The author mentions that there were a great many lucky accidents involved in the rise of the West. That is a factor that I think helps explain the Fermi Parado

The author mentions that there were a great many lucky accidents involved in the rise of the West. That is a factor that I think helps explain the Fermi Paradox. It is not enough to have an intelligent species, what they produce over the long term would seem to be civilizations that lack the sort of self-perpetuating technology dynamics that we have had in the West.