> Natural selection cannot apply to societies because there is no reliable mechanism for successful decision-making to propagate itself in the way genes convey

> Natural selection cannot apply to societies because there is no reliable mechanism for successful decision-making to propagate itself in the way genes convey successful characteristics to future generations. Behaviors, customs, and beliefs face the exact same selective pressure as genes. If a certain behavior or custom consistently leads to fatal consequences for the people who practice it, that behavior will become less common over time, and societies that normalize that behavior will go extinct. If a certain different behavior or custom consistently leads to success--in terms of maintaining or, better yet, increasing the number of people who engage in that behavior or custom--then that behavior will persist and spread. > The last century has seen the fragmentation of the imperial world into a proliferation of independent states, big and small. Individual empires always rise and fall. That's the nature of history. But for humanity, at least, there are only two options: either some of us will eventually colonize space (in which case those of us colonizing space will be more numerous 1000 years from now, and the set of behaviors, customs, and beliefs that led that group to colonize space will be the representative set among humanity), or else we won't colonize space because we ran into the Great Filter. The same is true for any extraterrestrial intelligence.