maybe the aliens are postcolonial?

the fermi paradox goes like this:

1. we exist, therefore intelligent life has happened once.
2. the universe is so vast that anything that can happen once has probably happened a lot of times.
3. where is everybody? specifically, why can we find no radio-emission-type evidence of other kinds of life ?

milan cirkovic's answer: we could only detect civilisations at interstellar distances if they were expansionist. that is, if they were devoting considerable resources to occupying as much of space as they could. but maybe the other intelligent life in the universe is not imperialist or expansionist? there's no reason why alien politics should follow models familiar to us, after all. it's quite possible that any civilisation sufficiently advanced to be able to have a go at colonising space might, along the way to becoming that advanced, have worked out a very good reason why it wasn't the best thing to be doing with their time.

charlie stross has more to say on the fermi paradox, all interesting.

link to circovik's paper