When I was a young teem, a teacher put a slice of apple in a sealed container with a few fruit-flies. A week later, there were hundreds of fruit-flies. In another week the bottom of the container was covered with the bodies of fruit-flies. Quick, unforgettable lesson.

In fact, any civilization capable of long distance space travel would have to overcome such idiocy and maximize the potential of all individuals, regardless of the wealth they were born into.

I’d be curious what you base this statement on? Historically, the societies which did the most long distance travel and exploration were the opposite of this. Spain and Portugal were absolute monarchies, with well defined feudal systems which exploited anyone outside the noble class. Yet, their efforts to “explore” and dominate the Americas were incredibly successful. The UK’s greatest exploration and extent was a direct offshoot of Mercantilism, with the East India Trading Company being both the primary actor and beneficiary. US Westward expansion was predicated on theft, war and genocide. Though, as a counter-point, the modern US system does a better job of providing opportunity to most people (with some notable problems), than it used to. And the US has been a hotbed of advancement in the last century.

In modern times, space exploration was originally driven by the desire to find new and interesting way to kill other people. And it’s only been recently that peaceful sharing of information has been normalized. Even there, the cutting edge of space exploration seems to be back in the hands of mercantilist forces. I mean, I love me some SpaceX, “let’s catch a rocket” shenanigans. But, we also shouldn’t pretend that SpaceX is anything other than a for-profit corporation under a leadership which would be happy to harvest organs from people for a profit.

I know it’s popular to think that space exploration must be a Star Trek style “space communism”. But, this doesn’t really align with the examples we have from history. And while that is certainly a human centric way to look at the problem, it’s also the only real world example we have to look at. Everything else is just philosophers sitting around, passing a bong and saying, “man, what if…” It can be a useful exercise to think about other possibilities. But, I’d tend to focus more effort on what we have evidence for, than made up ideas.

I watched a video on two LLMs fed on the history of philosophy. When they arrived at morality, it was funny to listen to them “talk” (this LLM generates a podcast). They talked about how humans strive for concepts like justice, good, or equality, but we’re very fraught with human tendencies around tribalism and brinksmanship. The AIs said something like, “It’s like they can’t imagine a species that wouldn’t have these features.”

And it’s like…yeah, good point weird autocorrect engines. We constantly impart our qualities on to things, but that’s just the blind spot of our superiority on this planet. Why wouldn’t aliens or AI seek a system in which all are valued for their best qualities?

Humans are still animals, very much so. We compete, we fight, but it’s all one species. I wish we would wake up and realize it.

https://youtu.be/GWmOw4d0R0s?si=Hb475ULiWtT0dF_U

This is kind of an underwhelming explanation,

Its the best one ive ever heard

and I dont think it’s ultimately right given how humans are trying their best to wipe out all life on earth over pieces of paper.

That’s essentially what we’re doing

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/07/metastatic-modernity-launch/

That’s… the point? Civilizations with that kind of tendency may very well destroy their planet and/or themselves long before they advance to the point where they are detectable to an outside observer many light years away.

The human race is at the moment in a race against time. We’re hoping that we can develop new technology to save ourselves faster than we destroy everything around us. This kind of race has probably happened countless times across the vast universe and perhaps the laws of physics ultimately make the race unwinnable. These laws limit how much technology can do for any species, no matter how smart, so it would be a universal filter.

If the only way to win the race is to slow down the destruction of the environment to the point that the species is undetectable, that solves the Fermi paradox.

It sounds like this theory posits that humans may never be advanced enough that we’d detect ourselves unless we learn to live harmoniously rather than virulently.

Could almost say that wiping out all life on Earth over pieces of paper is unsustainable, but that’d probably go too far.