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The Three-Body Problem and especially its follow up, The Dark Forest, explore this a bit. Great books to anyone interested in this kind of topic. TLDR is that

The Three-Body Problem and especially its follow up, The Dark Forest, explore this a bit. Great books to anyone interested in this kind of topic. TLDR is that technology ramps to effectively infinite levels far faster than anyone can reach the nearest star. The only safe option, strategically, is to kill off any intelligent life you are capable of killing, lest the balance go the other way before you know it. And knowing that, no intelligent species should let itself be found. Even if you accept the premise, a counter-argument could be that the only way to truly "win" the race would be to be the first one out the gate and ramp your resources to infinity. If a strategy requires an unknown condition to be true to win, you have to assume it's true as all other outcomes are a loss. I've also heard it argued that any species that makes it that far will need to have overcome its violent impulses. It's a lot of speculation, but interesting stuff.

sylens 8y ago
Yup, more people should read the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy if they're interested in Fermi's Paradox.
- slowmovintarget 8y ago
  David Brin also wrote his notions on Fermi's Paradox in Existence In the same novel he suggest a means for avoiding a negative AI "Singularity".
maire 8y ago
I was also going to bring up the Dark Forest - but it doesn't answer the question of the Cylon Spawn. The Cylon Spawn can be visible without revealing the source of the spawn (which was the issue in the Dark Forest).
- roywiggins 8y ago
  I suppose you might go out of your way not to produce artificial intelligences that could outcompete you, since if there isn't life out there, now you've just created it, and they'd wipe you out as soon as possible just in case. It would still just take one civilization build Skynet by accident or to hold a firm belief in mind-uploading though, and then we're knee-deep in cybermen.

sylens 8y ago

Yup, more people should read the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy if they're interested in Fermi's Paradox.

slowmovintarget 8y ago
David Brin also wrote his notions on Fermi's Paradox in Existence In the same novel he suggest a means for avoiding a negative AI "Singularity".

maire 8y ago

I was also going to bring up the Dark Forest - but it doesn't answer the question of the Cylon Spawn. The Cylon Spawn can be visible without revealing the source of the spawn (which was the issue in the Dark Forest).

roywiggins 8y ago
I suppose you might go out of your way not to produce artificial intelligences that could outcompete you, since if there isn't life out there, now you've just created it, and they'd wipe you out as soon as possible just in case. It would still just take one civilization build Skynet by accident or to hold a firm belief in mind-uploading though, and then we're knee-deep in cybermen.