Enrico Fermi was a Nobel prize-winning physicist. He is also regarded as the architect of the nuclear era and apparently created the first nuclear reactor. I found this out googling him but what I already knew about him was the Fermi Paradox. According to the paradox, where the fuck is other intelligent life?

There are over 300 billion stars in the galaxy, most of them billions of years older than our sun (the universe is 13.7 billion years old), and a large percentage of them also have habitable planets. Even if we grant the minimal likelihood to each of these happening (1% stars are older than the sun, of which 1% may have habitable planets) that's still a lot of planets that can host life. Realistically speaking, there's maybe thousands of active cultures and civilizations, of which most are definitely more intelligent than us.

With all our current technology, we could take anywhere between 5 to 50 million years to colonize most of the Milky Way. But there's civilizations older than us and smarter than us, so where the fuck are they. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. 

Robin Hanson is a fuck-all Economics bad boy cool dude who also created the term Great Filter. There are certain things you absolutely need to evolve into an intelligent life form:

- habitable zone, and the abiotic elements that support biogenesis (non-spontaneous conversion of abiotic into biotic forms)

- reproductive molecules and information contained within that can be replicated (like RNA and DNA)

- simple single-celled organisms (prokaryotes)

- more complex unicellular organisms (eukaryotes)

- sexy times, or sexual reproduction

- extremely complex multi-celled organisms (us)

- ability to use tools (yup)

- organize yourself into a civilization that can like. Do stuff. (we're here now)

- explore the far reaches of space and colonize it.

He decided that since we don't really have any evidence of other life, let alone more intelligent life, some stage in this time scale is just really hard to get past. The Great Filter. Since we are also not done, it could very well be ahead of us. Maybe we fall apart at this stage. This is very unlikely though, most scientists work on updated assumptions underlying the Drake Equation (which basically suggests the statistical possibilities of active civilizations), which suggests we are the one and only.

So basically the assumption is that this is peak performance: 

This is also supported by the fact that it is very likely that aliens (if they exist) may look eerily similar to us. This really is peak performance. Some basic things are universal - laws of physics are obeyed across most of the universe (except black holes and antimatter), and there cannot be freeform creation - adaptation for survival places restrictions on the body form, and lastly, the ingredients for life are mostly the same everywhere - Carbon is best, and water is the best medium for Carbon. Which means there can't be a huge variation in body type. They may have tentacles or antennae, but for the most part, they will look pretty similar to us, or some other species on earth (I'm betting on like an octopus). 

So the point is that maybe we are all alone in this universe. The universe apparently has no edges and is constantly expanding at a rate we can't fully comprehend. There's billions of stars, planets, asteroids, comets, black holes, ice, rocks, gases made of elements we don't know yet, supernovas that constantly give birth to more stars, and then there may be just us. This whole universe, all empty void. A massive space we can't map out half a percent of, and all alone, screaming very literally into a void that cares about us as much as you and I care about bees buzzing around a flower in Timbuctoo. All alone, meaningless, and have absolutely fuck all influence on the universe.

Series of letters for my manfriend who has a three-second attention span, during lockdown so he wouldn't leave me or forget me. Edited to take the XXX bits out, if you see an accidental yucky cheese moment pls ignore.