The level where there is suddenly “nowhere further to go”—the switch from exciting, meritocratic “Space Race” mode to boring, stagnant “Culture” mode—isn’t dependent on whether you’ve overcome any particular physical boundary. It’s dependent on whether you’re still encountering meaningful enemies to grind against, or not. If your civilization first got the optimization power to get into space by, say, a cutthroat high-speed Internet market [on an alternate Earth this could have been what happened], the market for high-speed Internet isn’t going to stop being cutthroat enough to encourage innovation just because people are now trying to cover parcels of 3D space instead of areas of 2D land. And even in stagnant “Culture” mode, I don’t see why [members/branches of] your civilization would choose to get dumber [lose sentience or whatever other abilities got them into space].
Suppose you survive the attack, but all stars within 1000 light years around you are destroyed.
I question why you assign significant probability to this outcome in particular?
Have you read That Alien Message? A truly smart civilization has ways of intercepting asteroids before they hit, if they’re sufficiently dumb/slow—even ones that are nominally really physically powerful.
The level where there is suddenly “nowhere further to go”—the switch from exciting, meritocratic “Space Race” mode to boring, stagnant “Culture” mode—isn’t dependent on whether you’ve overcome any particular physical boundary. It’s dependent on whether you’re still encountering meaningful enemies to grind against, or not. If your civilization first got the optimization power to get into space by, say, a cutthroat high-speed Internet market [on an alternate Earth this could have been what happened], the market for high-speed Internet isn’t going to stop being cutthroat enough to encourage innovation just because people are now trying to cover parcels of 3D space instead of areas of 2D land. And even in stagnant “Culture” mode, I don’t see why [members/branches of] your civilization would choose to get dumber [lose sentience or whatever other abilities got them into space].
I question why you assign significant probability to this outcome in particular?
Have you read That Alien Message? A truly smart civilization has ways of intercepting asteroids before they hit, if they’re sufficiently dumb/slow—even ones that are nominally really physically powerful.