There’s a trend I find increasingly frustrating in speculative biology artists like C. M. Kosemen and Alex Ries: they’ve been spreading deeply misanthropic, anti-technology worldview, and then presenting that worldview with the facade of science in recent years The Fermi paradox is an unanswered question. We have one example of technological civilization: ourselves. We have no idea how common intelligent life is, how often civilizations become technological, how long they survive, or whether extraterrestrial civilizations would even be detectable using the methods we’re currently looking for Yet somehow they want you to believe that technology is rare because technological civilization is basically a prelude to extinction Instead of saying “we don’t know,” complicated subjects get reduced to misanthropic narratives about humans being uniquely destructive, civilization being an evolutionary mistake, and technological progress inevitably ending in disaster If you constantly portray humanity as a destructive cancer, technology as a disease, industrial civilization as something we should distrust, and technological progress as something that inevitably ends badly, you’re promoting a particular worldview about what humans SHOULD do That’s politics at the level of philosophy, whether or not you attach a political party to it There’s nothing wrong with discussing ecological destruction, existential risk, or the possibility that civilizations can collapse But anti-human pessimism isn’t inherently more intelligent than optimism We as artists should be expanding people’s imagination with our works, not repeatedly telling them that humanity is uniquely stupid for wanting to build things