Of course, absent technology, the rate of cultural evolution, and thus of divergence, for the British and Roman Empires is very much slower than it would be for modern technology-enabled planets. The rate of change (and thus of divergence) of both of these historical examples was very slow, comparatively, to our our ‘evening news watching’ society. Hence, historically they did go “a long time” without either ever developing anything even close to the necessary tech capability to completely kill the other one. Ie; it is not just “the total elapsed time” as it is the “net aggregate functional difference over the accumulative rate of change” that matters.
Also, I notice that our modern ‘broadcast news watching society’ has become, also because of technology (and increasingly) more and more politically polarized and socially balkanized. Surely it can be suggested that this is at least some sort of evidence of technology being associated with cultural change, and with the rate of cultural change, and thus hence also of the overall eventual degree of divergence—ie; and this in addition to prior cultural changes being the reason for new technologies being/becoming developed, and hence of eventually even more increased divergence, etc (for example, because of the historical emergence of rationalism, the “western enlightenment”, etc, over the last few hundred years). To go from there and to notice that 1; strong overall societal polarization and local balkanization combined with 2; rapidly advancing and increasingly divergent technological capabilities, along with 3; no common necessary basis of mutuality of survival (ie, MAD and the reality of global nuclear winter) eventually leads to 4; very high first strike game-theoretic potentials and thus, with high levels of at least some type of tech power, significant culture destroying consequences somewhere.
Of course, absent technology, the rate of cultural evolution, and thus of divergence, for the British and Roman Empires is very much slower than it would be for modern technology-enabled planets. The rate of change (and thus of divergence) of both of these historical examples was very slow, comparatively, to our our ‘evening news watching’ society. Hence, historically they did go “a long time” without either ever developing anything even close to the necessary tech capability to completely kill the other one. Ie; it is not just “the total elapsed time” as it is the “net aggregate functional difference over the accumulative rate of change” that matters.
Also, I notice that our modern ‘broadcast news watching society’ has become, also because of technology (and increasingly) more and more politically polarized and socially balkanized. Surely it can be suggested that this is at least some sort of evidence of technology being associated with cultural change, and with the rate of cultural change, and thus hence also of the overall eventual degree of divergence—ie; and this in addition to prior cultural changes being the reason for new technologies being/becoming developed, and hence of eventually even more increased divergence, etc (for example, because of the historical emergence of rationalism, the “western enlightenment”, etc, over the last few hundred years). To go from there and to notice that 1; strong overall societal polarization and local balkanization combined with 2; rapidly advancing and increasingly divergent technological capabilities, along with 3; no common necessary basis of mutuality of survival (ie, MAD and the reality of global nuclear winter) eventually leads to 4; very high first strike game-theoretic potentials and thus, with high levels of at least some type of tech power, significant culture destroying consequences somewhere.