Aww, no alien empires yet

[viperzerofsx]

I had thought of something similar for a sci fi story but wasn't sure of its plausibility. a race that decides the Universe would be a better place if it was filled with life, the problem? they have a very narrow definition of what life is.


I should say though while I think its probable other races could be very different from us I have trouble imagining why anyone would feel threatened enough to exterminate another race. There is as close to infinite room for expansion as you can get out there, why even worry how tall the weeds grow if your yards the size of the Universe? But that assumes our thinking isn't unexceptional.

[Rynn]

There is as close to infinite room for expansion as you can get out there, why even worry how tall the weeds grow if your yards the size of the Universe? But that assumes our thinking isn't unexceptional.

To put it another way: It assumes that every single sentient race will think the same way. Critical to the Fermi paradox is that it doesn't matter if the vast majority of races don't partake in interstellar travel it only takes one, and the galaxy should be teeming with life.

That's what makes arguments along the lines of economics and ideology weak, if sentient races have evolved many times in history then why have none of them succeeded in galactic colonisation? Following that line of thinking leads you to contemplating that sentient races evolving and reaching space travel technology might be rare. The reason for that could be natural (there aren't many environments that allow for this) or unnatural (one race got their first and set it up so that no one else could).

[viperzerofsx]

There is as close to infinite room for expansion as you can get out there, why even worry how tall the weeds grow if your yards the size of the Universe? But that assumes our thinking isn't unexceptional.

To put it another way: It assumes that every single sentient race will think the same way. Critical to the Fermi paradox is that it doesn't matter if the vast majority of races don't partake in interstellar travel it only takes one, and the galaxy should be teeming with life.

That's what makes arguments along the lines of economics and ideology weak, if sentient races have evolved many times in history then why have none of them succeeded in galactic colonisation? Following that line of thinking leads you to contemplating that sentient races evolving and reaching space travel technology might be rare. The reason for that could be natural (there aren't many environments that allow for this) or unnatural (one race got their first and set it up so that no one else could).

actually the point I was making is there seems little reason for a race to colonize the galaxy on such a scale. its a big leap from anything we have done in our history up to this point to even getting to the nearest star, let alone colonize a planet. Even if we could it seems like it would be easier to fix up our home here, taking away a major impulse to go in the first place. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I think/hope it does for many reasons. It just doesn't seem to me like it would be necessary to do it on more than a small scale, say a few star systems rather than half the galaxy.


also for the record I tend to agree with the point intelligent life doesn't appear too often do to environment (Earth in the habitual zone, has a large moon, gas giants to bloc debris, mass extinctions that wiped out previous dominate races like the dinosaurs.) and the number of individually unlikely events that lead to humans developing this weird quirk we call intelligence. I think in most cases complex life gets along fine enough that it generally doesn't need our most famous feature.


I do understand I am making assumptions, a lot of them but I'm trying to keep them fairly reasonable. my economic arguments are simply I don't think such a destructive race could last long enough to be a major threat to anyone else and more more likely than not wipe themselves out before they even had industry let alone space travel and that space is big enough it would be no reason to wipe out another from a "what we have to do to ensure we survive" perspective." Ants which are distantly related to us only fight to support the colony they don't fight if there is no gain in doing so, and ants would not be able to control their population growth or find other solutions to problems like intelligent life.