Though written in 2007, the arguments still stack up:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nSo, it looks as if there are two possibilities. Perhaps our science over-estimates the likelihood of extra-terrestrial intelligence evolving. Or, perhaps evolved technical intelligence has some deep tendency to be self-limiting, even self-exterminating. After Hiroshima, some suggested that any aliens bright enough to make colonizing space-ships would be bright enough to make thermonuclear bombs, and would use them on each other sooner or later. Perhaps extra-terrestrial intelligence always blows itself up. Fermi\u2019s Paradox became, for a while, a cautionary tale about Cold War geopolitics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I suggest a different, even darker solution to Fermi\u2019s Paradox. Basically, I think the aliens don\u2019t blow themselves up; they just get addicted to computer games. They forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they\u2019re too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual-reality narcissism. They don\u2019t need Sentinels to enslave them in a Matrix; they do it to themselves, just as we are doing today.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n