Hello, SFIA audio listeners. In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asked at the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge.

To hear it and every episode early and ad-free, plus hours of bonus content,

check out go.nebula.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur.

Everything in the world displeases me, but above all, my displeasure in everything displeases me.

Frederick Nietzsche.

In the vast landscape of philosophical ideologies, nihilism stands as a provocative and

enigmatic concept that is both fascinated and disturbed thinkers for centuries here on Earth.

However, it would seem like potentially universal concept that we would expect both aliens

and artificial intelligence to encounter and contemplate, a convergent point of evolution for

any intelligent critter, that all civilizations should discover the concept of nihilism

and perhaps inevitably embrace it, and perhaps embrace their own ruin in the process.

So for today's sci-fi Sunday here on SFIA, I thought we would explore what a civilization

might be like that had come to embrace nihilism, or some form of nihilism, and ask what

sort of impact that might have on their future in space.

We will ask ourselves that this might be a solution to the Fermi paradox, that civilizations

tilt toward nihilism and may either perish or

see an end to galactic dreams because of it.

But to see how nihilism might impact a civilization, we should start by explaining what

it is, which is made more difficult as the term has branched out a bit.

Deriving from the Latin word nihil, meaning nothing, nihilism is a philosophical perspective

that asserts the inherent meaningless, purposelessness, and futility of existence.

...