A Lonely Universe

But a counter example to it is that only via cooperation a tribe can become technologically advanced.

All those tribes are just tribes due to their constant squabbling and fighting, while the other that cooperated, traded and exchanged ideas ended up advancing. Wars were/are part of humans but in Europe it quickly became evident that technology and ideas > traditional warfare. Each tech eventually falling out of favour when better strategy/tech emerged.

I believe that the solution to the Feremi paradox is biology/game theory, the only way for intelligence to emerge is via evolutionary competition where intelligence is justified cost for the enormous energy requirement. And that mechanism is the local maxima where competition is wired in and drags down sufficiently large groups down.

Any successful organism/organisation will fall prey to an exploiting organism/individual due to its size, be it internal or external. Empires. countries dominant species all fall prey to exploits over time.

Getting out into space is really hard and we hardly scratched the 'surface' of space exploration. And even if we somehow managed to colonize mars and/or Europa, i think Expanse have an accurate picture of what would happen, new species of humans will develop (slowly) and will culturally diverge putting whole 'one humanity' going into space into wishful thinking category back again.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night%27s_Dawn_Trilogy

And earlier, this: https://pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html https://pdfernhout.net/sunrise-sustainable-technology-ventur...

Still think it is all a good idea. Glad the "maker" movement is making some progress in that area. As I noted on the LibrePlanet mailing list a few weeks ago: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2022-...

Someday after I "retire" I hope to have more time to work on all that.

Tangentially, on a super earth with more gravity, they would have an easier time going into orbit energetically using mass drivers or laser launch systems instead of rockets. And in any case, how big a seed do you really need to make a space infrastructure if you are patient? And the ground can communicate to space with radio or lasers (like for telepresence) which are not affected much by planetary gravity even for super earths.

1. I'd presume life is exceedingly rare to start with, but I guess in the future we'll get a lot more tech to verify that -- direct imaging for biomarkers?

2. I'm sure there must be a "long term survival" equation for a given intelligent species that involves parameters such as "individual intelligence", individual lifespan, individual aggression level, individual empathy level, lifetime mating strategies that would predict if a species can go interstellar or not.

There's just so much to unpack about humans -- we did not evolve to live like we do today and because this transition is so abrupt, it could lead to a collapse of modern civilization, in my humble opinion.

We did not evolve to live in mega communities where antisocial behavior is rewarded (all kind of leaders), it is very likely that such an antisocial leader ends the human race in the future. It could be that a much more intelligent species where individuals have much greater "actuator power" that was able to reach our technological level with much fewer individuals would be able to eliminate such leaders and not have this problem.

It could be that a species with a much higher lifespans but a bit less intelligence than humans would have a lot more individual and collective wisdom and be better equipped to deal with tyrants or climate change. To me it seems that we are not capable of long-term survival goals. I find it sad that as a species we haven't invested in a planetary asteroid defense, or transition to nuclear-solar-electric energy. It's just so sad we developed nuclear technologies only for this technology to enable perpetual tyrants. Or electronics only to enable the same tyrants in perpetuity. Looking back just a few thousand years we can see events that cam wipe out 90% or more of the population of the Earth (such as the eruption of a supervolcano that would destroy all crops).

A species that can think of transcending historical-biological limitations should immediately strive to do so.

It could be that a species with much higher intelligence and much higher empathy would not destroy its planet and would not let greed destroy the very fabric of their society and actually make it over the "hump".

I don't see humans as having it to make it over "the hump", our "human condition" will prevent us from making it.