<i>&gt; But most likely, economic forces will start to dominate our actions in space, as they have always done on Earth.</i><p>Perhaps most advanced intelligence comes in the form of distributed hive minds, and something like a &quot;civilization&quot; is regarded by most sentients as something akin to a pack of wolves or an uncontrolled mob? Maybe we&#x27;re the ultimate ethical dilemma: All of the bad qualities of a cancer, but you can&#x27;t ethically kill us because every one of our units is an independent sentience.<p>Our neighbors are quietly watching us, hoping we&#x27;ll choke in our own industrial effluents and kill ourselves off in the resulting ecological chaos, so no one has to taint themselves with the unpleasant task of sterilizing our system.