The Great Narcissism

Fermi's Paradox is "the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations."  The two common answers are 1) we've over estimated the likelihood of extraterrestrial life, or 2) all intelligent species eventually blow themselves up.

Here is Geoffrey Miller on another possibility:

I suggest a different, even darker solution to the Paradox. Basically, I think the aliens don’t blow themselves up; they just get addicted to computer games. They forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they’re too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual-reality narcissism. They don’t need Sentinels to enslave them in a Matrix; they do it to themselves, just as we are doing today. Once they turn inwards to chase their shiny pennies of pleasure, they lose the cosmic plot. They become like a self-stimulating rat, pressing a bar to deliver electricity to its brain’s ventral tegmental area, which stimulates its nucleus accumbens to release dopamine, which feels…ever so good.

Read the full thing to find out who he thinks will inherit the Earth.  I remember reading this piece when it originally came out at Edge in 2006.

Thanks to Marginal Revolution for the link and post title.