Fermi Paradox: Iron Age Milky Way

post by Rofel Wodring (joel-lyles) · 2022-09-11T20:32:01.762Z · LW · GW · 9 comments

I have some observations about pre-industrial civilization and their relationship to why we don't see evidence of aliens. These observations, which in my opinion were consistent across human history despite very diverse cultures, can apply even to alien cultures. 

Because this Great Filter isn't biological, temporal, or even technological -- it's structural and inherent to how civilizations develop in the first place.

The road from Stone Age to Iron Age seems pretty obvious. Humans have independently experienced this phenomenon several times in history. So is the road from Industrial Age to Information Age; not as obvious or dramatic, but going from steamships to spaceships seems to be a pretty inevitable progression, done by polities of varying political and economic situations.

The problem is that event between Stone Age and Information Age, the Industrial Age. Unlike pre-industrialization or post-industrialization societies, which seem to come about in all sorts of political conditions, industrialization only came from a very specific set of circumstances that may be impossible to replicate on other planets.

The Industrial Revolution was not kicked off just from having a handful or even plethora of inventions.   We had the technological powder keg for the Industrial Revolution for centuries, what was needed was a political situation that allowed society to use the pieces in a way to change our mode of production. Because the lead-up to the Industrial Revolution saw some deeply, deeply profound changes that I think were both necessary and also very unlikely. And not just improbable, but 'straight-up most civilizations will never have the prerequisites, because the path to Iron Age civilization opposes the path to industrialization'.

Any pre-industrial civilization of sufficient size relative to its neighbors was an autocracy, and even the smaller ones such as the North American Confederations and the Swiss Republic had more autocratic than democratic elements.

You cannot begin the process of industrialization without a sizeable middle class, but throughout history the middle class was very small and under the thumb of the nobility. Even in times of surplus the middle class barely grew. And note that you can't technologize your way to the middle class.

Pre-industrial autocracies don't want to innovate or change. They want to expand, yes, but not in a way that makes them relinquish power. In fact, the idea of innovation being a good thing to cement your power is a notion particular to industrial civilizations. If Cortez wasn't able to exploit the political situation AND wasn't backed by a deadly disease, his expedition would've been doomed -- his technology gave him a decisive edge, but it didn't win the conquest for him. It's only until well into the 19th century did we get the hint of the notion of 'technology uber alles'.

And here's another notion peculiar to industrialized civilizations: 'war is good for innovation'. Not so. Pre-industrial civilizations devote from an absurd to a literally ruinous amount of resources to warfare. This leaves little surplus and constantly resets civilization. So even if your planet isn't unified under some huge stagnant autocracy who sees innovation as a threat to its power, the more hungry, newer, and aggressive civilizations can't actually produce any breakthroughs because they run the same playbook as the Ancient Empire. Indeed, it's more likely that a planet covered with dozens of independent Iron Age civilizations would see less technological progress than one ruled by some stagnant, indolent hegemony.

So as far as the Fermi Paradox is concerned: I really don't think there could've been a meaningful Scientific Revolution without an Industrial Revolution. After all, humans didn't start unifying those two fields until well into the Industrial Revolution. And not just because these two revolutions complimented each other, but because the surpluses of the Industrial Revolution allowed society, for the first time, to support a class of engineers and scientists who weren't drawn from the nobility. But alas, I don't think there could've been an Industrial Revolution in the first place without the very specific set of circumstances that led to the conquest of the Americas, the rise of the European middle class, and the rush for colonization forcing the autocrats to loosen their leash.

For example, if the Americas had been conquered in the 900s (long before such a conquest could lead to industrialization) or if Earth had just been one supercontinent, it's very likely that we'd still be toiling under the equivalent of the Roman or Mongol Empire, inventions like calculus and the spinning jenny largely just amusements for unlanded nobles who have no vested interest in advancing their technological base beyond enjoying the trickle of inventions that cement the status quo, like firearms and double-entry bookkeeping. And those are for ideal civilizations, which assume that they have access to our resources and our intelligence levels. Lacking things like dry land or hydrocarbons or metals can hurt your ability to industrialize, but having these things doesn't help you.

So what's the upshot of this? It may be the case that our galaxy is teeming with technological civilizations, but they're all stuck in their pre-industrial eras because their autocracies conquered the planet early on and choked out any room for an innovative middle class.

Also note that this analysis makes zero assumptions about the aliens' biology or culture. I wrote it in a way so that it would apply equally to 80-IQ pacifistic aliens and 350-IQ warrior aliens that have a fast-breeding/low-survival strategy. The commonality between them and us is that the very first, indeed ONLY, government that could get us from the Stone Age to Iron Age are autocracies. And the structure of autocracies don't give a damn about the individual capabilities of its subjects; both Spock, Jar-Jar, and Commander Shepherd's ancestors all had to bend the knee to a king who had way more resources and powers than any collection of lone geniuses ever could.

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