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eastlandd
An odd thought just occured to me.
eastlandd
..
Webber, Will
That truly was an odd thought
eastlandd
I was thinking about global warming. What if it's natural? I mean...what if it is normal that an advancing civilization causes drastic climate change. That species which advance to sentience nearly always change the envorinment so much that they either leave their planet of origin for space - or they perish. What if it is simply a 'weaning process' that pushes all species to the stars?
Eventually, if we make it to space, galactic civilization will welcome us and congratulate us on moving from infancy to adolescence?
Webber, Will
I think that means you need a really nailed-down definition of 'normal' for you theory to work.
eastlandd
True. But it would be interesting if it were the case. Maybe the basis for some good fiction.
Webber, Will
meaning, the reason advanced civilizations are out in space travelling around is really because they manged to ruin where they came from.
eastlandd
Exactly!
It's common enough in the animal kingdom. Ant colonies, pack hunting animals, coral eating fish...they all deplete an area and then move on
Webber, Will
Then curbing the things that cause a planets' demise would be viewed as a backward step really.
eastlandd
Well, there might be a special class of civilization that lives in harmony with its environment but never joins the interstellar community. Autistic civilizations or something...
But once you grow to a certain size and sophistication - a planetary environment really isn't the appropriate place any more.
Webber, Will
Your theory only works is it's presumed the species that leaves veiws the other life inhabitants of where they left as 'not worth fixing things for'.
eastlandd
Well, regardless of the environment we leave - some kind of life will survive and thrive. We've seen that many times through all the great extinctions in our distant past. But the sooner we leave the planet, the better chance the "next up" will have.
Only if we create some kind of runaway Venus-like greenhouse effect will life be impossible.
Webber, Will
I was thinking the other day that if the rate of tech advancement for our species were even trivially changed plus or mins a little speed wise- we would have a dramatically different world right now. Because of the compounding effect-- and a very long length of time since we first came into existence and now.
eastlandd
I remember Carl Sagan talking about the Library of Alexandria - and how when we lost the knowledge stored there we lost 1000 years of advancement.
Webber, Will
if homo-sapiens innovated 1% faster--- much different world now. If some other life form on a different planet innovated 1% faster than we do- but 'got started' quite a bit after we did- they would be dramatically beyond us now.
eastlandd
Agreed. So long as they didn't use their innovations for killing each other, like we have done.
Webber, Will
house flys with god-like intelligence.
eastlandd
indeed
We are like butterflies, who flutter for a day and think it eternity.
Again, Carl Sagan.
Webber, Will
It would be quite a bummer if the only thing that set our species apart from all the other life forms out there is that we have a slight regard for other life forms. That is- if every one of the others was ' every man for himself!'.
eastlandd
Wow...that would be ironic
Here we are, constantly berating ourselves for how poorly we treat each other - and we're the best the universe has to offer...
Webber, Will
It would be cosmic-ly funny if we were constantly being communicated to by countless advanced civilizations- but we are so dramatically behind them in technology that we can't preceive any of that communication.
eastlandd
That's one of the 3 solutions to the Fermi Paradox!
Webber, Will
It's like-- I keep talking to these bacteria in this digestive tract-- and they just don't seem to be talking back.
eastlandd
How rude!
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