The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. As a 2015 article put it, "If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now."
The argument can be summarized like this: it seems likely that intelligent life has evolved elsewhere in the universe -- the universe is a big place. It took a very long time for this evolution to occur in the only case we know of -- it took us billions of years. One can reasonably assume that some supposed alien intelligent life out there will evolve more quickly, others less. Statistically, we should assume that we are most-likely about in the middle in terms of our rate of evolution -- it would be unexpected for us to be the very fastest-evolving intelligent life in the universe. It takes time to travel between the stars, but as best we can tell, not very long compared to the kind of time required to evolve -- once a civilization is able to do travel in space, we would expect it to spread, and do so quickly compared to the time required to evolve. So if one guesses that maybe half of alien intelligent life evolved more quickly than we did, a lot of it should have had a lot of time to spread throughout the universe by now.
But we have seen nothing that appears to be alien intelligent life on Earth or elsewhere. How can this be?
There are some proposed answers to the paradox that are a bit disturbing.
It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself
This is the argument that technological civilizations may usually or invariably destroy themselves before or shortly after developing radio or spaceflight technology. The astrophysicist Sebastian von Hoerner stated that the progress of science and technology on Earth was driven by two factors—the struggle for domination and the desire for an easy life. The former potentially leads to complete destruction, while the latter may lead to biological or mental degeneration. Possible means of annihilation via major global issues, where global interconnectedness actually makes humanity more vulnerable than resilient, are many, including war, accidental environmental contamination or damage, the development of biotechnology, synthetic life like mirror life, resource depletion, climate change, or poorly-designed artificial intelligence. This general theme is explored both in fiction and in scientific hypothesizing.
We are right about at that point in technological development ourselves. We cannot yet travel to the stars, but we can travel in space, and reaching the stars does not seem to present fundamentally unsolvable challenges. If that answer is the correct one, then we would expect such a destructive event to occur to humanity before long.
It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy others
Another hypothesis is that an intelligent species beyond a certain point of technological capability will destroy other intelligent species as they appear, perhaps by using self-replicating probes. Science fiction writer Fred Saberhagen has explored this idea in his Berserker series, as has physicist Gregory Benford and, as well, science fiction writer Greg Bear in his The Forge of God novel, and later Liu Cixin in his The Three-Body Problem series.
A species might undertake such extermination out of expansionist motives, greed, paranoia, or aggression. In 1981, cosmologist Edward Harrison argued that such behavior would be an act of prudence: an intelligent species that has overcome its own self-destructive tendencies might view any other species bent on galactic expansion as a threat. It has also been suggested that a successful alien species would be a superpredator, as are humans.
For what it's worth, vitamin A is good for your eyes, particularly night vision. However, the carrot thing was in fact a lie. While carrots do have vitamin A, vegetables are not a good source of it; you need a meat-based source in order for it to be readily available to your body (sorry vegans--fortunately, it can be supplemented with pills). And no matter how much of it you eat, you will not get super night vision.
Many people here seem to suggest the likes of plankton, worms, trees, flies, bees or butterflies. But these are not just one species, they're huge groups of organisms. It is interesting to think about extinction of whole groups, but it's necessary to understand it's on the same level as thinking about the extinction of all rodents or even mammals.
Along with the other good replies here I'll chuck in flies. They're the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none in the insect world, sure, but they're the very bottom of sooooooo many food chains.
Plus we'd be buried in rotting material without them.
A child-size theme park owned, built and operated by a family of Little People. The site is still there with several new owners and attempts to redevelop it over the years.
I grew up in the middle of Miami, with developed streets and houses in every directions for at least 5 or 6 miles. But I lived in the corner of this dead end that ended at a path There was this huge area of woods like two or three city blocks worth, about 10 feet lower than the rest of the neighbor. There was a steep path down, by far the only stretch of mountain bike - worthy riding anywhere around, and all kinds of trails and huge boulders to climb. It wasn't wilderness--I think it was a coral rock quarry, and all of the trees were an invasive species that meant the original pines had been taken down. But it was just a beautiful place, and all the neighborhood kids hung out there for hours and hours. We could cut through there to get to school, and there was also a big covered basketball court. We could literally play basketball rain or shine, in this huge pavilion. The soccer fields were there so we could cut through those words for our games. There was a pool, too.
Hurricane Andrew came through when I was 14 and destroyed that forest, since those invasive trees couldn't handle the winds. The court and pool made it longer, but it's all gone now. Oddly enough, especially for Miami, it became a park and soccer fields, instead of more houses. My kids and my brothers' kids all still go there to play when they're visiting my parents, but that beautiful magical place from my elementary school years, where I could be wild and free in the middle of the city, is so gone.
The lost cause doctrine and related overall glorification of the u.s. civil war era confederacy. The fact that there are confederate statues in states that fought for the union is insane…
I wish I'd known how nice a place this is ages ago! After 10 years I was so institutionalised to the way reddit was, it was really hard to imagine using anything else and having anything like as nice a user experience. So many times over the last few days I've suddenly realised that for hours I've been browsing Kbin and not reddit. It's a nice feeling. Also, now I've replaced all my reddit bookmarks with Kbin ones which makes it feel a lot more permanent.
That the Confederacy was a noble cause. They say history is written by the victors; the American Civil War is a counterexample. Even today you still have people who fly the Stars and Bars and populate the KKK.
" Oh yeah? Which rights were that? And which states' rights? Did all states have these rights, or were only certain states able to express their rights?"
Crickets
It amuses me how often these people haven't even read the articles of confederation or the sessession letters that specifically state that slavery was one of the main reasons they seceded or that they were actively trying to remove the rights of other states to not participate in slavery.
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