A better scale for civilizations.

Up until now, we’ve been using the Kardashev Scale for scaling civilizations. It’s common to hear things like a K0 or a K2 civilization and technically, it is a sound and well thought of scale. Yet it creates a weak classification for civilizations in between the scale.

Kardashev Scale is primarily based on the energy a civilization can use in it’s current environment. Simplified, it comes down to how much energy a civilization can produce/capture from it’s stars or any other form, and use it for it’s own purpose. This scale gives a broad definition in terms of 4 definite (And 2 indefinite) pit stops for the scale.

1. Kardashev type 1 Civilization: A civilization that can harness the energy of their entire planet. Needless to say, we haven’t even reached this level since out current technology can only be marked at 0.7.
2. Kardashev type 2 Civilization: A civilization that can harness the energy of the entire solar system. This civilization is bound to use a dyson sphere or a swarm for it’s energy production.
3. Kardashev type 3 Civilization: A civilization that can harness the energy of their entire galaxy. A galactic empire that can transform each star in their home galaxy into an energy producing beast.
4. Kardashev type 4 and 5 Civilizations: Hard to grasp, but these civilizations would be able to harness the power of an entire universe or even multiverses. Unfortunately, by that time, humans would have become something entirely different so these types aren’t useful to us right now.

Kardashev Scale upto type 3.

This scale has a problem. It is too broad for civilization to be classified under. Even so, civilizations might not harness energy as their main form of economic growth either. A civilization that has gained transorganic form would require very little energy but could theoretically be a galactic empire.

I propose a different system of classification, not based on energy or information, but on predictions. Predictions based on various aspects of a civilizations environment. The classification is much more detailed regarding all aspects of social, technological, political and environmental factors that would come into play here. There would also be a masterclass in terms of inhabitant that would cover the major section and would carry the max.

1. Social Classification: A civilization can be a type 1 social if it can determine the outcome of it’s social policies within it’s planet. It would be type 2 if it can determine the outcome of it’s solar system and type 3 if it can determine the outcome of the galaxy.
2. Technological Classification: A civilization can be type 1 if it can determine the impact of it’s technology on a planetary level. A type 2 would know the outcomes on the level of their solar system and a type 3 would know the outcome on a galactic level.
3. Political Classification: A civilization that can know it’s political outcome on a planetary level can be classified as type 1, on the level of it’s solar system is type 2 and the galaxy is type 3.
4. Environmental Classification: A civilization that can predict every variable about it’s planet would be a type 1, it’s solar system would be type 2 and it’s galaxy would be type 3.

These are the 4 major classification outcomes. Part from these, a more expansionist view, that would incorporate the base Kardashev Scale. And finally, we would take into account the accuracy of their predictions. That would be a metric for how efficient the civilization is.

Our final value would take into account the weighted sum of all factors.

(KardashevScaleValue*0.5 + Social*0.1 + Political*0.1 + Technological*0.1 + Environmental*0.2) = TotalScaleValue

Here, the Kardashev, Social, Political, Technological and Environmental Values will be multiplied with their various accuracies. And each accuracy value will be determined by the number of variables a model can take versus the total various present in the classification paradigm.

This would allow a much deeper and better understanding of a civilization than our current method since our entire civilization works on predicting the future and acting according to it, to reduce uncertainties in a system.