In Stanisław Lem's classic sci-fi short story collection, The Cyberiad, there is a section called The Seven Sallies of Trurl and Klapaucius, two hyper-advanced robots who are so advanced they can conjure anything from technology. One of my favorite stories involves Trurl searching for a civilisation that has achieved the highest possible level of development (HPLD). To find such a civilisation, it decides it needs to find a 'wonder' or something that exists outside of rational explanation. In the end Trurl finds a cube-shaped star being orbited by a cube-shaped planet with the letters "HPLD" carved into it.
The planet's inhabitants are all laying around doing nothing. Trurl wants to know why, so it builds a computer to simulate the entire universe, and after millions of attempts it gets an answer: they simply have nothing left to achieve.
When I play city-building games, and especially the recent variety of factory simulators like Factorio, Satisfactory, and Dyson Sphere Program, I often think of Trurl's simulation. Each game has its own sort of end goal representing the highest possible level of development - a rocket, a space elevator, a Dyson sphere - but they all leave me feeling a little uneasy about their laser focus on efficiency above all else.
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