1029

The Fermi Paradox is the idea that life in the Universe should be somewhat commonplace, and therefore so should intelligent life. But when we look for signs of it, mostly in the form of radio waves, we find none. So where are they?

A common solution put forward at the time was that civilizations who invent radio waves around the same time will invent the atomic bomb and destroy themselves. While it’s probably true about the inventions coinciding, the theory has a few big problems. First, we have to assume all civilizations are violent within themselves. Second, we have to assume the bomb would destroy radio waves forever, which seems strange; you can rebuild civilization. Third, which I think is the most important problem, is that it was obviously an outgrowth of specific human fears about Cold War conflicts at the time the Fermi Paradox came out. Human thought is far too trapped in our own time.

Since the Cold War I think we can see a new reason why humans might not expand into the Universe forever. A much more mundane reason. We just don’t want to. It turns out that something strange happens when humans are given a certain amount of freedom over our reproduction, we more or less always choose to not have enough babies to replace ourselves. Basically every country which gets to a certain level of economic development always causes a crash in the number of children. Obviously this isn’t for the reason Schopenhauer might think, in that we genuinely became so enlightened to the human condition of suffering that we became antinatalists (the idea that it is morally wrong to bring new people into existence, because existence totally sucks), but more just that people don’t want to have a bunch of kids, because it is kind of a pain in the ass to raise them. This seems to be almost deterministic, in that regardless of culture, everyone falls below replacement rates when they get comfortable enough and have enough freedom to choose what they want to do. In fact, worldwide birthrates are less than half what they were when the Fermi Paradox was introduced. At the time, everyone was even worried about overpopulation. Now it seems like that worry was totally unfounded. So what does this mean for aliens? Well, if Aliens follow this same deterministic pattern, how can they expand into the Universe? How can we expand to other planets if, when given control over our own reproduction, we by and large choose to produce fewer children than is needed to replace us? What if this rule is somehow built into biology? What if all aliens that are highly intelligent somehow require a biology that makes few children, and long laborious time and effort to raise them? What if they all, like us, when given economic freedom just don’t want to have enough children to expand?

Now we have to imagine the kind of rare alien that would overcome this challenge. The kind that would become a “grabby” species, i.e. expand forever. Well, maybe the chief problem to overcome isn’t the desire to expand (as humans have traditionally), or to avoid the conflict of nuclear war, but just to literally have enough children. One way to do this of course, is for this species to just be far far more sex obsessed than all the other species in the Universe (and I think Captain Kirk would like this). While all the aliens that like poetry, math, video games, or sports die out from their own lack of children, the species that only likes having sex all the time (so much that the birth control doesn’t even work) will expand. By this reckoning, if we ever do encounter aliens, well...look out.