"Fermi's paradox became, for a while, a cautionary tale about
cold war geopolitics.
"I suggest a different, even
darker solution to Fermi's paradox. Basically I think aliens
don't blow themselves up; they just get addicted to computer games.
They forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they're
too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual-reality narcissism.
They don't need Sentinels to enslave them in a Matrix; they do it
to themselves, just as we are doing today."
-- Geoffrey Miller, from "Runaway Consumerism Explains the Fermi
Paradox", included in the book What is Your Dangerous Idea?, edited
by John Brockman.
(submitted to the mailing list by
Jeffrey L. Copeland)