scrape_r_rational/data/cache/3fa4ed.md

Science fiction plot token bingo.

Post:

Trying to think of an in-world excuse for why everyone's holding the idiot ball and not munchkining their technology? If humans have starships, NOW how do you explain the Fermi Paradox? You're playing Science Fiction Plot Token Bingo!

Mental Block! Consciousness is an aberration, it's inefficient, advanced civilizations are quiet because they've evolved different goals. Or speed of light delays keep advanced races close to the core of their computer networks. Ancient aliens programmed humans not to think about such things.

Anthropic Principle! All universes with competent users of technology have already been destroyed. We're the first species to get this far.

Nerfed Physics! We're in the slow zone, AI is mysteriously impossible this close to the core of the galaxy.

Quarantine! Ancient elders have built a wall around the solar system. A future superintelligence keeps sending agents back to keep its timeline stable.

What other examples can people think of?

Comments:

• u/None:

  Humans *are* the ancient elders. The Fermi paradox fails to account for the fact that we're pretty early on in the universe's lifetime, and we really need heavier elements that come from the death of the first wave of stars in order to get complex chemistry, and there simply haven't been that many novas to enable planets with heavy elements to form. Earth is actually one of the earliest planets to have life and the earliest in our arm of the galaxy to gain intelligent life.
  
  (We'll send out a fleet of probes at very fast sublight speeds. They'll reproduce, find terraformable planets, and seed the galaxy with our descendants.)
  

  • u/vilefeildmouseswager:

    > Humans are the ancient elders.
    
    That thought always scares the piss out of me.
    

    • u/FuguofAnotherWorld:

      Makes a lot of sense of a lot of stories as well. 
      
      Story teller: And then the ancient precursor race left gigantic superweapons just scattered about willy-nilly.
      
      Audience: What kind of monumental jackasses would do that?
      
      Story teller: Humanity.
      
      Audience: Oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Bet they were going to take them down but then the meeting got tabled and the representative filibustered the bill.
      

• u/ArgentStonecutter:

  [the reason for this post]
  
  > And the reason the Goa'uld are incompetent is because competent interstellar war is a galactic existential threat. Oh, you mean an in-story reason? Um, "Anthropic Principle".
  

  • u/E-o_o-3:

    I think a more narratively satisfying reason is that the Goa'uld just aren't very smart or creative, are unable to harness human  and most of their technology is parasitized from more advanced cultures, so they didn't actually know how any of it works and end up with very rigid, regimented uses.
    
    A "Chimpanzees using guns" sort of scenario. One more plot token bingo idea. }
    
    In the Goa'uld's case it's pretty easy to imagine. I mean, what with the genetic memory, the Goa'uld are basically one person copied over many times, and if they're not *complete* idiots it might be the benefit of millions of years.
    

• u/None:

  Fear - Jesus fuck, what sad and violent God spit out these warmongering upright apes, and how are they still alive?! Like...nuclear power. The first significant thing they did with nuclear power was BLOW EACH OTHER UP. No. Fuck that shit. Leave them alone and hope they accidentally their planet before they start to *spread*.
  

  • u/None:

    Goddamn species chauvinists.  You know lots of us don't actually *like* living this way, right?
    

  • u/ArgentStonecutter:

    Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel. \^\^
    
    Also, [Isaac Asimov, Silly Asses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_Asses)
    

• u/ArgentStonecutter:

  I really need rational explanations for smaller scale idiot balls too.
  
  Like "You have a universal assembler that can build more universal assemblers... and you have versatile robots that can put together a railgun to launch your landing party back to space, and you're talking about splitting up your starship instead of building a new one?"
  
  Like "You've survived and flourished in Earth orbit for 5000 years, but haven't bothered even trying to colonize the rest of the solar system?"
  

• u/blockbaven:

  The Prime Directive - Aliens conspire to intentionally avoid contact and interference with species under a certain level of development
  

  • u/ArgentStonecutter:

    That also covers "you've got a time machine and you're not using it as a perfect oracle?"
    

• u/LiteralHeadCannon:

  I'm writing a story for next week's challenge that indirectly answers this.  :D
  

• u/woodenWren:

  Seeds! The universe filled up 10 billion years ago. We're currently residing within a certain alien's territory as a long-term experiment that race is performing. They just need to stay out of our way.
  
  Simulation! We're just a simulation running in some alien supercomputer (explaining why our universe apparently has a minimum resolution). They wouldn't need to simulate the (possibly infinite) universe either, just our light-cone.
  
  Transcendence! We're on the verge of reaching a new plane of existence, where many aliens have gone before.
  

---