Enrico Fermi and Donald Trump

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    In the summer of 1950, the great physicist Enrico Fermi asked the famous question “Where is everybody?”. His lunchtime companions immediately understood that he was talking about aliens. He was not the first to worry about aliens: that was probably Lucian of Samosata, in around 150 AD. However, Fermi really defined the issue: if our galaxy is full of stars like the sun, why is it not also full of advanced civilizations that could communicate with us?

    Some ten years later, Frank Drake crystallized the problem with his eponymous equation. It depends on various input parameters, such as the average number of planets a star might have. In the 1960’s those numbers were unknown, but now we have a good handle on most of them, so that the average number of planets is probably around 10, but at least between 5 and 20.

    You can try plugging the numbers in yourself at various places on the internet. One parameter that we still have to guess is the number of years an advanced civilization might last, but surely we would expect to last at least as long as the dinosaurs. In that case, one comes up with a huge number: perhaps a hundred thousand. We can then ask how many have actually contacted us, and that number is zero. This discrepancy is the Fermi paradox.

    Various explanations have been put forward, but one that has been thrown into prominence by the events of the last few years is the lifetime of a technologically  advanced civilization. Relevant to this discussion is the ability to communicate beyond our terrestrial neighbourhood. In that case, we started with Marconi, and so it has existed for barely one hundred years. Will it really last another million?

    It is a given that civilization depends on intelligence, and hence that intelligence is a “good thing”. There is, in fact, no evidence that this is true. Stephen Gould argued the contrary: viruses have survived far longer than advanced mammals, and no one would call them thoughtful. We may value intelligence, but evolution simply does not care.

    However the downfall of civilization is a little more subtle. What we see at present in our leaders is what can only be described as intelligent stupidity. Robert F Kennedy is, by most standards, a highly intelligent man, and yet he is resolutely anti-vaccination, in the face of all the evidence. If he is successful in (say) eliminating the use of the MMR vaccine, we can expect ten thousand deaths a year in the US from measles alone in a few years time. One stupidly intelligent person can overturn the work of a thousand. 

    This problem is absolutely not limited to the US. Here in Canada, Pierre Pollievre is also opposed to vaccine mandates. He provides inspiration to his followers via glib three-word slogans, such as “Axe the Tax”. An obviously intelligent person, he can only supply stupid leadership. 

    Across the Atlantic, the well-educated and sophisticated Boris Johnson regarded the Brexit debate as just another argument to be won, regardless of the consequences. He expected the Cameron government of the time to sort out the details. Their total failure has pitched the UK into the rank of mediocre nations. 

    It is easy to find more cases, but of course Donald Trump is the supreme exemplar. it is fashionable in liberal circles to decry his intelligence but clearly someone who can get seventy million people to vote for him has extraordinary abilities. That does not mean that he will then make good decisions, and the world is right to await his regime with trepidation. For example, he has promised to enormously boost fossil fuel production in the US. Oddly enough, the effect on climate is almost a secondary problem. Far more seriously, the projected lifetime of all fossil fuel sources worldwide is around 70 years, hardly enough to keep a technologically advanced civilization transmitting to the stars. 

    It seems reasonable to think that this might be quite general. Any advanced society requires a great deal of intelligence to build it up and keep it running. But with intelligence comes stupidity; a total inability to see the probable results of one’s actions. Humans are not unique in this: the brilliant AI running the self-driving on my Tesla is quite capable of artificial stupidity.

    So the resolution of the Fermi paradox is actually pretty simple. Intelligence is not a particularly useful evolutionary quirk, because it is always accompanied by stupidity. Hence one can speculate that no advanced civilization can last more than a couple of hundred years. Then the viruses take over again, and there is no one left to carry on an interstellar conversation.

Peter J. S. Watson, 

Emeritus Professor of Physics

Carleton University, Ottawa