平庸原理根据人类自身的经验可以认为,原始的文明至少应与这样一些对象有关:农牧业、城市、陶器、冶金、文字等。较先进的文明则表现为电能与核能的应用、建立射电天文学、进行空间探索、计算机和人工智能等,这些乃是一个文明世界有能力向异星文明显示自身的存在,或可望搜寻到其他文明的起码条件。目前我们所知的文明种族只有人类本身。人们在探索地外文明时,就不得不借鉴人类自身的文明进行推理。“平庸原理”就是在这种情况下经常运用 Principle of mediocrity According to the experience of human beings, the primitive civilization should at least be related to such objects as agriculture and animal husbandry, city, pottery, metallurgy and writing. The more advanced civilizations are the application of electricity and nuclear energy, the establishment of radio astronomy, space exploration, computers and artificial intelligence. These are the reasons why a civilized world can demonstrate its own existence to alien civilizations or is expected to search for other The minimum conditions of civilization. At present, only the human race itself is known as a civilized race. When people explore the extra-terrestrial civilization, they have to draw lessons from human’s own civilization for reasoning. The “mediocre principle” is often used in this situation