Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near peaked my interest when he posited his reasoning for why there is likely no intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. By a mere matter of odds, most of us assume (likely myself included) that there simply must be some kind of super-intelligent species "out there somewhere." One of the many postulations made (the book is more than worth reading), is that species might – at the point of attaining a certain degree of capacity or intelligence – destroy themselves. Could be bombs, could be nanotechnologies, could be super-intelligent computers – but something batters them back to the stone age – or worse. In thinking recently on topics related to ethical enhancement and human enhancement in general, I came to the notion that this "self-extermination theory" might pan out in some other interesting and less considered ways.