Is there a common path that advanced civilizations choose for development throughout the universe?

Answer 1

We can only speculate on the common paths of advanced civilizations, based on what is required by the universe as we know it. There are certain common obstacles that need to be overcome for any species to become truly advanced.

The common path would need to include these steps:
1) Evolve intelligence
2) Develop tool use
3) Group behavior (language, cooperation)
4) Dominate local environment (dependable survival)
5) Develop technology
6) Create dependable sources for all needs (farming, mining, energy, water)
7) Deal with all local and short term threats (extreme weather, predators)
8) Deal with all global and long term threats (ice ages, asteroids)
9) Deal with threats within the solar system (species on local planets, age of the sun)
10) Deal with threats outside the solar system (super nova, gamma ray burst)
11) At some point it will be necessary to leave the solar system.

At some point during the last four steps, any technology would need to master at least chemistry and energy. It's likely that several other sciences would be mastered as well.

The only way for a civilization to avoid the eventuality of leaving their solar system is for them to develop a technology so advanced that they can survive a local red giant, super nova, or the remaining dwarf sun that remains. Whether they leave or stay, their technology will be so advanced that the normal survival needs that we are familiar with, will no longer apply.

The net result seems to be that any advanced civilization that is not yet able to leave their own solar system will be competitive to some degree, but once they advance to become truly interstellar, they will be so self sufficient that there will be no need to compete for anything.

Stephen Hawking once pointed out that any advanced civilization probably evolved from a predator species. Since any home world would have a limit to it's available space and resources, competition would be required at some point in the evolution of an advanced species. In our case, we competed with other carnivores to get our food and to prevent us from becoming a meal for others. Now that we have dominated the other species, we compete with our own.

Other home worlds could have some differences. A water world might have an intelligent invertebrate species, but in order to become truly advanced, it would still need to dominate it's local environment enough to focus on technology and not just mere survival. A solar system with more than one intelligent species on multiple planets would present different challenges. When the species advance to the point of leaving their home worlds, they will encounter each other and it will end in conquest (Spaniards vs. Mayans), integration (Romans vs. everyone), or blending (Anglo vs. Saxons).

Regardless of how they get there, any advanced civilization will eventually need to confront the long term threats to their survival; Ice ages, super volcanoes, asteroid impacts, and the inevitable death of their sun. We now know how to eliminate these threats, but doing so is another thing. For example, knowing that removing Panama will restore the Pliocene Epoch ocean circulation of 2.5 million years ago and thus stop the cycle of ice ages is quite a far cry from actually doing it. Likewise, knowing how to use the gravitational tug of asteroids to nudge the earth out to the orbit of Mars and thus escape the heat of our dying sun is nothing compared to amassing the will to do it.

Due to the enormous distances between the stars, any advanced civilization that is able to become truly interstellar will have mastered technology and the sciences to such a degree that the things we need for our survival will seem as pointless to them as us needing a sharp rock. In other words, by the time they get here, they won't need anything that we have or can even imagine.