This Is What a Godlike Civilization Would Look Like · Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
探讨神级文明的可能形态，从生态修复到科技发展，适合练习科技与成长类词汇和表达。
Everything we think about aliens might be completely wrong, an expression of how primitive humanity actually is.
我们对外星人的一切认知可能都是完全错误的，这其实反映了人类自身的原始与落后。
We imagine progress as Dyson spheres, interstellar travel and galactic empires.
我们把进步想象成戴森球、星际旅行以及银河帝国之类的概念。
But what if this is just how cavemen imagine things?
但如果这只是原始人想象事物的方式呢？
Bigger is better!
越大越好！
We need more energy, more space, more stuff!
我们需要更多的能源、更多的空间、更多的物品！
What if the universe is full of old, godlike alien civilizations and we don’t even realize it?
如果宇宙中充满了那些古老而具有“神性”特征的外星文明，而我们却丝毫没有察觉到呢？
What if real progress doesn't mean expanding outwards, but inwards?
如果真正的进步并不意味着向外扩张，而是向内深化（即提升自身的内在素质或能力），那又会怎样呢？
Controlling the tiniest layers of reality?
控制现实中最微小的层面？
Humans are expansionist and hungry for resources.
人类具有扩张性，且对各种资源有着强烈的需求。
In just a split second we spread across the entire planet, ate most of the large animals, felled a third of all forests,
仅仅在瞬间之内，我们就遍布了整个地球：吃掉了大多数大型动物，砍伐了三分之一的森林。
carved canyons for metals and burned mountains of dead plants for energy.
他们开凿峡谷以获取金属资源，焚烧堆积如山的枯死植物来获取能源。
And our appetite isn’t slowing down – it’s accelerating.
而且我们的“胃口”（即对资源、消费等的需求）并没有减弱，反而还在加速增长。
The more we progress, the faster we devour the planet.
我们取得的进步越多，破坏地球的速度也就越快。
So the next step seems obvious: head into space, claim new worlds, and devour them, too.
因此，下一步似乎显而易见：进入太空，占领新的星球，然后将它们也吞并掉。
Going big and wide feels natural to us because in the brutal world of our ancestors, conquering more land meant more food and security.
对我们来说，追求更大的发展空间（即“做大做强”）是一件再自然不过的事情。因为在我们的祖先所处的那个残酷世界里，征服更多的土地就意味着能获得更多的食物和保障。
For most of human history, expansion was key to being richer and living better.
在人类历史的大部分时间里，扩张是实现财富增长和改善生活质量的关键因素。
Big is good.
越大越好。
This logic should also be true for alien civilizations that expand outwards.
这种逻辑同样适用于那些向外扩张的外星文明。
They eat their planet, then they eat space.
它们先“吞噬”自己的星球，然后又“吞噬”整个宇宙空间。
Based on this idea of “more”, scientists came up with a system to categorize civilizations by their energy consumption on the macro level,
基于这种“更多”的理念，科学家们提出了一种系统，用于从宏观层面根据文明的能源消耗情况对它们进行分类。
the Kardashev scale.
卡尔达肖夫等级（Kardashev Scale）。
A Type I civilization harnesses its home planet.
I型文明能够充分利用其所在行星的资源。
Type II controls its star system.
II型天体能够控制其所属的恒星系统。
And Type III has taken over its galaxy, becoming a vast empire of engineered stars, terraformed planets, and titanic ships among the stars.
而 III 型文明已经控制了它的整个星系，建立了一个庞大的帝国——这个帝国由经过改造的恒星、被改造过的行星以及穿梭于星际之间的巨型飞船组成。
This scale is helpful but also very limited – growing outwards might have been more important in the past compared to the future.
这个评估标准虽然很有用，但也存在很大的局限性：与未来相比，过去“向外扩张”（即扩大业务范围或市场份额）可能更为重要。
Because as our civilization climbed up the tech tree, progress stopped coming from the big and began to emerge from the small.
随着我们的文明不断在科技发展的道路上前进，进步的来源不再局限于那些大型项目或机构，而是开始从那些小型创新中涌现出来。
Our ancestors built the pyramids: an immense technical achievement on a scale 100 times their own.
我们的祖先建造了金字塔——这是一项极其伟大的技术成就，其规模远远超出了他们自身的能力范围（即建造金字塔所需的工程技术难度是他们自身能力的100倍）。
But at a scale 100 times smaller,
但在小100倍的尺度上……
they created something incomparably more impactful: writing – making knowledge eternal and allowing information to travel through time and space.
他们创造出了某种影响更为深远的东西：文字。文字使知识得以永存，并让信息能够在时间和空间中传播开来。
Over the next thousands of years we gained more and more mastery over the small and our capability and standard of living rose in parallel.
在接下来的几千年里，我们对这些微小生物的掌控能力不断提高，与此同时，我们的生活质量也随之提升。
We learned how to mix metals to get better tools.
我们学会了如何将不同的金属混合在一起，从而制造出更优质的工具。
Engineered medicines that saved millions from disease.
这些经过精心研发的药品拯救了数百万人，使他们免于疾病的折磨。
We turned air into fertilizer, feeding billions.
我们将空气转化为肥料，养活了数十亿人。
We pushed all the way down to the quantum level to convert sand into transistors, compressing room-sized computers into tiny machines,
我们一直深入到量子层面，将沙子转化为晶体管，从而将原本占据整个房间的计算机压缩成体积极小的设备。
hundreds of millions of times more powerful.
其威力要强出数亿倍。
Controlling the small world makes you richer, healthier and able to live better.
掌控这个“小世界”会让你变得更富有、更健康，从而能够过上更好的生活。
So what if we categorize alien civilizations by how deep they can go into the micro level?
那么，如果我们根据外星文明在微观层面上的探索能力来对它们进行分类，会怎么样呢？
This is the Barrow scale, which measures progress by your level of control of the small world.
这就是“巴罗量表”（Barrow Scale）——它通过你对该“小世界”（即你所处的具体环境或系统）的控制程度来衡量你的进步情况。
It starts at Type 1-minus, which covers almost all of human history until the late 19th century.
这一阶段从“1-减”类型开始，几乎涵盖了整个人类历史，直到19世纪末。
We were able to manipulate objects and building structures roughly at our own scale, mining minerals, combining and refining them.
我们能够大致按照自己的比例来操控各种物体和建筑结构，开采矿物，并对这些矿物进行加工与提纯。