this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
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Article is a response to the paper:

“THE SUSTAINABILITY SOLUTION TO THE FERMI PARADOX”

https://arxiv.org/abs/0906.0568

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[–] VoterFrog@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

That's... the point? Civilizations with that kind of tendency may very well destroy their planet and/or themselves long before they advance to the point where they are detectable to an outside observer many light years away.

The human race is at the moment in a race against time. We're hoping that we can develop new technology to save ourselves faster than we destroy everything around us. This kind of race has probably happened countless times across the vast universe and perhaps the laws of physics ultimately make the race unwinnable. These laws limit how much technology can do for any species, no matter how smart, so it would be a universal filter.

If the only way to win the race is to slow down the destruction of the environment to the point that the species is undetectable, that solves the Fermi paradox.