The Milky Way is probably full of dead civilizations

and all the assumptions use humans as the model for the behavior of the civilizations. What if the civilizations does not have concepts that we have. things like family or the concept of free choice. what if there is a concept they have that we don't have.

Perhaps we need a definition of civilization.

Our current definition is: "the stage of cultural development at which writing and the keeping of written records is attained"

Perhaps it should be something like:

A stage of development where a species controls sufficient technology to exist with durable records, in more than one: city, continent, orbit, star system, galaxy, universe.

That would allow for different levels of duration and tech achievement.

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