Implication of our technological species being first and early
Daniel P. Whitmire (a1)
(a1)
Department of Mathematics, The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA
Published online: 03 August 2017
Abstract
According to the Principle of Mediocrity, a cornerstone of modern cosmology, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we should believe that we are a typical member of an appropriately chosen reference class. If we assume that this principle applies to the reference class of all extant technological species, then it follows that other technological species will, like us, typically find that they are both the first such species to evolve on their planet and also that they are early in their potential technological evolution. Here we argue that this suggests that the typical technological species becomes extinct soon after attaining a modern technology and that this event results in the extinction of the planet's global biosphere.
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COPYRIGHT: © Cambridge University Press 2017
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