The real problem is that it's built on a foundation of assumptions, all of which are completely anthropocentric - more specifically, that foundation's cornersto

The real problem is that it's built on a foundation of assumptions, all of which are completely anthropocentric - more specifically, that foundation's cornerstone is based upon the behavior of humans in developed countries during the 20th century. Especially repressed aggression. It really tells us a lot more about ourselves than about aliens. "If aliens exist, they would send tight-beam radio communications on this exact frequency (because that's the one that we'd choose!), in a format that we could recognize as an attempt to communicate (probably English, because we all speak English! Or maybe Morse code), and keep spending resources doing it for however many thousands or millions of years it took for us to notice." Even we don't even do that. Most of our radio transmissions now are short-range bluetooth, wifi, cellular, or satellites pointed at the planet. Our broadcast signals, though some might be strong, are attenuating in cubic space and all mixed together containing all channels and stations - white noise and static at best. We just assume that if they're not speaking our language in our formats, they're not really civilized/advanced. "If aliens exist, they would have conquered the entire galaxy by now, because that's what we'd do!" I've lived here for years and haven't tried to conquer my neighbors and have no intention of doing so. Yet we assume any sufficiently-advanced aliens must be violent. "If we couldn't conquer it straight away, we'd at least send self-replicating robots to claim every planet! So if aliens existed, of course they would have done that!" They may not be self-replicating, but any of us could buy drones and send them to claim undeveloped plots of land that we couldn't use. Yet we don't. It'd be pointless. But we assume any sufficiently-advanced aliens must be selfish. "We've been ripping every resource out of the planet as fast as we can and polluting as much as possible to maximize profits and shareholder value. If aliens exist, they would do the same and even go as far as creating Dyson spheres!" Well yes, we do destroy our environment. But some of us have realized that it is a bad idea to do that and we should probably ramp it down, rather than go to the full extreme of destroying our entire solar system. Yet we assume any sufficiently-advanced aliens must be greedy. I don't really think it's a paradox mainly because I don't have that underlying assumption that all aliens must act like the noisiest, greediest, most violent and self-absorbed humans of the 20th century. Perhaps the paradox is that we expect all civilized life in the rest of the universe to be as bad as the worst of us, and it's just not, and we don't have an explanation for that yet.