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GMoromisato • today at 9:47 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

Imagine you're an alien explorer. You visit Earth 25,000 krugs ago (51,304 Earth-years ago) and see a pretty standard ecological milieu: a wide variety of species, each adapted to its own little environment, no different than it was 50 million krugs before.

You return today and see that one previously unremarkable ape-like species has spread out to all parts of the world and is even orbiting in little tin cans around the planet. Almost all wild terrestrial megafauna is gone and the megafauna that remains is raised by the "humans" in massive farms. They've converted forests and jungles into farms and cities, and they're spending vast amounts of energy to make silicon think.

The fact that aliens have not nuked us from orbit out of sheer panic is, I think, strong evidence that we are alone in the galaxy.


Replies

kridsdale1 • today at 9:49 PM

Read Children of Time for a great exploration of this theme.