Collection 6: "Reality Check" by David Brin

“Where is everybody?” they asked the taciturn stars. The answer—silence—was disturbing.

“Or else a filter sieves the cosmos, winnowing those who climb too high. A recurring pattern of self-destruction, or perhaps some nemesis expunges intelligent life. This implies that a great trial may loom ahead, worse than any confronted so far.”

But what happens when the exploited resource is limited? For example, only so many eight-bar melodies can be written in any particular musical tradition. Composers feel driven to explore this invention-space quickly, using up the best melodies. Later generations attribute this musical fecundity to genius, not the luck of being first.

Some prescribed retreating into a mythical, pastoral past, but most saw salvation in creativity.

Burgeoning information systems spread each innovation, fostering an exponentiating creativity.

The dream is too pleasant: to extend a limited sub-portion of yourself into a simulated world and pretend that you are blissfully less than an omniscient descendant of those mighty people.

Oh, spare us the envy of those mighty mortals, who left us in this state, who willed their descendants a legacy of ennui, with nothing, nothing at all to do.

This happens more and more, as so so many wallow in simulated sub-lives, experiencing voluptuous danger, excitement, even despair.

Perhaps others will find a factor absent from our extrapolations, letting them move on to new adventures—but it won’t be us.

The Filter has us snared in its trap of deification.