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This Is What a Godlike Civilization Would Look Like

Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell | September 22, 2026



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Sources & further reading:
https://sites.google.com/view/sourcesbarrowscale/

We imagine advanced alien civilizations building gigantic spaceships, Dyson spheres and empires spanning entire galaxies. But what if true technological progress goes in exactly the opposite direction? Not outward into space, but deeper and deeper into the smallest layers of reality?

What is the Barrow Scale? How powerful could a civilization become by mastering DNA, and even fundamental particles, and could the universe already be filled with godlike civilizations hiding in plain sight?

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Comments

This post currently has 21 comments.

  1. @XEinstein

    September 22, 2026 at 6:57 pm

    I kinda doubt that any civilization will be able to really control down to nuclei scale. Nuclear dynamics, governed by QCD is so wildly dynamic that I really think it's not controllable

  2. @ThorstenMayaux

    September 22, 2026 at 6:57 pm

    the DNA manipulating thing remind me of the Lore of the game Rain World. this game take place in a world where an ancient civilisation created ”purposed creature” wich are genetically made creatures to do task like containing memory, defending or cleaning… and due to their creator being irresponsable, all primary creatures (creatures that has not been genetically modified) has gone extinct. Leaving only those purposed creature to replace them. When their creator is finally gone, the purposed creature, whitout controle, began to evolve to be more natural creatures. in a nutshell, the ancestors of all creatures you see in this game (whether it is flora, fauna… ) ARE genetically made creatures.

  3. @darkmarc

    September 22, 2026 at 6:57 pm

    Finally, someone putting some actual original thinking into the topic of alien intelligence. Most of the Fermi-"Paradox" talk has always been incredibly short-sighted, hubristic, and anthropomorphic, at best. We always want to believe aliens will just be slightly more-advanced versions of us, and they almost certainly WON'T BE. We may just be a local infestation, to them; or "wildlife", at best. Millions or billions of years of space between two things on the evolutionary scale can do that.

  4. @SacredGeometryForgottenProphet

    September 22, 2026 at 6:57 pm

    I told you earthlings these exact statements before during the few times I was "captured" by your leaders hired military forces

    FOCUS ON THE HERE FIRST
    THEN YOU MAY FOCUS ON THE ELSEWHERE AFTER

    Took you guys too long
    The only ones who did fit your previous description of conquerors went kaput eons ago!

    That stuff doesn't work for long in such a vast universe!

  5. @OLBICHL

    September 22, 2026 at 6:57 pm

    yeah, I'm also excited to learn about the reality of the mind, when we finally get there… like if you make the perfect copy of a person, body and brain 1:1, does the mind see with 4 eyes and move 2 bodies simultaneously? or is the copy a new individual (this is more likely the case)?
    or if we link 2 brains together in a way that they can share information back and forth, do they keep their separate individuality and know what thought is their own, or do they merge into one mind?
    or if you completely break down a brain, rebuild it back again, does the mind go on like it just took a nap, or is it gone for good and a new mind was born?
    and what part of the brain makes the mind, that as long as it's still there, the individual persists? and if that part is put into a mindless brain, does the brain alter it or does it have full control of the brain?
    I got so many more questions, but finding out answers to all of them requires acts that are so immoral and unspeakable (tampering with the mind is a line we should have never crossed), but hopefully we don't become such monsters (again) and find other ways :-0

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