Too Damned Quiet?

TL;DR

The paper explores reasons why extraterrestrial civilizations might remain undetected, including evolutionary self-censorship, risk aversion, or rarity, challenging assumptions about the Fermi paradox.

Contribution

It discusses alternative explanations for the silence in SETI, emphasizing evolutionary and sociological factors that could suppress detectable extraterrestrial signals.

Findings

Self-advertisement may be evolutionarily disadvantageous for extraterrestrial species.

Intelligent civilizations might intentionally avoid broadcasting to reduce risks.

The apparent silence does not necessarily imply the rarity of extraterrestrial life.

Abstract

It is often suggested that extraterrestial life sufficiently advanced to be capable of interstellar travel or communication must be rare, since otherwise we would have seen evidence of it by now. This in turn is sometimes taken as indirect evidence for the improbability of life evolving at all in our universe. A couple of other possibilities seem worth considering. One is that life capable of evidencing itself on interstellar scales has evolved in many places but that evolutionary selection, acting on a cosmic scale, tends to extinguish species which conspicuously advertise themselves and their habitats. The other is that -- whatever the true situation -- intelligent species might reasonably worry about the possible dangers of self-advertisement and hence incline towards discretion. These possibilities are discussed here, and some counter-arguments and complicating factors are also considered.