What If Humanity Was A Type VI Civilization? | Unveiled

What If Humanity Was a Type VI Civilization?

How far can humankind really climb? Could we one day leave planet Earth, break out of the solar system, or even leave the universe altogether?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; what if humanity was a Type Six civilization?

By “Type Six civilization” we mean type six on the Kardashev Scale - a system for measuring societal progression through the lens of energy use, as devised by the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev, in 1964. There’s an entire playlist on our channel with videos dedicated to every single previous level of it, from Type One through to Type Five (so be sure to check that out after this video!) but here’s a very quick run through, just to get us started.

Type One on the Kardashev Scale refers to any civilization which has mastered all of the energy possible on its home planet… It can efficiently use every unit of power its native world can generate. In today’s world, humans haven’t quite reached this point yet; we rank around 0.7 on the Scale, as we’re still trying to maximise life on Earth. A Type Two Civilization has mastered all of the energy output from its home star system, though. A Type Three controls all of the energy from its home galaxy. Then, a Type Four controls all of the energy in the universe… and, for some, the Scale stops there. Because, what’s bigger or more powerful than the actual universe??

Others argue, though, that the Scale can be extended to Type Five, which refers to any civilization which has mastered all of the energy possible in multiple universes - AKA the multiverse. A Type Five being would be able to move between parallel worlds, with total knowledge of the true nature of reality. But, according to some theories, there could still be an even higher level. And that’s where we’re headed with today’s question… into the transcendental realm of Type Six.

The first thing to note, here, is that we’ve long since left conventional physics at the door. This isn’t something you’ll find in any textbook anytime soon, and that’s because a Type Six being would effectively live outside of reality. And, remember, this isn’t just outside of reality as we currently know it, either; it’s outside of a reality that we’d by this point know was far, far greater than just our single universe. At Type Six, even the all-knowing, all-seeing Type Fives would be totally beneath your gaze and fully at your mercy. This is the topmost level of life, the final boss of existence, the ultimate enforcer of all things. Thinking about it in terms of how we view the world today… many would recognise a Type Six entity as a god.

So, what if humanity reached this point? Well, one thing’s for sure, humanity wouldn’t be all that human anymore. Considering, again, that we currently rank at 0.7 on the Kardashev Scale, our species has an unfathomable amount to do and go through between now and then. Right now, we’re struggling to make best use of just one planet, in one star system, in one galaxy, in one universe. But, to achieve Type Six, we’ll have had to have ironed out every single inefficiency about ourselves now, and from this point forward through Types One, Two, Three, Four and Five.

Take language as a specific example… a Type Six society might not even have one. Or, at least, they wouldn’t be communicating in a way that’s at all recognisable to us. At one time in its past, when it was at a lower Kardashev level, such a civilization might’ve amalgamated all previous languages into a universal language. It might then have converted that spoken language into a digital one, negating the need for anything like conversation - and avoiding the possibility of miscommunication and confusion. This digitalized language might then have been optimized into something like thought transference, so that not even body language was needed anymore. And then thought transference could lead into the creation of a shared (or hive) mind. And finally, as the Type Six civilization breaks beyond the usual bindings of even time and space and reality, that hive mind becomes more like a memory chip, ready to be accessed when (or if) its ever needed.

With all of that knowledge and wisdom and power, something as humble as language could fall by the wayside. In fact, social connections of any kind might’ve long since disappeared, endlessly replaced by the next more efficient thing. Ultimately, it could even be the case that a Type Six civilization wouldn’t even consist of individual beings, at all… it would be just one, all-encompassing collective mass, with that memory chip of existence in its hands (or whatever its equivalent of hands was).

Let’s not forget that to a Type Six being, Earth (and everything it entails) would represent just one spot of ink on a stack of spotted papers; one speck of dust in a city of dusty houses… so far would a Type Six’s horizon stretch that it could look for an infinite number of lifetimes and never even notice this particular green-and-blue mass which has played host to all of human history, all of evolutionary history, up until now. Even if such a being could, incredibly, be traced all the way back to us, then, the average twenty-first century human would be so spectacularly far removed from the average Type Six mind.

Today, we amuse ourselves by trying to work out problems like how the universe started, or how we could colonize other worlds, or whether time travel is doable… but these would be blink-and-miss-them bits of everyday information at the level of Type Six. All of our big questions will have been answered… and all of the answers would be basic, common, unimportant knowledge. Not only that, though, but as Type Six would operate outside of reality, there would be no further questions above them. Nothing would be not known to them, and that would be a literal, incontestable fact.

Now, as we found in our previous video, this would be kind of true for a Type Five civilization as well… to a certain degree. They, too, would understand and be able to manipulate the multiverse. They, too, would know all there is to know. The difference is that Type Five won’t yet have broken out of reality itself… so they’d know everything there is to know, but only for so long as we assume that a multiversal reality is the ultimate. Reach Type Six, though, and we’d know that even the infinite multiverse isn’t the end!

The much-used video game comparison is a problematic one if we apply it here, because neither Types Five nor Six automatically infer some kind of simulation… but it does provide a real-world, Type-less-than-one way of looking at it. Type Five is the game character that’s maxed out on attributes, and has been hacked and patched and glitched to such an incredible level of perfection that it’s really pointless for them even to be there. The game is done, and they’ve completed it so magnificently that their very existence is a marvel in itself. They know the game is a game, and they know why and how… so, well done to them. But, regardless, Type Six is the one with their hands on the controls. A Type Six civilization might look at a Type Five with something like pride or satisfaction (if emotions like this even exist at this point) but they can turn away at any point. Turn their attention elsewhere. Or even turn off the console. Type Fives know it all, and they know how to shape and bend it all to their every want and desire. But Type Sixes know how to end it all in an instant.

This power for potential destruction could be seen as the ultimate signifier of the highest civilization that there ever could be. It’s maybe a bleak way to look at things, but anything which could erase everything else automatically sits at the top of any proposed civilization league table - which is, sort of, what the Kardashev Scale is. There is a slightly brighter flipside, though, because a Type Six being would also be the ultimate creator. We’re not talking the creator of just worlds or galaxies or even universes, here, but the creator of whole, unending, to anyone else totally unpredictable multiverses. And, let’s be honest, that is some serious power!

Could humans ever reach this point? Well, contemplating it all from our current position, it looks unlikely to the point of impossible. For one, the multiverse is just a theory to us right now, with no actual proof that it really does exist. We’re also not too sure on the size of just this universe, even if we do know it is expanding. We’ve also never been to any of the predicted billions of other star systems in the cosmos… and we’re struggling to ensure our long-term survival on just this planet, for the time being. But, though it might be difficult to envisage it actually coming to pass, that’s what would happen if humanity was a Type Six civilization.