The Great Filter is the idea that, in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare. The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi paradox.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. As a 2015 article put it, “If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
Personally I think it’s photosynthesis. Life itself developed and spread but photosynthesis started an inevitable chain of ever-greater and more-efficient life. I think a random chain of mutations that turns carbon-based proto-life into something that can harvest light energy is wildly unlikely, even after the wildly unlikely event of life beginning in the first place.
I have no data to back that up, just a guess.
Oh my god, that’s such a stupid and simple way to kill a galaxy, but also what a great plot twist that would make in a story. Like the big reveal over why the galaxy has always been at war with itself. Exactly the kind of nihilism I’d expect from an Altered Carbon or its ilk.
Thanks for sharing!
You might like the paperclip maximizer thought experiment
Also an excellent clicker style game called Universal Paperclips
Thanks I have heard of this kind of problem before, just not in an adversarial space war context, with like opposing forces