“Perhaps most importantly, they took into consideration the tendency of advanced civilizations to experience self-annihilation. And as it turns out, any alien life that came before us likely gave into that tendency long before we showed up on the scene.”
Perhaps intelligence is not exactly the go to quality for long term survival.
Or not.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
A recurrent theme in the sci-fi world and statistically unquestionably true. One of the things that drew me to science (before business) was the big question about life throughout the Universe. Each sentient species has its “shot” and as in target shooting; most miss the mark on the first few tries…
Fingers crossed; wish I could be around to see the ultimate outcome (and hoping I’m not….).
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If reincarnation is important to someone, they may want to opt out in a few centuries or millennia. Or less if we keep electing right wing idiots.
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I don’t buy into the assumption that self-annihilation is either common or certain for life in the Cosmos. Despite our own violence and self-destructive behaviors, it is not something we have seen in ourselves (if we had, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it). We certainly haven’t seen it on other planets. The assumption therefore is not empirical. Why use it to scare or diminish ourselves?
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“scare or diminish ourselves” ??
I’m honestly at a loss to see how either is elicited by the piece.
Feeling “diminished is a personal choice, and I don’t think “scared” is an effective response.
However, being aware and proactive in reducing the possibility/probability of such an occurrence as low as possible seems prudent.
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Of course there is some speculation in that article.
Judging by the impact of just a few days without electrical power in a small region of the world I would say our hubris is in full swing. We cannot survive for long outside the bubble of civilization unless we are among the primitives still in existence without any modern protections and innovations.
The natural world always wins. For example, we have only had the luxury of antibiotics and antivirals for just a few decades in the grand scheme. And already we are pushing the boundaries backwards with developing resistance in the microbial world.
Or try to find some of the Mayan ruins in a jungle so overgrown that once majestic cities are gone.
Or even in the political world, we have seen the cracks in our once majestic and “successful” experiment in governance. The cracks prevent us from even addressing what is going to be a major problem in the coming centuries: drastic shifts in weather patterns that established where masses of humans, including us, live to survive and in some areas, thrive.
All this being said, what happens 50, 40, 30 even probably 20 years from now are not my problems to endure. Human DNA probably doesn’t really worry too much about future issues since for 99.9% of our time on earth as dominant species such long term planning wasn’t as important as immediate food and shelter.
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