[ageofwant]

If there were any high-intelligence species before they must have exited in a time predating current coal and oil formation, or were not technologically capable, or found some other way of harvesting energy. The fact that we found massive amounts of planet-killing coal and immediately started exploiting it with abandon means that that did not happen before, ergo no technologically capable species on this planet for at last 300M years back. Now you could argue that 'intelligent species' tend not to shit in their own beds. We talk about Fermi filters for a reason.

Do keep in mind that diversity enables diversity. If biosphere complexity falls enough changes are it will never recover. Earth had live almost immediately after formation. It took more than 2.5B years for something more complex to emerge from the ur uni-cellular broth. Evolution or linear increasing complexity is not guaranteed by any means. What will a chimp bashing rocks in the bush be doing in 1000 000 years? Building quantum computers or bashing rocks. Overwhelming evidence points to bashing rocks.

[nojvek]

I absolutely believe that any intelligent species that has enough intelligence to become interstellar will heavily invest in camouflage and become a lurker. Only reacting when something threatens its survival. The universe is like a jungle full of scary things, the only wise move is to watch out, be invisible and not make a lot of noise.

[aleksei]

I get your point, but I posit that this is a very human point of view. Once you've cracked the energy needs for interstellar travel, what's the point of raising a war campaign light years away (especially if you need generation ships to attack)? Furthermore, it doesn't seem very intelligent to me that all capable species just hunker down in their own gravity well to die off unnoticed and without having explored the universe. Humans have thus far always endeavoured to go one step beyond; why stop now?

Besides, I'd rather we risk ending up on the galactic buffet table for the chance of finding life forms we can "compare notes with". We're all going to die and go extinct regardless.

[vidarh]

They wouldn't need generation ships. You "just" need sufficient tech to put engines on a suitable astroid and accelerate it to a decent fraction of c; it only needs enough logic to fine tune the path. An invasion force is horribly inefficient vs. just slamming a lot of mass at someone at high enough speed.

And it only takes one massively paranoid, xenophobic species lobbing big rocks at people to ruin the entire neighbourhood.

I don't think camouflaging necessarily means not leaving your gravity well, but if there's someone lobbing big rocks at potential threats, then the only ones exploring will be the ones powerful enough or good enough at hiding for us to be unlikely to spot them unless they want us to. Everyone else will be dead.

It's one of the more compelling answers to the Fermi paradox to me, while at the same time being profoundly depressing. But it's less depressing than the chance that there might not be any other civilizations.

[rsync]

It's funny, I just spent the last 18 months deep-diving into the history and literature of World War 1.

"And it only takes one massively paranoid, xenophobic species lobbing big rocks at people to ruin the entire neighbourhood."

Ahh, Germany ...

[vkreso]

> They wouldn't need generation ships. You "just" need sufficient tech to put engines on a suitable astroid and accelerate it to a decent fraction of c; it only needs enough logic to fine tune the path. An invasion force is horribly inefficient vs. just slamming a lot of mass at someone at high enough speed.

I misplaced a link and the name of an author of a sci-fi novel in which space battles are much more science based than the usual laser-tag shoot off. I'll dig through my bookmarks and hopefully post the name in the reply when I get to my pc..

I think there was also a reddit thread about it sometimes in the past.

[btouellette]

The Remembrance of Earth's Past series by Liu Cixin? It also has the "lurker" theory of cosmic sociology being discussed in this thread.

[pavel_lishin]

Isn't that only a problem if you're completely planet-bound? If you want to play it safe, you shouldn't put all of your eggs into a single basket anyway.

[nojvek]

Correct, but while exploring the universe, doing it undetected is actually a great strategy. Imagine self replicating nano bots that embed themselves into asteroids. Everything thinks its just big rocks flying in space that sometimes smash into planets. But its a strategy to slowly colonize the galaxy and put a mark everywhere. Kind of how plants spread their pollen into the wind or have bees and butterflies do their dirty work.

[detritus]

An interesting view on this perspective can be found in the sci find novel 'the killing Star'

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Star

[pchristensen]

If this is interesting to you, read The Dark Forest: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23168817-the-dark-forest...

[nojvek]

Thanks for the recommendation

[colkassad]

This is an interesting theory. Perhaps you could expand on it and form a new social science called "Cosmic Sociology".

[dmichulke]

Aren't Twitter, FB and selfies a sign of the opposite happening at the micro level?

[vidarh]

Despite the occasional swatting, for the most part the consequence of being spotted on social networks is not to have the local lunatic show up to shoot you in the face.

That's a rather significant difference to the proposed idea.

[builditand]

He was talking about intelligent species.

[sundvor]

Good thing we're keeping so quiet then... :P /s

[bonzini]

1000000 years ago, homo erectus was bashing rocks. You cannot really know what Bonobo chimps are going to evolve into so far in the future.