Fermi Paradox Predicting Humankind's Future?

An anonymous reader writes "The Fermi paradox says that if extraterrestrial civilizations exist, at least one of them should have colonized the entire galaxy by now. But since there is no evidence of this, humankind must be the only intelligent life in the galaxy. The Space Review has an article on how the Fermi paradox can be applied to human civilization. It says that, like the extraterrestrials, humans have three choices: colonize the galaxy, remain on Earth, or become extinct."

Comments

Re:This paradox is full of holes...

[radtea]

I can't accept the thinking that a sufficiently advanced race would feel it was neccessary to go out and conquer the galaxy, which pretty much blows this theory out of the water.

Let's see how that argument works at home:

"I can't accept the thinking that a sufficiently advanced country would feel it was necessary to invade other nations on the basis of unverified intelligence that included trivially false claims about the possible uses of aluminium tubes and equally false claims about attempts to acquire yellowcake in Niger."

Nope, not so good.

I don't know precisely what your idea of "advanced" entails, but human history shows that that the most "advanced" culture is the one that goes out and tramples all over the world. The Greeks did it. The Romans did it. The Arabs did it. The Spanish did it. The English did it. It is what every "advanced" culture does: expand to the limits of possibility, which allows them to maximize their share of the Earth's resources. It is not clear why a spacefaring culture should be any different.