Some unpleasant thoughts
Many people have no macro concept of the four words "science and technology" and are unwilling to think about overly complex issues. They like to simplify all systemic issues and make up a set of so-called "civilization levels" in their minds:
Intercontinental-level civilization, planet-level civilization, galaxy-level civilization, galactic-level civilization, cosmic-level civilization... Then, following the hierarchical logic of Xiaobai's article, we came to the "iron law" that higher-level civilizations must beat lower-level civilizations.
This kind of logic is simply untenable. This crude and brainless logic completely ignores the diversity and richness of civilization. The composition of a civilization includes race, technology, culture, politics... war strength and weapons technology are just one of them. A very, very small aspect.
Whether a civilization can rule the galaxy has nothing to do with whether it can create a Dyson sphere or Coca-Cola.
Because the Human Empire is an interstellar empire that rules the galaxy, based on this premise, the Human Empire must master the "basic technology" of electromagnetic acceleration, so black water must not be able to infect the Astartes, so alien blood must not corrode ceramite, so The technology of the Umbrella Company must be inferior to that of the biological sages... Therefore, the human empire must defeat those civilizations that have not yet left the earth in all aspects - this logic is a complete fallacy.
As long as any civilization masters the three technologies of subspace navigation, star torch navigation and astrological communication in the Warhammer 40K universe, it may become an interstellar civilization. As for whether it can develop the T virus, this has nothing to do with its ability to develop the T virus. Whether it becomes an interstellar civilization or not has nothing to do with it!
Many people only use a simple and crude logic to measure the technological level between two civilizations: the size of the territory is equal to the level of science and technology.
Galaxy civilization \u003e Solar system civilization \u003e Earth civilization.
Vast territory = advanced science and technology, an inexplicable logic. As long as you think about it, you will understand that the size of the territory is only related to transportation technology and communication technology. What does it have to do with other science and technology?
Taking the real world as an example, when the Mongol Empire spanned the Eurasian continent, the political system, economic system, and science and technology of the entire empire were among the relatively backward ones on earth at that time.
Politically, it was a slave society that had not yet transitioned to a feudal society. Economically, it did not issue its own currency, and its overall technology was not developed, so some weapons and technology were relatively advanced... But this did not affect the fact that the territory of the Mongolian Empire was the largest on earth at that time, and This vast territory was conquered by themselves with swords and guns.
Take the Human Empire as an example. During the Great Crusade, the Human Empire encountered many civilizations whose technological level surpassed its own.
The Luna Wolves once conquered a planet-level civilization that called itself "Emperor" and possessed stealth power armor technology. Their stealth power armor could not be seen through by Space Marines even if they switched to thermal imaging view.
The Space Wolves once conquered a galaxy-level civilization called Duranian, mastered mortal-level personal shields, power armor, and Dreadnought Mechas, and owned spaceships that could travel faster than the Empire's sublight speed.
Intress, a galaxy-level civilization that the Luna Wolves finally conquered, perfectly combined magic and technology. Their soldiers wore psionic + mechanical centaur power armor and coexisted peacefully with the alien race.
In these countless cases, the technologies of these lost human civilizations are more powerful than the human empire, but they were eventually conquered by the human empire. Why?
volume.
No matter how technologically advanced planet-level civilizations and galaxy-level civilizations are, their war potential cannot be compared with that of the human empire that occupies most of the galaxy.
When the number of Space Marines under his command is so large that they can use the human wave tactics to casually die at will like the bulk of the Imperial Guard, few civilizations can withstand a powerful offensive of this level and scale.
When conquering these civilizations, even if they were as powerful as space warriors, they died in pieces like wheat. But no matter what, the final victory still belonged to the human empire. Quantity overwhelmed quality, and quantitative changes produced qualitative changes.
They have many advanced technologies, but they have never mastered the three most critical technologies: subspace navigation, astrological communication, and star torch navigation.
(It is also said that these civilizations were the first to realize the horrors of subspace and chaos, and voluntarily gave up the development of subspace navigation technology. They were also content with the current scale and status quo, and had no ambition to expand their territories and conquer the galaxy.)
Technology can neither determine the outcome of a war nor the size of a territory.
The world is complex, and the strong should accept the complexity of the world and try to understand it, while only the weak will try to crudely summarize the world with some imaginary simple logic.
Technology is like a tree. Some branches are long, some are short, some are lush, and some are sparse. Interstellar navigation technology is just a branch on this big tree, nothing more. It is such a simple fact that many people spend their entire lives unable to understand.
Elon Musk once said:
People who can see through the essence of things in half a second and people who can't see clearly the essence of things in a lifetime are destined to have completely different fates.
I don’t entirely agree, but it can also explain:
Cognition is a person's greatest competitiveness, and all other production factors other than cognition can be slowly constructed.
………
I originally wanted to put the above words into the main text, but I felt that they were too preachy, so I opened a separate free chapter. The same sentence——
Refuting and defending are secondary. I just hope that readers can find some gains in values and worldview, as well as gains in cognition, in an online novel.