this post was submitted on 30 May 2025
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This is a well known concept in sci-fi where civilizations massing in the tens of billions will have all kind of weird outliers. But at such a scale, even the really weird ones can form groups of tens of thousands or even larger. In sci-fi storytelling this is often used to explain weird behavior that probably wouldn't make a lot of sense otherwise.
It also comes up in the fermi paradox a lot. For example aliens always want to stay at home and not be noticed or interact with anyone. But at a certain scale of civilization that doesn't hold water. Even if 99.99% of a given alien species think that way, there would stil be at least a million of them that think otherwise and would be willing and able to act on it.
So it makes perfect sense for all the Predator people to be really normal and the hunting cult is a hobby that got out of hand.
Yeah I’m gonna need examples. I read a shit ton of science fiction and can’t recall having encountered this.
Check out the works of Alastair Reynolds, he loves to apply this principle in his books. Great on world building and describing the weirdest parts of large civilizations.
For more a meta/review/fermi paradox talk point of view check out the content from Isaac Arthur, he also likes to point out this when discussing things like the fermi paradox and sci-fi in general.
I’ve read most of Asimov’s sci-fi but I’ve only read one Reynolds. It was great, I’ll definitely read some more. Thanks for the response!