[ExI] Fermi paradox, a solution

[Dagon Gmail]

Old story yet not a very good solution. Imagine this experiment:
you kidnap ten million humans, somewhere 2500 years ago
from all over the world, in consistent batches of 10.000 of
the same ethnic and cultural background. Then you'd drop them
with plants and animals on suitable terrestrial worlds, scattered
over the galaxy, and let them consolidate their planet.

Some colonies would fail, for a variety of reasons. Yet from a
sampling of a 1000 colonies quite a few would stumble on to an
industrial civilization, probably within 10.000 years. If you'd give
a small number of members a comparably higher education,
chances would shoot up sharply.

You can easily visualise batches of colonies with a starting
technology of, say, the late industrial-age revolution, established on
hospitable worlds and most of those would move into varied
forms of information age, internet, consumer society and
consequently the consumerist trap you suppose.

How many of the 1000 colonies audited would fail? I think more
than half would stumble through, one way or another, especially
if you wait 10.000, 20.000 years.