Are we universally selfish?

One cornerstone idea in Cixin Liu's "3 Body Trilogy - Dark Forest" is the question "what is the sociology of the universe?"

Instead of focussing on earth, Liu asked this question on the largest possible scale - but because of very incomplete information - he can only explore it with 1st principle thinking. His main arguments go something like this:

  1. All living beings in the universe have incomplete information about the rest of the universe.

  2. All living beings experience time, therefore, have the possibility of technological progress.

  3. Technological progress gives living beings increased control and domain over their reality.

  4. All living beings strive to evolve and expand their control and domain over reality.

These 4 arguments lead to 1 implication:

The knowledge of life in one part of the universe by another implies a technological race condition as to who reaches technological maturity faster.

I struggle with this implication but also feel it fits into our knowledge of reality nicely.

As our fight for attention intensifies towards the "everyone is a creator" culture, it is always fun to stop and think of how it fits into a larger picture.

jon slimak