System Collapse and the Fermi Paradox
My theories on the shape extraterrestrial civilization must take
Rendering of an alien Earth-like planet, by me.
Introduction: Ever since I had the pleasure to read Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, the Fermi Paradox has taken over a significant portion of my mind. To me, what the Fermi Paradox represents is a great puzzle that, uniquely among space subjects, can be approached from multiple academic angles. I am not a scientist, and I have little to no formal education in STEM, but I am an enthusiastic student of systems of global interactions, and through this perspective I believe I am able to contribute, in some small (and assuredly unoriginal) way, to this great mystery at the heart of our place in the cosmos.
Fundamentally, system collapse interacts in my conception of intelligent extraterrestrial life through its assumptions, which I will review below, in a way that adds many dimensions to my own explanation for the Fermi Paradox. In short, I am a believer in the Great Filter, because of the fundamentals of my ideas on system collapse: a system of multiple actors that can destroy itself inevitably will do so, presenting a reason why at the very least that the galactic field has been winnowed of many civilizations as we would understand them. That said, the logic of this argument confines itself exclusively to high-tech civilizational systems in the human mold. Alien intelligence that is not arrayed within a system that follows the basic assumptions of human systems would be the very intelligences that we would be ill-equipped to search for. Therefore, the idea of system collapse could act as an evolutionary push towards alien civilizations that follow different (namely non-competitive) logic than our own.
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