Enrico Fermi found a paradox: If there’s intelligent life on other planets, why haven’t we heard from them yet?
Perhaps the answer is this:
Any civilization sufficiently advanced to travel great distances will have to work in community.
This pro-social behavior, combined with the tech they develop, will inevitably lead to some sort of social media.
And once social media arrives, the civilization will struggle to survive.
I’m more optimistic than this ‘law’ would have you believe, but it’s worth acknowledging that we become the stories we tell, and the social media algorithms we live with cause us to tell stories we might regret.
It’s not our job to be used by social media, or to become tools of the algorithm.
Hat tip to Hugh.