3 ms·
I had this idea recently myself and to the best of my knowledge you're the only other person who's mentioned it. The closest I've found is the "galactic preempt
by DavidSJ 12y ago
I had this idea recently myself and to the best of my knowledge you're the only other person who's mentioned it. The closest I've found is the "galactic preemption" hypothesis published in the 80's, but that's more an explanation for why only one civilization would exist in a single galaxy, rather than for why a newborn civilization such as our own would look at the sky and see no signs of civilization in the whole universe.
Have you seen this idea published anywhere?
- sgt101 12y agoI've read a novel that featured this, I am wracking my brains to remember the title/author. It featured a generation ship that switched to a .com mode as it approached the star to be colonized and a race of bat people who were the putative colonization targets. I am not making this up, but I may have dreamt it!
- mickdarling 12y agoTwo Scifi examples that come to mind are a book, GreenFlies (http://www.amazon.com/Greenflies-Andrew-Darling-ebook/dp/B00MX3QPJM/ http://www.amazon.com/Greenflies-Andrew-Darling-ebook/dp/B00...) that has a fun example of a super-predator type-3-ish civilization, and the motivations that would create the galaxy we see today. David Brin also has a great book, Existence (http://www.amazon.com/Existence-David-Brin-ebook/dp/B0079XPMQS/ http://www.amazon.com/Existence-David-Brin-ebook/dp/B0079XPM... ), that is an example of a super-predator meme that may also be a natural great filter for any intelligent civilizations that pop up. Full disclosure, my brother is the author of the first book.
- DavidSJ 12y agoThat seems different to me. There's lots of scifi and speculation about contact between civilizations of vastly different technological development. But the idea here is that the expansion of a civilization happens so quickly that it consumes all the resources around it before other civilizations get a chance to exist at all. No malevolence ("superpredators") required. The probability that a new civilization is born after the light from the expanding one has arrived, but before their colony ships have, is very small, so therefore we should expect that whenever our civilization was born and whatever the benevolence of the aliens, when we look into the sky we should see no sign of them.
- mickdarling 12y agoSuper-predator Civilizations solve the significant problem of blaming the silence on a psychological quirk rather than statistics. When you are making assumptions about the millions of civilizations, it is absurd to think they ALL retreated to playing video games for eternity, or ALL nuked themselves to oblivion. With a single super-predator civ, that has a huge leg up on everyone else, they can have unusual motivations, and techniques. The problem with a super-predator is you likely won't be able to learn anything to prove or disprove them until you meet them, with all that implies.
- maaku 12y agoNo, but I haven't read any science fiction since my teenage years. (Sadly, because I would like to... just don't have the time.) I actually don't remember reading this anywhere, it just seemed an obvious idea. The idea that humanity would expand into a Type III civilization and near light speed is very old, probably dating to the work done by the British Interplanetary Society on interstellar travel. I don't have citations handy, but I remember reading a critique of generation ships which basically boiled down to "if you travel less than 0.9c, you can expect someone else to leave after you do but arrive sooner." Applying the same logic to other civilizations just seemed like common sense...