But if a civilization is peaceful, would it exterminate another just because they are a threat? It seems quite ruthlessy egoistic. Maybe they would just intervene at some specific point, without extermination but by somehow gatekeeping our expansion and letting us live without spreading evil.
As even a type 1 civilization it costs you almost nothing to send a big ball of death a few million years into the future to wipe out a possible future rival.
The timescales are where things get tricky. If you wait for them to become a problem they will be a problem for millennia. and that problem will metastasize.
Now if you have FTL figured out. I mean. Carl from accounting could wipe out all life on earth because he had a bad day.
I think of it the same way as the paradox of tolerance. If a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance.
If a peaceful civilization allows the expansion of a non-peaceful society, it could spell the end of the peaceful civilization.
But if a civilization is peaceful, would it exterminate another just because they are a threat? It seems quite ruthlessy egoistic. Maybe they would just intervene at some specific point, without extermination but by somehow gatekeeping our expansion and letting us live without spreading evil.
As even a type 1 civilization it costs you almost nothing to send a big ball of death a few million years into the future to wipe out a possible future rival.
The timescales are where things get tricky. If you wait for them to become a problem they will be a problem for millennia. and that problem will metastasize.
Now if you have FTL figured out. I mean. Carl from accounting could wipe out all life on earth because he had a bad day.
I think of it the same way as the paradox of tolerance. If a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance.
If a peaceful civilization allows the expansion of a non-peaceful society, it could spell the end of the peaceful civilization.
Dark Forest Theory
Shoot everything you see