farmerman wrote:As a complete an unabashed evolutionist, The "top of the evolutionary rung, ie a BIG BRAIN" is the model that you and I are familiar with and I think thats where i separate from Fermi's.
I understand your point. Fermi's paradox does assume that technological intelligence and capability are a common result of biological evolutionary processes (at least several thousand cases per galaxy).
But the whole conjecture starts from the statement, and the assumption: "If technologically advanced life exists elsewhere in the galaxy (or did exist), then we should see it".
The story goes that, one day back on the 1940's, a group of atomic scientists, including the famous Enrico Fermi, were sitting around talking, when the subject turned to extraterrestrial life. Fermi is supposed to have then asked, "So? Where is everybody?" What he meant was:
If there are all these billions of planets in the universe that are capable of supporting life, and millions of intelligent species out there, then how come none has visited earth? This has come to be known as The Fermi Paradox.
Fermi was basically arguing that these conditions do not exist, that there are no other technologically advanced civilizations in our galaxy. If there were, then we would have seen them already. Fermi was challenging those people who made the assumption that there are other technologically advanced civilizations.
And those people have yet to answer that challenge.