Chapter 292: What to do?
After a long silence, Jason suddenly snapped out of his daze. He playfully ruffled Lily’s hair, completely messing it up, and offered a wry smile. "Alright, let’s not worry abou these god-like entities for now. They are entirely too far removed from our current reality."
"We need to focus on the present and conquer our own immediate hurdle first... Controllable nuclear fusion!"
Lily’s face was deathly pale. She rubbed her eyes hard and simply gave a soft murmur of agreement.
Jason’s mind had cleared considerably. He picked up a pen and scribbled on a piece of scratch paper. "The bottleneck of Gene Philosophy is currently impossible for us to overcome... We simply do not have the technology to edit our own fundamental genetic instincts!"
"Therefore, we should focus on the sociological side of the equation and figure out how to prevent our society from falling into this trap..."
Tackling the crisis from a sociological perspective made the problem slightly more manageable, unlike the esoteric and seemingly insurmountable roadblock of Gene Philosophy.
Lily remained seated with her chin resting in her hand, lost in deep thought.
Looking strictly through the biological lens of ’survival,’ a massive underlying theme emerged: the desire for an ’optimal state of living.’ This concept perfectly encapsulated the process by which a species developed and attempted to satisfy its base desires.
’Reproduction’ was equally instinctual. It gave rise to another massive thematic branch encompassing concepts like ’family’ and ’kinship.’ Naturally, these reproductive drives constantly intersected with the primary survival drives, generating increasingly complex behavioral patterns.
"Based on our observations, species bound by these drives share a fundamental, fatal flaw: they are incredibly short-sighted," Jason explained. "Because they are driven purely by biological desires, they become complacent the moment those desires are temporarily satisfied."
Generally speaking, sentient beings only focused on immediate gratification. The duration of ’immediate’ simply scaled with the species’ level of intelligence.
This inherent short-sightedness had a solid factual basis in nature. For example, after a wild predator ate its fill, it would simply lie down and rest. At that exact moment, it was content. Afterward, its drives would shift toward reproduction. If it wasn’t the breeding season, it would simply sleep to conserve energy. Even if a fresh meal ran right past its nose, it wouldn’t bother giving chase. Why? Because hunting wasted calories and actively reduced its chances of surviving the next immediate hurdle.
Animals only cared about the present, not the future. Very few species possessed the foresight to hoard food for the winter.
Humans, however, possessed enough advanced intelligence to calculate their ’next moment.’ Thus... they tirelessly pursued wealth and resources to artificially construct a more comfortable, secure environment for themselves.
As a universal medium of exchange, capital could satisfy both the need for survival and the need to secure a mate for reproduction. Therefore, the more capital one hoarded, the better, it was a beautifully simple concept.
However, human wisdom was still not sophisticated enough; or rather, the collective wisdom of the masses was heavily flawed. A bank account balance was an intuitive, easily measurable number, but the true trajectory of human advancement couldn’t be summarized by money alone.
The long-term consequences of many collective actions were not immediately apparent, making them incredibly difficult for the average person to calculate. Take light bulbs, for instance. Old-fashioned incandescent bulbs were cheap to buy upfront but consumed massive amounts of electricity. Modern LED bulbs were expensive to purchase but drastically reduced energy costs over time. In the long run, the LED bulbs were the objectively superior choice.
Yet, for decades, many consumers still deliberately chose the inefficient incandescent bulbs. It wasn’t that they couldn’t do the basic math; it was simply that the initial upfront cost was lower, so handing over the cash hurt less in the moment. Because of this psychological short-sightedness, inefficient bulbs weren’t naturally eliminated by the free market. To save the power grid, global governments eventually had no choice but to forcefully ban their production.
"If we compare human cognition to a computer program, the vast majority of people operate on a ’greedy algorithm,’" Jason pointed out. "They always make the choice that provides the maximum immediate benefit... they take it one step at a time, constantly settling for a locally optimal solution rather than the global optimum."
Lily nodded calmly. "Is that so surprising? In reality, most animals operate the exact same way. They eat when they’re hungry and rest when they’re full. Humans are just slightly better at dressing it up."
"Only a tiny fraction of visionaries take a truly long-term approach, planning ten or twenty years into their future... and for a human lifespan, that’s practically the absolute limit, isn’t it?"
Jason paused for a moment, then suddenly clapped his hands together. Communicating with a brilliant woman was incredibly refreshing.
"Exactly! That makes perfect sense!"
By this logic, individuals capable of meticulously planning out their entire lifespans were exceedingly rare. And almost no one actively planned for what would happen to the world after they died!
There was an old saying: " I’ll enjoy life while I can, and I don’t care what happens after I die!" While most people weren’t cartoonishly selfish villains, the core sentiment rang true. Very few individuals were willing to actively pay the price today for a benefit that would only materialize long after they were buried.
Everyone on old Earth knew that single-use plastics were destroying the environment, but everyone continued to use them for the exact same reason. If a plastic bag released a lethal toxin the day after it was used, the market for them would have evaporated overnight. But because the microplastic pollution would take centuries to seriously threaten human survival, everyone happily continued to use them for the sake of convenience.
"This is the ultimate limitation caused by biological short-sightedness," Jason noted.
"Building on what we just discussed, we can logically conclude that everyone knows scientific development is inherently good. Everyone acknowledges its macroscopic importance."
"But the masses are fundamentally unwilling to sacrifice their immediate, tangible interests in pursuit of vague, abstract benefits promised in the distant future."
"It’s exactly like financial investing. Projects that promise a return on investment within a few months or years are incredibly attractive. Venture capitalists are willing to pour billions into them, even if there’s a high risk of losing their principal capital..."
"But if the profits will only be realized decades later or worse, after the investor has died, almost no one will fund it, even if the eventual return is mathematically guaranteed to be risk-free. After all, why should I care about profits that only materialize after I’m dead?"
"If a project requires the sustained, grueling efforts of several generations, or even dozens of generations, then... well..." Jason smiled bitterly, letting the sentence trail off.
Following this grim logic, as technological development became increasingly complex, R&D cycles naturally lengthened, delaying the realization of any practical benefits. As a direct result, society would actively invest less capital into fundamental science. People were simply biologically unwilling to endure the wait. If an investment made during a citizen’s prime only yielded returns long after they had passed away, who actually reaped the rewards?
If the rewards went directly to their immediate children, people might be convinced to make the sacrifice. But to blindly donate their lifetime of labor to the abstract concept of "the entire civilization"... that sounded absurd to the average citizen. It felt like forced charity work from beyond the grave.
And so... the less funding allocated, the slower the R&D speed plummeted, creating an inescapable vicious cycle.
Eventually, even the sheer number of scientists and engineers dedicated to the field would dwindle. Brilliant minds were unwilling to devote their lives to stagnant fields that yielded no results, creating yet another vicious cycle. After all, major scientific leaps still relied heavily on once-in-a-generation geniuses to drive them forward...
"Therefore, relying solely on the genetic directives of ’survival’ and ’reproduction’ makes a species far too easy to satisfy, and therefore catastrophically short-sighted..."
Thus, a profound societal rot stemming directly from Gene Philosophy took root, forming a massive, inescapable civilizational trap! Almost all planetary civilizations were firmly crushed beneath its weight!
In reality, Jason and Lily’s late-night discussion only scratched the surface of a much broader range of systemic social issues. To explain the phenomenon in exhaustive detail would take days and easily fill a massive textbook.
But even from this isolated example of market economics, one could already sense the terrifying magnitude and complexity of the problem.
Unraveling this biological knot was virtually impossible.
Jason finally let out a long sigh. "Would you be willing to live like a pack mule for the rest of your life? Never spending a single credit on yourself, maintaining absolute focus on a single goal, and working yourself to the bone day and night... all in exchange for endless wealth and glory that will only be enjoyed by abstract descendants long after you’re dead?"
"The controllable nuclear fusion project is even more terrifying. It requires the tireless, grueling efforts of ten, perhaps even twenty consecutive generations! And it doesn’t just require the sacrifice of one person, but the unified sacrifice of an entire civilization! If even a single generation loses faith and gives up, the entire endeavor fails completely..."
The Nix Civilization was a complex society of billions, with wildly varying levels of education, diverse cultural perspectives, and deeply entrenched political conflicts between rival nations.
How could the collective willpower of such a fractured civilization ever be perfectly unified?
How could such an impossible multi-generational goal be sustained?
How could a divided planet ever pool its total global resources without a total societal collapse?
"It is truly worthy of the title... the Great Filter!"
"It’s a practically unsolvable equation!" Jason muttered, dragging a hand across his forehead with a sense of numb resignation.
In that moment, he could vividly picture the vast majority of civilizations in the universe tumbling blindly into this exact same evolutionary trap. He even felt a strange, dark sense of schadenfreude at the sheer cosmic irony of it all...
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