Would a space-faring civilization have some sort of space police force similar to the Jedi?

Would a space-faring civilization have some sort of space police force?

Now some people argued that a space faring civilization would never be militaristic. But however, would there be a space police force of some sort?

Many films like Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy covers the ideas of a space police force such as the Jedi and the Nova Corps.

While it is highly unlikely according to some people that there would be a militaristic extraterrestrial civilization what about space crimes? I mean there's going to still be crimes like murder and space piracy of some sort that would happen.

Plus I'm pretty sure a space police force would be used in the event a potential civilization becomes a threat to the Universe like Earth should their military industrial complex decided to expand outwards.

originally posted by: starwarsisreal
Would a space-faring civilization have some sort of space police force?

Now some people argued that a space faring civilization would never be militaristic. But however, would there be a space police force of some sort?

No.

What's to police? Without faster than light travel every world is likely to be independent.

And for every inhabited world there will likely be at the very least dozens if not hundreds or thousands, and probably more likely, millions of uninhabited ones.

Even if you assume faster than light travel exists you probably wouldn't going to be dealing with just different types of "people" but whole different species which evolved in different conditions on different worlds with different ways of communicating which may very well be driven by biology.

How would you communicate with an intelligent colony of bioluminescent creatures who communicate with flashes of light for example?

Star Wars is pretty bad sci-fi to be honest.

Star Trek is probably a little better but not by much in terms of the whole dumbing down of aliens to just different people with different features.

Please tell me how you police a planet of intelligent arthropods?

They exist. They are... the MIB

Here come the Men In Black......

I, for one, have a hard time buying in to the whole "so advanced everything is perfect and nobody is ever a jerk because utopia" idea. Then again, I'm human and being a jerk is in some people's nature. Maybe other species don't have that problem?

I think it's more likely that space faring people would be like societies here on earth: some are highly militarized, others are nice guys, and the rest are somewhere in between. I can't really envision the total lack of any military or law, but maybe thats just because I'm human and not a grey

originally posted by: Shamrock6
I, for one, have a hard time buying in to the whole "so advanced everything is perfect and nobody is ever a jerk because utopia" idea. Then again, I'm human and being a jerk is in some people's nature. Maybe other species don't have that
problem?

The main reason people are jerks is because of competition for things, resources, breeding, etc.

Take that away and what happens?

If one can travel between the stars one has access to more resources than they'd ever need. And to get to the point of being able to travel between the stars a planet (not a nation but a whole planet scale society) would have to have done two things:

1) Avoided using the massive energies used for interstellar travel to wage war because such energies used in war would probably be globally devastating and prevent the species from leaving its world.

2) Accessed the resources in their own solar system to create an economy not based on scarcity (as ours is) but abundance.


The evidence that such may be the case is that we have never been invaded, annexed, enslaved, or wiped out and there has been 2.5 billion years the Earth has been broadcasting a signal that life exists here that if "space meanies" were the norm then that would already have happened in our distant past.

a reply to: JadeStar

EY You!

Star Wars is pretty bad sci-fi to be honest.

Take that back. How dare you to say something like that? Star Wars is great, will say fantastic story and I entirely agree with the OP: Star Wars is real!

And yes, dear OP: it would be an independant holistic detective agency. The problem of financing would be solved because it only pursuits crimes of the contributing member civilisations. As Mrs.Jaded noticed, there is a lot of space even for the tiniest part of it to be under permanent watch is impossible. However, we found a way to keep the endangering species grounded till they surrender to the constitution of common sense. Ever wondered why Virgin doesn't get its lift-off done, lately?

a reply to: starwarsisreal

First off, the entire premise that " advanced " means peaceful is stupid.

From our own experience, the most advanced intellects on earth all belong to predators.

Humans being the most advanced and easily one of the most aggressive.

There is no evidence at all that advanced tech or mental faculty means nonaggressive.

There is a lot that says the exact opposite is true though.

One gets much more easily digested energy from meat than plants...is....predators have bigger brains.

Predators are aggressive and violent.

Advanced civilization will undoubtedly descend from a predatory, hence violent species.

The green lantern corps is my best guess honestly though as to a space police.

Take the best brightest and most trustworthy from species in their home sectors if the galaxie and empower them to enforce peace.

Not peace on a planetary mind you but galactic scale.

Earthlings are free to wipe themselves out on earth, but not to wipe out martians for example.

Thus you maintain self determination, and peace.

Just my best guess though.

originally posted by: Peeple
a reply to: JadeStar

EY You!

Star Wars is pretty bad sci-fi to be honest.

Take that back. How dare you to say something like that? Star Wars is great, will say fantastic story and I entirely agree with the OP: Star Wars is real!

It's great fantasy but there is very little in the way of science involved.

a reply to: JadeStar

Could be. Or they could just not give a crap about us yet. Or at least not enough of a crap to make themselves plain (and I mean as in coming and being totally obvious, not giving glimpses of themselves in a shaky cell phone video).

There's two sides to the resource issue. Yes, they could theoretically have all the access in the galaxy, but who's to say two different groups don't want access to the same area? Group A thinks they should have access to planet Q. Group B wants the same resources on the same planet, and neither one thinks they should have to wait the extra two weeks it takes to get to planet Y, which has the same resources as planet Q. Somebody has to mediate that, or there's competition for it.

originally posted by: infinityorder
a reply to: starwarsisreal

First off, the entire premise that " advanced " means peaceful is stupid.

From our own experience, the most advanced intellects on earth all belong to predators.

Humans being the most advanced and easily one of the most aggressive.

There is no evidence at all that advanced tech or mental faculty means nonaggressive.

There is a lot that says the exact opposite is true though.

One gets much more easily digested energy from meat than plants...is....predators have bigger brains.

Predators are aggressive and violent.

Advanced civilization will undoubtedly descend from a predatory, hence violent species.

The green lantern corps is my best guess honestly though as to a space police.

Take the best brightest and most trustworthy from species in their home sectors if the galaxie and empower them to enforce peace.

Not peace on a planetary mind you but galactic scale.

Earthlings are free to wipe themselves out on earth, but not to wipe out martians for example.

Thus you maintain self determination, and peace.

Just my best guess though.

It's flawed logic.

It is based on one example. Us, who have yet to travel to any of the nearby stars.


Very simply, aggression can conquer a planet.

Too much aggression and you just end up conquering yourself.

And the reasons for such aggression in the first place are due to scarcity of resources. How different will humanity be in a million years with the abundance of resources in space? Would we still be fighting endless wars? I doubt it.

Every single point of difference would have it's place in space. There's plenty of room and stuff for everyone out there so what would be the point of wasting vast resources to fight "interstellar battles" when the same resources could be better spent finding other uninhabited planets with resources?

originally posted by: Shamrock6
a reply to: JadeStar

Could be. Or they could just not give a crap about us yet. Or at least not enough of a crap to make themselves plain (and I mean as in coming and being totally obvious, not giving glimpses of themselves in a shaky cell phone video).

There's two sides to the resource issue. Yes, they could theoretically have all the access in the galaxy, but who's to say two different groups don't want access to the same area? Group A thinks they should have access to planet Q. Group B wants the same resources on the same planet, and neither one thinks they should have to wait the extra two weeks it takes to get to planet Y, which has the same resources as planet Q. Somebody has to mediate that, or there's competition for it.

Because if you can travel between the stars, two weeks to the next planet is probably not a reason to initiate a costly war to commit genocide.

There are literally 100 billion or so planets like Earth estimated to be in our Galaxy alone.

Unless you think 50 billion of them all are inhabited by intelligent extraterrestrials your scenario would almost never happen.

There is likely vast unclaimed real estate for anyone who wants it.

Not to mention civilizations themselves could be VERY VERY far apart from each other where no two "spheres of influence" ever even come close to overlapping.

So far the evidence seem to be that while life may be common in our galaxy, intelligent, technological, interstellar travelling life is probably rare.

a reply to: JadeStar

Well science you ever heard of that is...
Do you know X.com? The game? And mass effect? what do you get when you lay these two over each other and paint the converging lines?

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: Shamrock6
I, for one, have a hard time buying in to the whole "so advanced everything is perfect and nobody is ever a jerk because utopia" idea. Then again, I'm human and being a jerk is in some people's nature. Maybe other species don't have that
problem?

The main reason people are jerks is because of competition for things, resources, breeding, etc.

Take that away and what happens?

If one can travel between the stars one has access to more resources than they'd ever need. And to get to the point of being able to travel between the stars a planet (not a nation but a whole planet scale society) would have to have done two things:

1) Avoided using the massive energies used for interstellar travel to wage war because such energies used in war would probably be globally devastating and prevent the species from leaving its world.

2) Accessed the resources in their own solar systeminheritate an economy not based on scarcity (as ours is) but abundance.


The evidence that such may be the case is that we have never been invaded, annexed, enslaved, or wiped out and there has been 2.5 billion years the Earth has been broadcasting a signal that life exists here that if "space meanies" were the norm then that would already have happened in our distant past.

Lol.

I disagree, so does Carl Sagan, he even petitioned NASA to try to get the voyager space craft back years after helping launch them.

Because the same thing I am saying occurred to him.

We have had the means to destroy all life on this world for a half century....we haven't, but we are still very violent.

What happens when 2 or more space faring civilizations find a prize, say an ultra rare element needed to fuel their civilizations, in abundance in one and only one system in the galaxy?

They just share it equally?

Not likely, it is far more likely, that even if they are peaceful now, they will break out the old boom sticks they put down millennia before and war over the finite resource.

Read Larry Niven's "man tzin war".

This has already been very well thought through by many great thinkers.

The predators always win.

The meek will inherit nothing but what they are allowed.

The Jedi: Acts as peacekeepers and enforcers of the good side of the force on that part of the universe. They don't believe in free will for everything is bound to the force.

The Sith: Acts as renegades or warlords of the force on that side of the galaxy, and believe in the freedom of expression. They believe the force is bound to them. How everything is bound to them or how they feel about it might depend on their attitudes and intentions.

originally posted by: Peeple
a reply to: JadeStar

Well science you ever heard of that is...
Do you know X.com? The game? And mass effect? what do you get when you lay these two over each other and paint the converging lines?

Read my above post. Those are games but not really based on what we know in the field of exoplanets and astrobiology. They MAKE it so those spheres of influence overlap to have a good game (the same reason sci-fi films do this to have a good story) but there is no good reason to believe they ever would in reality.

Civilizations are likely separated not just by space but time as well.

a reply to: JadeStar

Meh. I think you're putting too much stock in to what is an unknown. You're assuming species will all have the "no, no, you go first" mentality.

I don't.

a reply to: Specimen

Nice right? Enbalancing forces, like federal prosecutor and lawyer. Because what does Yoda say: never let the extremes guide you, so what do you do, you send one from team guilty and one from team not-guilty and let them see what they can find... enbalance each other, cancelling out the confusing emotions.
Oh i love star wars...

I remember in the movie "The Day The Earth Stood Still" they had aliens that were policed by robots.

If there really are space police, I hope they're more competent than Galaxy Police from Tenchi Muyo.

originally posted by: infinityorder
Lol.

I disagree, so does Carl Sagan, he even petitioned NASA to try to get the voyager space craft back years after helping launch them.

Because the same thing I am saying occurred to him.

Link to something which supports this please? Because I am very familiar with Carl Sagan and I think you've misunderstood something he said, if he said it at all.

We have had the means to destroy all life on this world for a half century....we haven't, but we are still very violent.

And we have yet to reach the nearest star system.....

We are by no means an interstellar civilizations yet.

What happens when 2 or more space faring civilizations find a prize, say an ultra rare element needed to fuel their civilizations, in abundance in one and only one system in the galaxy?

There's no such thing.

The elements, even rare ones are fairly common in the universe since they all are made in the hearts of stars. Not to mention the distribution of intelligent species is probably such that there probably would be vast space between them both in terms of distance but also in terms of TIME.

No two species in roughly the same area of space would necessarily be at the same technological level at the same time.

This has already been very well thought through by many great thinkers.

Indeed it has. But until recently human chauvinism and the idea of a galaxy mostly devoid of resources dominated such thinking so it was easy to extrapolate what we do as humans to aliens.

The current thinking is along the lines of what I said. We see no evidence of vast space battles in this galaxy or others (and we could detect such if it were occurring).

In reality we now know the galaxy is probably far more alien than we thought but also full of far more resources and comfortable places to live than even Star Trek imagined.