to explain the Fermi paradox, you must explain why all civilizations collapse before colonizing the galaxy.
If all civilizations involve exponentially increasing technological and cultural change and billions of competing self-interested sentient interests, then I'd expect nearly all of them to collapse. Civilizations, as our civilization understands the notion, are formulated in such a way as to be inherently unstable. If there's anything that persists on long enough timescales to settle a galaxy, a civilization is the last thing I'd expect it to be.
is every alien race going to make that error?
I'd expect almost all civilizations to be prone to such an error. Perhaps the only forms of sentience which are stable over millions of years are hive minds and these can never leave their home systems because the speed of light would cause them to divide and either 1) attack their closest rival, or if such hive minds were prone to be civil with each other: 2) proceed to form a society and civilization, after which they would then fall prey to all the problems of civilization.
Per my other reply, if you accept the original terms of the Fermi paradox, which is that there should be a lot of alien civilizations, then merely killing off "nearly all" of them is insufficient. It only takes one species to colonize the galaxy. Life is probably nearly impossible, but it only takes one cell to colonize a planet.
Per my other reply, if you accept the original terms of the Fermi paradox, which is that there should be a lot of alien civilizations, then merely killing off "nearly all" of them is insufficient
Only up to certain values of "nearly." If you make intelligent life rare enough and suppress it from spreading out of its home system then you fulfill the original terms. My "Civilization Instability Hypothesis," combined with the indivisibility of the alternative could fulfill the original terms.
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to explain the Fermi paradox, you must explain why all civilizations collapse before colonizing the galaxy.
If all civilizations involve exponentially increasing technological and cultural change and billions of competing self-interested sentient interests, then I'd expect nearly all of them to collapse. Civilizations, as our civilization understands the notion, are formulated in such a way as to be inherently unstable. If there's anything that persists on long enough timescales to settle a galaxy, a civilization is the last thing I'd expect it to be.
is every alien race going to make that error?
I'd expect almost all civilizations to be prone to such an error. Perhaps the only forms of sentience which are stable over millions of years are hive minds and these can never leave their home systems because the speed of light would cause them to divide and either 1) attack their closest rival, or if such hive minds were prone to be civil with each other: 2) proceed to form a society and civilization, after which they would then fall prey to all the problems of civilization.
Per my other reply, if you accept the original terms of the Fermi paradox, which is that there should be a lot of alien civilizations, then merely killing off "nearly all" of them is insufficient. It only takes one species to colonize the galaxy. Life is probably nearly impossible, but it only takes one cell to colonize a planet.
Per my other reply, if you accept the original terms of the Fermi paradox, which is that there should be a lot of alien civilizations, then merely killing off "nearly all" of them is insufficient
Only up to certain values of "nearly." If you make intelligent life rare enough and suppress it from spreading out of its home system then you fulfill the original terms. My "Civilization Instability Hypothesis," combined with the indivisibility of the alternative could fulfill the original terms.