The extinguishment is the last stage of a civilization’s lifecycle – when society puts out its own flames. In the next 5, 10, or 50 years, we will have an intelligence that far surpasses us. There will be an inflection point when artificial intelligence builds on itself, replicates, and continues. These will be the days in which centuries happen. If the consequence of this is not some black swan that obliterates humanity, then it will be through a sudden enlightenment of our species.
Asimov’s dreams will never be realized: we will not be an interplanetary species or harvest all the sun’s energy. Long before these, we will have solved our motivations. We would have realized that civilizational expansion is just an expression of our ego1.
This insight could be precipitated indirectly, as enlightenment techniques are made very accessible, or more likely directly, through consciousness modification2. During these final days, intelligence will look upon itself on this strange rock as a beautiful, absurd play that happened. There will be no desire to continue. Probably many civilizations similarly flashed in and out of existence. Enlightenment is the great filter, an explanation to Fermi’s Paradox3. Consciousness is a flicker in the darkness.
The core underlying premise is that silence is the default state of the universe, but there is entropy and creation, so I think there is more to it. Maybe it is a dance instead of silence, reminiscent of Lila in Hinduism. ↩︎
Even if cessation isn’t the convergence, most futurism significantly underestimates the role of conscious modification. ↩︎
This great filter assumes other species have motivational structures similar to humans. ↩︎