this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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Futurology
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It's typically interesting reading about speculation regarding the Fermi Paradox and/or Great Filters. I of course have no special knowledge, but my guess is that space is simply so large and empty that most civilizations turn inwards instead of outwards. There's a decent chance that while life is common, technologically advanced life isn't - life evolved almost as soon as conditions allowed (on a geological timescale) but it took a lot of good fortune and time for humans to appear.
There are an estimated 100-400 billion stars in our galaxy. If there are only a handful of advanced species at our level or greater then perhaps such civilizations reach out, hear nothing for millennia, potentially colonize a few nearby stars at slow speed on an interstellar scale, and then retreat into themselves via constructs like virtual universes. It could be that recreated universes indistinguishable from reality are more feasible than spending huge amounts of time in transit to the stars with planets that might be able to support your species. In that case you wouldn't be visiting Earth and it could explain the silence.
I have to wonder if motivations remain the same past a certain point in a species' development. Our expansionism on earth and in our solar system is driven by our need for resources, which is driven by our population growth, which is driven by the basest of biological instincts. If we become largely non-biological and functionally immortal, is the desire to procreate still there? It's really an extension of what you said, but maybe that "turn inward" is not only a question of feasibility, but also maybe intelligent life just becomes satisfied at some point, a kind of cybernetic nirvana.
I vote we expand anyway, even if it's done automatically while we're in some kind of degenerate party simulation. It just seems like a shame not to build things for real.
Don't forget the whole 13 billion years thing. The universe could be teeming with technologically capable life in the absolute sense yet have only a few intelligent/sapient species arise within the same hundred thousand year period, for example. Missed connections may abound.
Also, intelligence might not be the evolutionary advantage we think it is. It has a lot of drawbacks too (it's very energy-intensive for one). Sharks are older than trees and never really changed since they evolved, with not that much intelligence to show for it.
Ever read Blindsight?
Oh yes, brilliant book.
That breaks if they expand, though.
I don't know, we're not the only species that's started using stone tools, for example. As far as I can tell species get more or less prehensile and intelligent over time fairly randomly, and it's just a matter of diffusion for one to reach the capability of using technology.