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Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
I mentioned this in the existential risk thread in D&D but I think it's likely that climate change is the great filter and insurmountable.

The evolutionary paradigm necessitates a balance between competition and cooperation. The competitiveness necessary to reach the point of space travel leads to pollution being treated as an externality. Getting ahead of the other tribe will take priority over preserving the environment. No species can master fire without choking itself to death.

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Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

that's just capitalism, op

the same way we've figured out that we shouldn't poo poo into our potable water supply we also figured out that we shouldn't burn so much oil we're going to cook ourselves to death but we can't fix it because capitalism won and we are dominated by the profit motive. this could have been very different in our own history and even if we die in boiling seas there's no reason to think any other species might be as shortsighted and loving idiotic as ourselves

I get that, I don't think it's an avoidable problem for species who can get to the point where space travel is possible.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
Bonobos don't have capitalism or space travel. :shrug: I'm not pretending I can prove any of the rest of this.

Another point would be that we were fortunate enough to also have fossil fuel but it's not clear that's always going to be an option for intelligent species and without them I'm not sure industrialization even happens. So you don't get space travel but also don't doom yourselves.

Maybe a bonobo type civilization will make it to space the slow way, where they create dense fuel themselves from massive community owed solar farms. I hope so!

Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Feb 24, 2021

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