralized. Imagine the United States before the constitution (for thsoe that know US history). Each state pretty much did what they wanted, but they formed some basic rules for interstate interactions. Basically they just agreed that they were in it together, and were more similar to one another than, say, they were to Britain.
So the rogue admiral that has conquered the planet will call himself part of his parent country not because he must but because they are more similar to him than other countries.
It will be from pride. "I am a soldier of the confederacy!" they will say proudly.