Well, thank goodness for this news that the Fermi Paradox is back with a vengeance. And, its such an amazing question to think about: How come, despite billions of years of time, millions of light-years of life-supporting space, and all the complexity of the Heavens, the Universe is filled with what we can call the “Great Silence”? As Fermi put it, “Where is everybody?” What are they doing? Why can’t we detect them? Why can’t they detect us? No one seems to know.

A number of prominent futurists, a list that includes Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec, have speculated that the destiny of advanced intelligence is to re-work the cosmos itself. This has been imagined as an intelligence explosion as advanced life expands outward into the cosmos like a bubble. The entire Galaxy would be re-organized with much of its matter converted into computronium. Eventually, it is thought that the laws of the Universe will be re-tuned to meet the needs of advanced civilizations.

Interestingly enough I myself am writing a science fiction novel with the working title “Tether.” And, its about human beings discovering exactly this kind of cosmological engineering technology –Science moving at the speed of fiction…

Unfortunately, we do not appear to inhabit a Universe that even remotely resembles this model. The cosmos appears natural and unperturbed. This is reminiscent of the God problem and the presence of evil. We live in a Universe that is hostile, indifferent and pointless. If advanced ETIs had the capacity to re-engineer the Universe such that it was safer, more meaningful and paradisical they would have done so by now. By virtue of the fact that we observe such a dangerous Universe we should probably conclude that such a project is not an option.

This is all mostly true. But, of course the Universe appears dangerous to us, and the project seems as though its not an option. For one thing, and with this example its entirely a given: we would not be the species doing the cosmological re-engineering!

If this case were true, our Universe wouldn’t be tailored for us. In fact, given that, the Universe would appear especially in this case, dangerous and unperturbed as we observe it. Put another way, these aliens being different from us, would likely re-engineer a Universe that was not ideal for us.

Indeed, with clear reflection on this idea, one realizes logically, it is only because we have no working theory of Life, let alone for which this universe would be ideal, that we have no working theory in which the Universe could be re-engineered for life, to be ideal. Nor any theory to counter that notion directly.

What this does, is, give us more directions to go in. An interesting idea might be, as we see few species opt for technology on our planet as a means of solving evolutionary problems, that perhaps it is an indication of the success of species throughout the history of all life which opted for technology. In other words, perhaps technology is a bad thing to opt for. What if everybody was only ever able to engineer their own accidental destruction? Or, perhaps even more forward thinking, our accidental and eventual creation?