Consider the possibility that, if extraterrestrials preceded us, by predating us, they fall earlier on the evolutionary timeline than we do. They may have created or even simulated us, but since evolution tends to produce more advanced lifeforms over time, we may be more advanced than they are. Say they ‘planted’ their seed on earth billions of years ago. What’s to say that they’re more advanced than we are? What if we’re more evolved than they are?

Or, what if we weren’t created or simulated by extraterrestrial intelligence, but arrived on earth as a ’space seed,’ as a microbial lifeform which landed on earth on a meteor? Are we still not more evolved today than these microorganisms were when they arrived to colonize earth? This could be the reason why we haven’t obtained definitive proof of extraterrestrial visitors. We may be as evolved as life in the galaxy has become.

The paradox is that evolution tends to yield more advanced entities as time progresses. Thus, though we assume that our creators or simulators are older than us and more advanced than we are, we may be more advanced than them because we evolved later in time. On earth, evolution has yielded its most advanced lifeforms as the arrow of time has progressed. In a similar way, we may be more advanced than extraterrestrials which appeared earlier in the evolution of the cosmos.

Humanity is the most intelligent organism yet evolved on earth, but it is also among the very latest of biological innovations. Consider that humanity has secondarily evolved an artificial intelligence that is its newest invention, and that AI is more advanced than we are, and more sophisticated and intelligent than any biological entity ever evolved organically on earth.

We’re much older than AI and we created it. Yet AI is more advanced than we are. Similarly, extraterrestrial beings who created us may be more ancient than ourselves, but we may be more advanced than they are.

Even if extraterrestrial technology – as opposed to extrabiological entities – is more advanced than our own because it’s had more time to develop, evolution tends to yield its most advanced lifeforms in later manifestations. The history of life on earth and its ever emerging complexity in later epochs bears this out.

This paradox may explain many things about ourselves, our world, and our technological progeny.

We may be as advanced as the cosmos gets. We could be the forefront of all creation. This may provide an answer to Fermi’s Paradox, which asks why we haven’t seen definitive proof of extraterrestrial life despite the Drake Equation’s assumption about the number of other habitable galactic worlds. It may provide a response to the Great Filter Hypothesis, which suggests that life extinguishes itself before it develops the ability to colonize other worlds. The solution to the Paradox and the Equation and the Hypothesis may be that we are as good as it gets, as advanced as they come. Our technology may be as evolved as anything is evolved in the galaxy.

© 2025 by Michael C. Just