https://braddelong.substack.com/p/draft-the-fermi-paradox-the-drake

Bravo @delong

"What we do not see, either in our own past or in the biosphere around us, is many independent runs at civilization in the strong sense: high‑bandwidth symbolic communication, cumulative technological culture strong enough to reshape an entire planet, large‑scale cooperation and hierarchy, and the institutional scaffolding that keeps that precarious construction from collapsing back into small‑band primate politics. That may be the real bottleneck."