@Lazarou @nyrath so space is full of von Neumann probes trying to find uncontacted species so that they can be rescued before they boil themselves, so that in a couple centuries they can naturally join the galactic civilization. So naturally exploration was very important because the worst thing is to find a civilization on a dying planet that you could have fixed, had you just shown up a couple decades earlier, and now it's too late.
@Lazarou @nyrath Anyway the main story was going to be about a group of galactic council races showing up and abducting the entire human civilization, only to drop them on a freshly built habitat on the moon. We're getting a cut-rate ecosystem fix: stuff everyone into an ark on a nearby planetoid while they reboot the whole ecosystem over a couple decades.
@Lazarou @nyrath They found earth almost too late, and then procrastinated on solving our problem because nearly half the council voted "let them burn" because humanity is considered The Virus in galactic circles.
Hundreds of space-faring civilizations, thousands of uncontacted ones, and Humans are the only ones who came up with the concept that you can own ideas.
They nearly let us die because of the dread mind-killer, "copyright"
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@Lazarou @nyrath Anyway it was mainly just me finding it hilarious that the real reason for the Fermi paradox might just be that more enlightened alien races find us absolutely disgusting, for minor ideological reasons.
Like, sure, the Beta-Cassiopeians have killed billions, but they've got a locust-style reproductive strategy, they naturally swarm and overwhelm their enemies with sheer numbers... But at least they don't claim ownership on THOUGHT ITSELF!
@foone I worked with one writing group on a game that worked off of the idea that we were considered to be in a bad neighborhood so we got missed.
@dbolack nice. I have seen some stories that go by the idea that Earth is such a death world that some aliens flew by like 500mya and was like "god, nothing could ever evolve on that disaster of a planet, mark it down as 'can't support advanced life'" and never came back to check.
@foone We were mostly riffing off of the idea that Sol was in a "there be dragons" territory and that Sol wasn't the actual issue. When the group broke up I repurposed the idea as the plural of apocolypses happened here and we came along later. But nothing else ever did.