ThyDarkAngel wrote:Thief wrote: Given the likelihood of other life in the universe, and the age of the universe, do you think it's possible that a race of rational beings existed long enough to witness the end of their star -- an unavoidable end to a species?
No.
As rational as they might have been, I'm sure they killed themselves millenia before their star died out.
Rationality and consciousness seem to fall back way too much on ego and greed for me to believe in a peaceful enough society to live all the way to that point.
Couldn't their psychological profiles have adapted differently enough to our current state of greed and outrage based human ones? They could probably cause us to make ourselves extinct one day (which is a pretty negative outlook, and "worst case", IMO), but that doesn't have to mean they'd be like that? They may actually be, I dunno, "nice"?
Regarding the question posed, I think in all the possibilities of the universe, it could have happened somewhere. But no way of knowing. I'd hope that they'd have evolved into being able to space travel and have a plan of action to GTF outta there before the light gets switched off, though.