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I might be missing something here, but why would alien (or any) civilizations continually expand at a constant rate? While I'm not an expert, it appears that b

I might be missing something here, but why would alien (or any) civilizations continually expand at a constant rate? While I'm not an expert, it appears that by observing life on Earth (not just humans), groups of living things do not expand linearly, and eventually hit an upper limit (this happens at all scales, from colonies of bacteria to entire civilizations). Who's to say that other "loud" aliens haven't already expanded and begun spacefaring, but simply are not expanding out to where we are?

LoganDark 3y ago
Based on human history, wouldn't the rate of technological growth eventually start to skyrocket during/after some revolution? And with better technology comes better/more expansion.
- Ancapistani 3y ago
  So far, it seems like the Industrial Revolution was the key accelerating factor for our civilization. Conditions for it were right (or very close) at the height of the Roman Empire. They were probably pretty close at the height of Chinese power, and the Islamic world before the Khans. …but we’re still a young civilization, and are extrapolating from very little data. It could be that we’ve yet to encounter most of those inflection points. Maybe the next one is “the Singularity” - but beyond that we really have no idea. All of this is consistent with humanity being very early on the timeline of the universe.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    What I know is that technological progress was very slow, until suddenly there was a breakthrough and it rapidly accelerated. Now, we have enough of the fundamentals down that new technological breakthroughs are happening extremely rapidly. What a time to be alive, of course, but what suggests alien civilizations wouldn't follow the same trend of rapid acceleration rather than constant growth?
geor9e 3y ago
Constants are the simplest assumption. It's a "first round" of modeling that lets you start having philosophical thoughts on the implications. You can always increase the complexity of the model after. If you don't hold some parameters constant, the model quickly becomes too complex to be of much use for philosophical questions. In reality, a civilization can expand with exponential acceleration, deceleration, or shrink. I didn't even think this the worst of the assumptions. The fact that expansion stops as soon as a civilization meets another seems silly too. As we know, civilizations love nothing more than respecting borders and not conquering each other. But again, it can go either way, so they chose the middle assumption.
ben_w 3y ago
Fastest growing subpopulation rapidly dominates the whole group.
tshaddox 3y ago
Aren’t you essentially just describing a Great Filter, which is one of the classic proposed solutions to the Fermi paradox?
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  I think that is mentioned in some of the materials. This 'grabby' alien and 'light cone' discussion is explaining , or one solution to the Fermi Paradox.
Udo 3y ago
> Who's to say that other "loud" aliens haven't already expanded and begun spacefaring, but simply are not expanding out to where we are? By definition if they're loud and we can't see them, they're not within the volume of our visible universe. > I might be missing something here, but why would alien (or any) civilizations continually expand at a constant rate? This assumes they keep multiplying and colonizing outward. There is no real upper limit - except, eventually, the accelerating expansion rate of the universe that keeps them from reaching further. Because the colonized volume is so large, we don't really assume these colonized volumes form a coordinated empire. It would be more like a loose tangle of city states spread across a vast landscape. They might share common heritage, technology and some amount of culture, but be otherwise independent.

LoganDark 3y ago

Based on human history, wouldn't the rate of technological growth eventually start to skyrocket during/after some revolution? And with better technology comes better/more expansion.

Ancapistani 3y ago
So far, it seems like the Industrial Revolution was the key accelerating factor for our civilization. Conditions for it were right (or very close) at the height of the Roman Empire. They were probably pretty close at the height of Chinese power, and the Islamic world before the Khans. …but we’re still a young civilization, and are extrapolating from very little data. It could be that we’ve yet to encounter most of those inflection points. Maybe the next one is “the Singularity” - but beyond that we really have no idea. All of this is consistent with humanity being very early on the timeline of the universe.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  What I know is that technological progress was very slow, until suddenly there was a breakthrough and it rapidly accelerated. Now, we have enough of the fundamentals down that new technological breakthroughs are happening extremely rapidly. What a time to be alive, of course, but what suggests alien civilizations wouldn't follow the same trend of rapid acceleration rather than constant growth?

geor9e 3y ago

Constants are the simplest assumption. It's a "first round" of modeling that lets you start having philosophical thoughts on the implications. You can always increase the complexity of the model after. If you don't hold some parameters constant, the model quickly becomes too complex to be of much use for philosophical questions. In reality, a civilization can expand with exponential acceleration, deceleration, or shrink. I didn't even think this the worst of the assumptions. The fact that expansion stops as soon as a civilization meets another seems silly too. As we know, civilizations love nothing more than respecting borders and not conquering each other. But again, it can go either way, so they chose the middle assumption.

ben_w 3y ago

Fastest growing subpopulation rapidly dominates the whole group.

tshaddox 3y ago

Aren’t you essentially just describing a Great Filter, which is one of the classic proposed solutions to the Fermi paradox?

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
I think that is mentioned in some of the materials. This 'grabby' alien and 'light cone' discussion is explaining , or one solution to the Fermi Paradox.

Udo 3y ago

> Who's to say that other "loud" aliens haven't already expanded and begun spacefaring, but simply are not expanding out to where we are? By definition if they're loud and we can't see them, they're not within the volume of our visible universe. > I might be missing something here, but why would alien (or any) civilizations continually expand at a constant rate? This assumes they keep multiplying and colonizing outward. There is no real upper limit - except, eventually, the accelerating expansion rate of the universe that keeps them from reaching further. Because the colonized volume is so large, we don't really assume these colonized volumes form a coordinated empire. It would be more like a loose tangle of city states spread across a vast landscape. They might share common heritage, technology and some amount of culture, but be otherwise independent.