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Intelligence is a pathogen. Wherever it develops in the universe, it rapidly spreads and consumes everything, wiping out most other life forms and eventually itself. It has probably developed over and over again over time all over the universe including our own galaxy. It may be relatively rare, but there would still be millions of instances. The fact that we have found no evidence of intelligent life elsewhere is not because it doesn’t exist or is too far away, but because we have missed the band of detectable transmissions from these societies that existed closer to us. There will be others, but we may be gone by then. We should definitely not be working to spread to other worlds. We should perish here from our own behaviors as we are meant to.
This is one possible answer to the Fermi paradox.
I think a tendency for intelligent life to destroy itself would make it more rare than it already is, but doesn't do enough to account for the unlikelihood of never encountering it. Once a species is spread across more than one planet, I would think it would be very unlikely for an extinction event to wipe all of it out before some survivors can bounce back. So all you would need is one or more civilizations beating the odds up to that point to become basically unstoppable.
Also, intelligent life might frequently kill itself off, but that doesn't mean intelligence is a disadvantage to long term survival. The vast majority of unintelligent species also go extinct. It's more that reaching stability is quite hard, with or without intelligence.