The Fermi Paradox

by Jon Sullivan - 2025-08-13 - Jonism

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We know there are billions of earth-like planets around us. Finding civilizations beyond Earth should be easy.

I often find my mind wandering to the Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox. If we run the math, there should be advanced alien civilizations all over the place. We should be able to see Dyson spheres or swarms with modern telescopes, but we don't. We should be able to spot changes in planetary atmosphere, radio signals, anomalous energy outputs, tourists and explorers. Nothing. Even if we consider that advanced civilizations may go extinct, that may solve the paradox but it raises even more troubling possibilities - No matter what we do as a species, no advanced civilization ever lasts long enough to even be noticed.

There are many other theories, but that's not what has held my attention. I've been thinking about how we even get to the point where not finding advanced civilizations leads to a paradox. Even if there are billions of planets with life evolving, why do we all assume we/humans are the pinnacle of evolution that all life would move towards? That's not even true on Earth.

On Earth, which we know all about because we stand on it, evolution prefers the form of a crab. Many non-crab animals have evolved to have crab like bodies. Space aliens are more likely to look like crabs than bipedal flesh sacks. And if we look at what evolution has actually done in 4 billion years the most successful species are creatures like sharks and birds. Even if we just go by intelligence we find species like crows, dolphins, octopi that have been doing it quite well for millions of years before primates came along.

Do crabs need Dyson spheres? Do birds suffer from a lack of indoor plumbing? Why do we assume evolution leads to technology? What if technology itself is a species killer? We seem to need to hold onto the idea that we are the superior species. But the only way we can do that is to cherry pick our own "blink of an eye" existence. Or even more simple minded - Humans are a superior species because we wear clothes and can kill stuff good. Maybe the most advanced evolution in our corner of the universe is a species of crab-like beings who don't poison their environment, don't over-populate, and don't kill everything they can find for sport. Maybe the pinnacle of species evolution is something that can exist for a 100 thousand years without destroying itself.

In short, I'm thinking the Fermi Paradox itself is a massive gaffe in human arrogance. Perhaps we should rework it as the "Fermi Conjecture" - Technology is an evolutionary dead end, and the human race will inevitably collapse soon. With the best evidence for this being the complete absence of technology in the universe, other than what we've built in the last 100 years.

Human arrogance about our supposed superiority has led us to do really stupid things with technology, and that seems to be accelerating. In the US we liked the last global pandemic so much we're trying to have them more often. Even as "AI" gets it wrong over and over we try to figure out how to give it more control over everything. Our arrogance drives us to do more and more dangerous things with more and more powerful tools. While at the same time we demonize experts and outlaw science. Is it too far-fetched to think that humans are a bad mutation that evolution will have to weed out, as it has on billions of other planets?

As Elon Musk works on his plan to terraform Mars, as Trump pushes us towards global nuclear war, as healthcare becomes a luxury, as democracy dwindles around the globe, as AI gaslights us with our own delusions...... What do we do? Can we do anything? Would any leader stand up and claim we need to stop working on better robots and viewer retention, and instead work on not going extinct? Will the next visit from God/Jesus be to tell us we need to stop poisoning His creation and "love your biome as yourself"?

My answer to the Fermi Paradox is that as soon as we start arrogantly looking for "people like us" on other planets we lose the long game. Maybe we should be more like the birds and dolphins and eight armed mollusks that seem to be doing it way better than we are. Hopefully we'll still be here in a few thousand years when it's found that the Milky Way has billions of planets filled with crabs and birds who need no technology or religion to live in Eden.

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