this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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Quite a few assumptions being made and quite a lot of hyperbole.
As for why a civilization should be interested in spreading out as much as possible in case it wants to survive:
If alien species are anything like us, I highly doubt that they'd come to the conclusion that you've posited.
I can point to examples of many civilizational collapses based on comparatively minor climate abnormalities in the last mere 7,000 years, and can say with certainty the earth has gone at least 5,000,000,000 without being bombarded by even one gamma ray burst.
I think any alien civilization with basic math would prioritize the bird-in-hand.
Civilization collapsing doesn't equal to species end. A gamma ray burst or yeah something that has already happened in the planets past, a big enough asteroid hitting us. Can mean the end of the species.
Of course civilizations collapse should be avoided even just for the reason of avoiding lots of people dying. We shouldn't completely discard expanding into space either. Our population and civilization is big enough that both things can be done at the same time.
Working towards both will probably provide a better overall goal for common people as well instead of currently working just to line the pockets of CEOs and pedofiles.
At this point civilization collapse would effectively terrestrially lock us in. There aren't enough easily accessible raw materials to reindustrialize to a space-faring point.
Yep.
If you burn through all the readily available energy resources, civilization collapses, then tries to rebuild itself...
It can't. Their ancestors kicked over the ladder of progress, and broke it.
Attempt 2 at civilization now has to figure out another tech tree, because they cannot cost effectively lubricate an industrial economy and logistics with fossil fuel.
Not strictly impossible, per se, but they have an even more difficult task.
You can point to those civilizations because their collapse was not the end, life continued on. We haven't been hit by a gamma ray burst or any other complex life ending disaster since we are here to discuss the scenario. But that's no guarantee that we won't be.
The odds of anything happening to render Earth totally uninhabitable are very small... in our lifetimes. But as long as we keep existing, the time frame will keep growing, the opportunities for disaster will keep accumulating and the odds will keep multiplying. The basic math looks very different when you multiply by infinity. Even the sun won't last forever.
Obviously, this is no reason to neglect Earth and rush to other planets. But it is reason enough to reject the idea that we should never spread to other worlds because Earth will always be enough.
you wouldn't know that. deep-sea life would probably survive any gamma ray burst, i guess.
and it turns out, there's a surprising amount of deep-sea life: bacteria and complex life.
on this diagram, it would throw us back by 300 mio. years max.
Won't ocean acidification kill a lot of that life? Isn't it already?
Other positive things to mention about space exploration:
Yeah. You don't wanna carry all your eggs in one basket.
Also, it's human nature to explore. Show people a place they can't go and they're going to want to find a way to get there. It's just what we do. We're curious little monkeys.
Wish I had your optimism. I think the Earth is gonna shake humans off like a bad habit if we don't stop climate change. Crop failure will kill everyone, not just poor people.
Ooh do you listen to John Michael Godier by any chance?
He's as rich as he is because people agreed to give him money out of faith in what he claims he wants to achieve.
He's one of the world's most supported humans according to humanity's most dominant merit system.