Proof of life out there

The great silence: why haven’t we found any aliens yet? is a great read. We have precisely zero evidence of advanced life in the universe beyond Earth. At the same time, there is growing evidence that simple life forms are likely to exist in multiple places around our solar system. The piece hits some of the big paradoxes of advanced life. For example, a civilisation advanced enough to send out rockets and radio signals is also advanced enough to wipe itself out via warfare or environmental destruction. Then there’s the point from Solaris, that advanced lifeforms may not ever be able to recognise each other, much less meaningfully communicate. These are all good points, but I think the most important problem in this line of thought has been left out. This still imagines life and evolution as having a sort of telos, with that telos being an industrialised society. Advanced lifeforms have to go through a series of stages from the Stone Age, to the Bronze Age, and then to the Iron Age.…