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this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2026
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Science Memes
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if you don't mind. could you elaborate? it's ok if you don't, I am rudely asking for free labor.
Seems like you were going for a bit of a twist ending where the letter is actually a threat. It didn't really land for me.
The threat could be more concise and pointed which would give it more impact. Instead of speculating about how humans may react and then saying the aliens will counter it, maybe just say something that amounts to "resistance is futile".
Its also not exactly clear to me what "the problem" is. Its that their race will someday come to an end? There is a lot to be said about this idea and I think you should explore the philosophy of that more. How does prolonging their existence save them? Seems to me like they're still left with the inevitable.
the problem is the inevitability of the heat death of the universe, and the meaningless of existence if there's no life at the end.
While the solution is to optimize the entire universe, though massive galactic engineering (using plausible physics) to maximize their research in order to break thermodynamics. I'll try to make it clearer.
the ending is clear, but wether it's good or bad is ambiguous and up to the reader, as they basically incarcerated humanity on earth and took away any possibility of humanity ever leaving earth. without any negative effects on the planet or humans.
My issue with "the problem" is that this doesn't really make sense to me philosophically. The science is more or less fine.
If they are thinking on the most macro of time scales then doom in 10 years or doom 10^1000 years is still doom. 100 is not any closer to infinity than 10 is. The inevitable is still inevitable.
They admit that they cant use suns from other galaxies. So, even if the universe is infinite, that doesn't help them. Galaxies are not. No matter how slow they make their sun, it will still burn out some day.
Maybe I'm missing the part about breaking thermodynamics.
keep cracking layers of reality, what's possible when understanding deeper physics enables unpredictable things. I'll have to make it clearer