How lonely will it be if human beings prove to be the only civilization in the universe?

How lonely will it be if human beings prove to be the only civilization in the universe?

If we have proved that we are really the only civilization in the universe, it will not have too many negative effects on mankind. This fact will not lead to social collapse, nor will mankind stop exploring the universe.

On the contrary, most human beings may be ecstatic, because it means that the resources in the universe are all their own, and there is nothing for human beings to play in the dark forest. It is hard to imagine how far it can support the development of human civilization.

Now that the hypothesis of "only civilization" has been given, we won't discuss whether it holds, that's another question. I just expect what will happen later.

The "how lonely and desperate" thing mentioned in the question is actually just a psychological problem of human groups, not a big problem. Because for most people, looking up at the stars is only a small part of what they care about in their lives. There are always relatively few people in the universe who care about stars. If anyone feels unprecedented loneliness because of this fact, it can only be this small group of people.

The purpose of human genes is to reproduce themselves, knowing that the universe is so empty that it will not cause them any serious problems.

On the technical side,

Humans have traveled all over the universe, which shows that at that time, humans at least mastered the technology similar to "hyperspace transition" and were not trapped by space distance. It was not killed by artificial intelligence at the same time. Then the next step must be to expand the living space in various parts of the universe and multiply their own civilization.

On the social front,

This fact will lead to two mainstream trends of thought. The first is the "thirteen-layer space theory" (the movie "The Hacker of Different Dimensions"), that is, there is a God who sets various parameters of our universe, and we are just an experiment. Worms looking for the universe and religions will prevail.

The second is "the theory of human deity". How lucky it is that only one intelligent life has been born in such a vast universe. The whole universe exists for mankind, and the pride of mankind will expand unprecedentedly, which will accelerate the pace of human exploration of space civilization.

Of course, there will be some people who are obsessed with the pursuit of meaning and choose to commit suicide or something. But this in-situ philosophical thinking is far less than exploring the curiosity ahead.

In terms of culture and art,

Novels and movies will decline.

First of all, most science fiction novels will be abandoned. After all, the setting of "alien civilization" has been falsified. Just like science fiction in the early 20th century, it has lost its charm for modern readers. Cyberscience fiction will not be too optimistic. Even now, the creation of this genre has entered a bottleneck (the language of a Cyberpunk science fiction writer). What is written is all those things, and nothing new can be written in this framework.

Not to mention traditional literature, this era is already in decline. There are fewer and fewer people who can study hard, and creative people have lower and lower requirements for themselves. And all kinds of entertainment programs such as Tik Tok and King attract people's attention far more than the dense words. The evolution of human civilization depends on commerce and technology, and all human interests will be within these two frameworks.

Why did movies fall? Movies satisfy people's feelings and horizons that cannot be obtained in reality. If human beings are tough enough to discover that there are no aliens in the universe through interstellar travel, then it should be a small case to experience all kinds of movie-style life personally.

As for music, painting, architecture and other art forms, it is difficult to judge because I don't know much about them. Every art is related to the inner spiritual needs of human beings. If there is an external fact that leads to a spiritual need that these arts can't solve, then they will inevitably lose their original role.

Perhaps many friends can't imagine how literature and movies can decline. Don't rush to refute, this is just a brain hole, at least tens of thousands of years later. At that time, Maslow's pyramid theory should have been iterated or added to the floor long ago. For example, there is a demand for collective wisdom that we can't understand, and the spiritual needs of human beings and the product forms caused by spiritual needs have been updated for hundreds of generations. 1000 years ago, the spiritual needs of major civilizations on earth were all religions, and sacrifices to the living were prevalent. That kind of behavior entrusted their spiritual needs. Now? This was more than a thousand years ago. Everyone should be imaginative and inclusive about the possible evolution of civilization and the aesthetic advancement of human beings in the long river of time. Besides, I'm talking about decline, not disappearance. They will still exist, but other art forms based on higher technology, such as genetic art, can trigger the * * * voice of human beings in that era. And I'm not a bad art, just looking forward to the possible future.

Knowing that human beings are the only civilization, a new art form will be born, that is, a civilization that creates reality.

People will delve into related technologies and indulge in playing the role of God. The great competition between human beings will be a competition to see who has created a more interesting civilization, so as to make up for the lack of diversified civilizations in the real universe.

There are two ways to create civilization, one is alien migration. Different from those experiences in virtual games, alien immigrants actually created a realistic civilization. After a long period of evolution in their respective environments, these alien immigrants will alienate various civilizations, which are alien civilizations to the earth.

The other is similar to the enlarged version of westworld, which scatters artificial people on various planets.

Therefore, even if human beings are really the only intelligent life in the universe, there is no need to worry. Humans are very good at entertaining themselves. Feeling unprecedented loneliness and despair will only be a small link in the process of human evolution.

Finally, aside from the topic, I personally tend to think that there is an alien civilization for the answer to Fermi's paradox. This paradox arises only because we have observed the universe for a short time so far, and the observation methods are not mature enough, and the range we can observe is pitiful.

In a word, we are not strong enough.