David Kipping

But we may be not only generally a negative force for a planet's biosphere and its own survivability, which I think you can make a strong argument about, but we may also be a very persistent infestation.

Even in the wake of a nuclear war,

Would that be an absolute eradication of every human being, which would be a fairly extreme event?

Or would the candle of consciousness, as you might call it, the flame of consciousness, continue with some small pockets that would maybe in 10,000 years, 100,000 years, we see civilization reemerge and play out the same thing over again?

I just mean... I think it tends to imply, but I take your point, yeah, but maybe, just maybe extremely rare, maybe.

I would just, yeah, I do think it depends on this classification.

I think there is sort of, again, it's kind of buried within there as a subtext, but there is a classification that we're doing here that...

what we are is a distinct category of life, let's say, in this case.

When we talk about intelligence, we are something that can be separated.

But of course, we see intelligence across the animal kingdom in dolphins, humpback whales, octopuses, crows, ravens.

And so it's quite possible that

that these are all manifestations of the same thing.

And we are not a particularly distinct class, except for the fact we make technology.

That's really the only difference with our intelligence.

And we classify that separately, but from a biological perspective, to some degree, it's really just all part of a continuum.

And so that's why

when we talk about unique, you are putting yourself in a box which is distinct and saying, this is the only example of things that fall into this box.

But the walls of that box may themselves be a construct of our own arrogance that we are something distinct.

It's a cancer.

We're floating around, sorry to interrupt, but we're floating around this idea of the great filter a little bit here.