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I have a toy hypothesis that once civilization level intelligent life emerges it never disappears barring the planet it inhabits being vaporized by some unfortunately directed GRB or some similar catastrophe.

Our knowledge is becoming holographic such that to prevent the reemergence of civilization one would have to wipe out all of us at once.

[snapplebobapple]

depends how you define civilization level life.if you mean we cant be bumped back to hunter gatherers without wiping out almost all of us, you are probably correct. If you mean we will always have computers and the ability to split the atom, i dont agree. Knowledge and industry is way more fragile and we have loat working knowledge of simpler processes in favor of more advanced ones so it wont be that easy rebuilding through the lower rungs of the tech tree.