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> Stable civilizations will be, generally, much, much older than expansionist neighbors, and so incomprehensibly more advanced. This is not necessarily true. A
by breuleux 4y ago
> Stable civilizations will be, generally, much, much older than expansionist neighbors, and so incomprehensibly more advanced.
This is not necessarily true. A roiling cluster of ephemeral, competing life forms and civilizations may very well develop warfare and defence technology better and faster than stable civilizations. This is especially true if you consider the cost of stability: all new technology is a potential threat to stability that has to be weighed carefully, so I expect stable civilizations to evolve much slower than unstable ones. In the aggregate, instability is not really a problem: a civilization's progress will be scavenged or stolen by its successors, retaining the advantage, and for that reason I would argue the unstable regime will almost systemically overwhelm the stable one.
You can kind of see this with humanity: a lot of the big problems we have to face as a civilization (but not all of them) result from the careless adoption of technology. Climate change would not be a problem if we had industrialized slowly enough. The Internet spread too fast for us to understand its effects on the propagation of (dis)information. A truly stable civilization would have taken a thousand years to do what we did in a hundred. Perhaps it would be happier for it, but if we met them, we would eat them alive.
- pencilguin 4y agoThe stable societies still standing after confronting and defeating numerous upstarts will be the ones that really are more advanced. You could say there will be a survivorship bias in the extant population.
- breuleux 4y agoBoth conflict and technological advancement are destabilizing influences, though. How do these societies remain stable? My worry here is that any confrontation with an inventive upstart will require swift change and adaptation in order to fend off the threat, but such fast change is likely to cause internal instability. I don't think there is such a thing as a "stable society" that cannot implode and turn into a bunch of expansionist upstarts, unless they are so careful about progress they are practically defenceless.
- pencilguin 4y agoStability and not-expanding are not necessarily the same thing. ("Stable" is easier to write.) They could be extremely dynamic, but if their population isn't exceeding their resources, why do they need more room? Expansion is what brings cultures into contact and conflict. Puny humans are confined to one solar system, and even just the one planet, but are pretty dynamic. Population in wealthy countries is in decline. Remember we are not just talking about humans with bumpy heads, here. Social universals on Earth do not apply. Expansion might be limited just by a physical inability to reproduce beyond their home planet, without giving up any dynamism.