Have you seen that website that shows the solar system if the moon were only one pixel? [1]

Getting from the Sun to Pluto takes a very long time you might give up and close your browser tab.

Many theories attempt to explain why we haven’t yet encountered extraterrestrial civilizations. One possibility is that, given the immense scale of the cosmos, intelligent life may exist but is simply too far away for contact. Another idea is that while life may arise on other planets, it rarely, if ever, evolves beyond primitive intelligence. Intelligence here defined as ability to understand the cosmos and even leave their own world.

But there is another, more sobering theory. It suggests that when life does evolve to the point of intelligence, it eventually develops technology so powerful that it inadvertently brings about its own destruction. Whether through war, environmental collapse, or uncontrollable advancements, these civilizations may end themselves before they have a chance to explore the universe, or be found by others. This concept just described is called The Great Filter. The Great Filter proposes that there is some critical barrier or stage in the evolution of intelligent life that is extremely hard to surpass. [a]

There's a Wikipedia page dedicated to nuclear close calls between the United States and the former Soviet Union, and also present Russia. [2]

Perhaps the most famous close call is the one involving Vasily Arkhipov during the Cuban Missile Crisis [3] [2]

“Man has dominated man to his injury.” — Ecclesiastes 8:9

The Great Filter need not be caused by the intelligent beings themselves and can be natural like the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. It's said that asteroids of varying sizes crash into Earth every X million years.

There's a counter argument to the Fermi paradox that perhaps we are too primitive for advanced alien beings to bother with us. One of my internet friends put it like this -

"there are counter arguments to the fermi paradox; one of which hires the analogy of, iirc, a guy looking over at a group of insects/anthill/ worms. he doesn't go wondering whether those worms are sentient enough to meditate on his thoughts. he doesn't think to sit back to converse with them. hell, they wouldn't understand him even if he tried. the paradox only holds water on the assumption that such civilisation is within the scope of our comprehension. " [4]

But there's a counter to that counter argument.

Yes it's possible that we're too primitive for advanced civilizations to bother about. But even in the case of ants and humans, isn't it true that we sometimes try to interfere with their lives just to see how they'd react either for fun or just sheer curiousity?

Yes, it's true that we might not be able to comprehend alien species. After all, they evolved in worlds different from ours. But, any sufficiently advanced civilization would understand Mathematics. Mathematics is a universal language and for them to be scientifically advanced means they understand science. They could, if they desired, find a way to communicate with earthlings using the universal language - Science. Carl Sagan made this point in one of his books and I think it was Pale Blue Dot (highly recommended).

I've shared some of my thoughts about aliens on my blog posts which my comment here were from. [4] [5]

[1] https://www.joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsys...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_close_calls

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov

[4] https://www.rxjourney.net/extraterrestrial-intelligence-and-...

[5] https://www.rxjourney.net/mutually-assured-destruction

[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

Fermi Paradox