In the recent article `Conflict between anthropic reasoning and observation’ Ken D. Olum, using some inflation-based ideas and the anthropic premise that we should be typical among all intelligent observers in the Universe, arrives at the puzzling conclusion that `we should find ourselves in a large civilization (of galactic size) where most observers should be, while in fact we do not’. In this note we discuss the intriguing possibility whether we could be in fact immersed in a large civilization without being aware of it. Our conclusion is that this possibility cannot be ruled out provided 2 conditions are met, that we call the Subanthropic Principle and the Undetectability Conjecture.

this is one of the more interesting papers on the fermi paradox: we are basically too dumb to be of interest to older civilizations.

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