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[MaxTheFox]

My mostly-hard-sci-fi setting (FTL is the only thing that isn't super-advanced alien technology that is total handwavium), humanity's "extreme trait" is individualism. Most alien species, even humanoid ones, are very collectivist: pack/herd mentality, hives, just straight up pseudo-communism, etc.

[Eric Blank]

But that's not even necessarily true, humans can also be extremely dependent on one-another for support, the culture they were raised in, to the point you'll meet people who appear to have never had an original thought in their life and regurgitate whatever they've heard on the news/from people around them. If anything, the weirdest thing about humans is that the only things we all simultaneously have in common is our underlying biology. Behaviorally, people can represent any conceivable extreme, including intentionally forgoing independent thought and action.

Of course we have to remember, all "concievable" extremes to which we are privy are currently of our own making. Alien intelligences could be so fundamentally alien that we can't put them in any of the boxes we enjoy putting ourselves in. We'll just make new boxes of course, that's something humans like to do is lump groups of individual, unique things into categories. Maybe we'll find aliens who dont do that?

[Starver]

Perhaps we'll find that humanity is the only race that doesn't either produce or consume massive quantities of slood. Or perhaps we alone have any conceivable use for logarithms in our 'mathematics', which is a nonsensical concept in any other race's concept of number-theory (theirs working exactly as well as necessary, possibly better than ours in some things). Or bilateral bodyforms, is that actually the optimal ideal? Manipulation of the environment with limbs and fingers is a rather gimcrack thing when setting up a carefully-formed ultrasonic standing-wave from your noise-melon does it much better.

(Hmm, wait, that's drifting away from societal differences. But I could expand on each into a theoretical sociological scenario, if you didn't mind a few more walls of text.)

[MaxTheFox]

But that's not even necessarily true, humans can also be extremely dependent on one-another for support, the culture they were raised in, to the point you'll meet people who appear to have never had an original thought in their life and regurgitate whatever they've heard on the news/from people around them. If anything, the weirdest thing about humans is that the only things we all simultaneously have in common is our underlying biology. Behaviorally, people can represent any conceivable extreme, including intentionally forgoing independent thought and action.

Of course we have to remember, all "concievable" extremes to which we are privy are currently of our own making. Alien intelligences could be so fundamentally alien that we can't put them in any of the boxes we enjoy putting ourselves in. We'll just make new boxes of course, that's something humans like to do is lump groups of individual, unique things into categories. Maybe we'll find aliens who dont do that?

On average, humans are very individualist is what I meant. Of course there are outliers.

And I have some races that are extremely different mentally, but those tend to live on planets with very different conditions from Earth or most habitable worlds (convergent evolution kicks in otherwise).

[Egan_BW]

Why assume FTL? There's no reason to believe that we'll ever find a way around that, it's a rule broken by a lot of sci-fi but probably just because we have a desire to see other star systems and stories might wind up becoming a bit unrelatable if our protagonists have to wait thousands of years or more just to arrive at a place with some more rocky planets and balls of gas.

Odds are good that we're not the only life in the universe, but what of the odds of us ever being able to find or interact with them? If they're planet-bound, it's looking for the needle in the haystack even if we could travel instantly between stars and planets. We'd be more likely to run into other highly expansionist strains of life, perhaps forming networks to siphon off all the energy let off from huge clusters of star systems, always spreading outward.

[Scoops Novel]

We've still got breakthrough starshot. Cross-system travel within 2 decades using tiny probes. Use that enough and within 2000 years maybe we find an existing primitive galactic internet or somebody doing the same thing.

Then presumably we just recreate bits of the galaxy in a dyson sphere instead.

If you think about it, the best defense against a galactic internet is adding more planets to the galactic internet.

On the other hand, it could be full of stuff made for more intelligent, restrained species. And stuff beyond that deliberately restricted access until you prove a certain level of intelligence/sophistication where people are working on the big problems like the heat death of the universe, but equally with some epic goodies to bait you into pursuing it.

Presumably there would be some GalacNet council deciding what the species downloads and pursues and what exactly a good anti-virus is.

Huh... it's not even that hard.

Pause

This legitimately seems like the best way to dodge all the bullets of our technological advancement.

[MaxTheFox]

Why assume FTL? There's no reason to believe that we'll ever find a way around that, it's a rule broken by a lot of sci-fi but probably just because we have a desire to see other star systems and stories might wind up becoming a bit unrelatable if our protagonists have to wait thousands of years or more just to arrive at a place with some more rocky planets and balls of gas.

Odds are good that we're not the only life in the universe, but what of the odds of us ever being able to find or interact with them? If they're planet-bound, it's looking for the needle in the haystack even if we could travel instantly between stars and planets. We'd be more likely to run into other highly expansionist strains of life, perhaps forming networks to siphon off all the energy let off from huge clusters of star systems, always spreading outward.

Well it was OP's prompt, it's unlikely we will ever find an usable loophole but who knows?

We've still got breakthrough starshot. Cross-system travel within 2 decades using tiny probes. Use that enough and within 2000 years maybe we find an existing primitive galactic internet or somebody doing the same thing.

Then presumably we just recreate bits of the galaxy in a dyson sphere instead.

If you think about it, the best defense against a galactic internet is adding more planets to the galactic internet.

On the other hand, it could be full of stuff made for more intelligent, restrained species. And stuff beyond that deliberately restricted access until you prove a certain level of intelligence/sophistication where people are working on the big problems like the heat death of the universe, but equally with some epic goodies to bait you into pursuing it.

Presumably there would be some GalacNet council deciding what the species downloads and pursues and what exactly a good anti-virus is.

Huh... it's not even that hard.

Pause

This legitimately seems like the best way to dodge all the bullets of our technological advancement.

I completely lost it at "big problems like the heat death of the universe". Actually cracked up and laughed out loud. No civilization possibly existing in this galaxy now will last long enough to even begin to see it. It is an incomprehensible amount of time. And "solving" it would require power on par with the Abrahamic God anyways, since you'd need to change the underlying laws of the universe.

[Egan_BW]

And "solving" it would require power on par with the Abrahamic God anyways, since you'd need to change the underlying laws of the universe.

Good thing we're not doing any of that in this hypothetical, then...

[MaxTheFox]

And "solving" it would require power on par with the Abrahamic God anyways, since you'd need to change the underlying laws of the universe.

Good thing we're not doing any of that in this hypothetical, then...

The hypothetical, in a slightly edited form, stretches the realm of plausibility according to physics as we know it, but it's at the very least conceivable that there could be some sort of loophole.

Making a machine to change the cosmological constant, or to break the law of conservation of energy, is at least three levels of implausibility upwards.

Besides, it specified just allowing FTL, not changing any other laws of physics at will.

[Starver]

Presumably there would be some GalacNet council deciding what the species downloads and pursues and what exactly a good anti-virus is.

With the exception of the AV (it seems that's handled invisibly, and nobody seems to care much if sneakernet-based malware is used between civs, in fact that might be the idea) that puts me in mind of the Uplift Trilogy and the sanctioned Libraries from which carefully-curated information is provided to the various strata of clientage that stretches[1] back into the mists of progenitor-history that seems remains hidden even from those that currently claim to be the senior remaining extant races...

[1] Except, it is feared, from the potentially self-bootstrapped humanity! One of our uniquenesses, along with our secret and carefully concealed history of speciecide.

[Loud Whispers]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'll tell you what's wrong with the Galactic Empire! It is an autocratic regime which oppresses its citizens, which cry out for liberation! Our 45,000,000 who martyred themselves cry out for righteous revenge against the Goldenbaum dynasty! Long live the galactic federation, long live democracy!