this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2025
55 points (76.7% liked)

Asklemmy

50895 readers
865 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
55
[deleted] (lemmy.ml)
submitted 4 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
 

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] NightFantom@slrpnk.net 8 points 4 weeks ago

I like the theory where (one of) the "great filter(s)" is just the likelihood of a technologically advanced civilization emerging from a greedy society is just way more likely than from a complacent society. So at some point some creature somewhere gets some critical mass of tech fueled by greed, this leads to global domination (humans over animals, as well as europeans over their colonies).

Without the greed, there would not have been the technological advantage, but due to this same greed we now have weapons of mass destruction strong enough to wipe any semblance of intelligent life from the planet.

Of course this theory is very black and white (not to mention capitalistic). Perhaps a curious society is also an option to reach technological advantage but not global domination, but would such a society manage to become a Kardashev type I civilization by sharing rather than conquest?

So to directly answer your question: I think it's likely that someone would have enslaved most of the earth somehow, (which absolutely does not excuse it). It's surprisingly good that humans on average dislike the idea of slavery and colonisation now, so maybe we can build on top of that a society of curiosity and progress instead of one of war and a (literal) dead end.