Joseph had spent seven years pondering little other than the Fermi paradox. It was his job as a scientist. Every morning he would go to work and for eight hours would ponder the Fermi paradox. Then he would come home and prepare dinner and still think of nothing other than the Fermi paradox.
The Fermi paradox deals with the contradiction between the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial life and the high probability of the existence of alien intelligent life. If the universe is so big, then it’s sensible to say there is intelligent life way in advance of ourselves. But where are they?
Joseph pondered this question day after day, year after year. Like most things there could be a simple solution. And then Joseph became overwhelmingly obsessed by it. He went to see a psychiatrist.
“Do something else in the evenings,” said the psychiatrist. “Take up a hobby. Get your mind to think on other things.”
So Joseph took up knitting in the evenings. It was while following a knitting pattern that Joseph saw the answer. It had been staring him in the face all along.