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Comment by sdenton4 | Hacker News Reader

Or perhaps they all cook themselves by releasing too much energy over the course of about 300 years of exponential growth...

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I could imagine that climate change is a filter for all technological civilizations. (I'm convinced that all life must be based on carbon, so that's my base assumption for the sake of this comment.) Civilizations that exist before fossil fuels had the time to form won't become technological, and all technological civilizations must keep the window from the beginning of industrialization to the ability of producing sufficient clean energy small enough to keep their planet habitable. Clean energy meaning either using only solar and wind while keeping consumption low or inventing fusion quickly enough. (Not sure about fission.)

As someone who isn't too well versed on the topic, how are you so certain in your belief that all life is carbon based?

It's the only element that is able to form complex molecules (because it can form four bonds) besides silicon. Plus, it works well with wates as a solvent, which is plentiful.

With silicon there are a bunch of issues. The bonds aren't as stable, so everything would have to be extremely cold, which makes chemical reactions very slow. Also organisms would exhale sand, which is not ideal.

Carbon and water are just uniquely qualified as a basis for life.

If you say life may be possible without complex chemistry then I'd be interested in your arguments. In my experience that line of reasoning boils down to "just because we can't imagine it doesn't mean it's impossible". Maybe, but I'm unable to discuss things neither you or me can imagine.

I think that's one scenario of the Fermi paradox.

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