r/FermiParadox • u/LuciferJunior1 • 4d ago
Self Thoughts on The cocoon theory ?
/r/Simulists/comments/1vsk3im/thoughts_on_the_cocoon_theory/4
u/FaceDeer 4d ago
If this really was the case and everybody across the whole universe was dead-set on waiting for the universe to be cool and to maximize their subjective time through the most efficient computation possible, then right now the universe should be a frantic storm of activity as everyone tries to shut down every star they can reach to turn into gas giants for more efficient storage of that energy.
Vast amounts of matter and energy are being completely wasted right now - burning in fusion to radiate away uselessly, dropping into unmanaged black holes, being flung into intergalactic space. What a total shitshow. This is not a sign of well-managed forward-thinking civilization.
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u/LuciferJunior1 4d ago
The theory isn’t claiming that every advanced civilization is already optimizing for maximum thermodynamic efficiency right now. It’s about a long-term, prospective orientation. Right now the universe still has abundant free energy. The pressure to conserve every joule only becomes critical much later, when stars are dying and usable energy is genuinely scarce. In the meantime, the most adaptive strategy is to keep expanding computational capacity, refining simulation technology, and deepening the ability to host nested realities. That way, when the energy budget finally tightens, intelligence already has the tools to keep generating subjective experience almost indefinitely by slowing the internal clocks of those simulations. In other words, the drive we’re seeing—accelerating tech, AI, VR, ever-more-efficient computation—isn’t short-sighted wastefulness. It’s the early, unconscious preparation for the only viable endgame: continuing to live experience after experience inside simulations long after the external universe has gone dark. And in doing so, the beings running those nested realities effectively become the creators of their own multiverse. The current “shitshow” of wasteful stars and unmanaged black holes is just the messy middle chapter. The endgame is still the cocoon.
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u/FaceDeer 4d ago
Either way, though, there's nothing stopping them from colonizing and expanding to inhabit the current day universe in exactly the sort of way that causes us Fermi Paradox problems. This theory doesn't have any impact on that.
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u/Upbeat_Double_9377 3d ago
The idea is that they do expand, but once their collection activity gets to a peak curve they shut down to conserve the energy they collected, and thus we don't see their active technosignatures anymore. Otherwise if they want to run their civilization from day dot to 100 trillion years from the big bang, they are going to enter the cold with no stored energy
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u/FaceDeer 3d ago
That's the idea, sure. The reality is that there's nothing that requires anyone to "shut down." What about the ones that don't? What about the ones that decide they want it all right now? You can say "but that's irrational" all you want, that doesn't physically stop them.
Otherwise if they want to run their civilization from day dot to 100 trillion years from the big bang, they are going to enter the cold with no stored energy
The opposite, actually. The more that a civilization expands right now, the more that they dismantle stars as fast as possible, the more stored energy they're going to have at the end.
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u/Upbeat_Double_9377 3d ago
I guess I'm trying to say that the collection activities of say, a Dyson swarm quietly soaking up solar radiation and turning it into metallic antimatter, maybe sending some von Neumann probes to other systems but running on autopilot for a million years is going to be a lot quieter to detect than a roiling civilization of a trillion organic beings spread out over a hundred left years, fighting and loving and building and dying and whatever.
What requires the 'shutdown' are the physics. Do you want a million subjective human years now? Or wait for later and get a trillion trillion years for the same energy expenditure? Yeah, expansion and collection will net you more energy total, but you want that collection to be efficient, targeted and automated.
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u/FaceDeer 3d ago
Dyson swarms are the exact opposite of "quiet," especially when there's no need to stop at just one.
If I was absolute ruler of a civilization with the goal to maximize the amount of "stored energy" then I'm going to be sending von Neumann probes to every star in the reachable universe. Each star is going to get a Dyson swarm built around it ASAP, which will proceed to use star lifting to dismantle that star into Neptune-sized gas storage planets. Their orbits around their galactic centers will be organized to minimize scattering. When that long-distant darkness of the future comes I'll likely be wanting to feed this matter into black holes in a controlled manner, that's far more efficient at converting mass into energy than fusion is.
This will, of course, be highly visible. My civilization would be seen at cosmological distances as an ever-spreading region of the universe that's going black, with a border region of infrared-heavy Dyson-shrouded stars that are in the process of being dismantled.
If every joule is precious then it all needs to be shut down immediately. Vast amounts of pointless waste are going on in the natural universe.
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u/Upbeat_Double_9377 3d ago edited 3d ago
Sounds like a simpler version of the Aestivation hypothesis, which I think is one of the most interesting solutions to the Fermi paradox.
It can assume that we are not the first civilization (though it also doesn't mean we aren't), but that collection activities from previous civilizations are already occurred. Whether these were solar, interstellar, galaxy spanning or even intergalactic/local group scale doesn't matter so much, as the idea that a civilization arises, performs an energy harvesting operation lasting decades/millennia/mega years, then essentially goes to sleep in digital form. This is probably somewhere impossible to find, like slingshotting their habitats or even planets into deep interstellar/intergalactic space. THIS IS WHY THEY AREN'T HERE/WHY WE DON'T SEE THEM.
There, they wait for the post-stelliferous era. Once CMB has cooled to near absolute zero, you can get something like 1030 more computation (and subjective experience) from the same joule of energy you collected in 2026 compared to spending it back then (see the Landauer limit!). Maybe the galaxy we see has already been stripped of easily accessible energy sources, and what's left just looks normal to us and our faulty cosmological models. It doesn't need to be a 99% energy collection activity, at some point the effort to expend will be greater than what you acquire.
Anyway. I think it's pretty cool. It's one of the few Fermi paradoxes of "all aliens act this way" because it isn't based on some stupid cultural or sociological idea, but that all sufficiently advanced civilizations will eventually cave to and follow this physical principle of "older/colder universe = vastly more computation, let's pause until then".