Quote:
Originally Posted by bubbsy
I think for humans existence has been very cyclic. Humans progress, then every few thousand years some sort of devastating natural phenomenon (ice age, global warming, meteor, etc) wipes out most of the population and the cycle starts again.
So forget species beating themselves to death before progressing to the point they are competant enough to build the technology to travel such massive distances in a lifetime. They are also having to live through never-ending natural catastrophe which i think we can assume is apparent in every nook/cranny of the ever changing universe.
|
I disagree with the cyclical nature. Yeah, ice-ages have wiped out civilizations, but it's also been a major driver of technological development. The paleolithic era, for example, was a period of intense technological progress, in part because of periods of extreme climate change (ice-ages) forced humans to develop technologies that would allow them to adapt to climate change. It's widely speculated that fire-usage became common during the ice-ages of the middle paleolithic. In a relatively static, comfortable environment that experienced no food shortage or climate change, it's arguable that it would have taken for longer for fire and tool usage to spread.
An extreme climate change event right now would potentially kill millions, alter societies and politics on a global scale, but it could very well drive technological innovations that increase the likelihood of us surviving not only on our own planet but also outside our goldilocks zone. We might emerge from such an event as a far more focused and efficient civilization that has the technologies that would allow us to start to look seriously at colonization within the solar system.
In the case of extraterrestrial civilizations, this is really what's important: not how long it takes them to develop long-distance space travel, but how long it takes them to develop the technologies to function outside their own goldilocks zone.