Paul J Gans wrote:

In talk.origins John Harshman <jharshman.diespamdie@pacbell.net> wrote:

K_h wrote:

Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no other intelligent civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy.  On the other hand, intelligent life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time.

Does it? News to me. What evidence do you have that this is the case?

There is also the problem that there could easily be more than one
kind of intelligence.  Many living (and non-living) things respond to stimuli.  At what point does that become intelligence?

Does the definition of intelligence require that television be invented?

I believe that the operational definition of intelligence as used in the Drake equation does require this, or at least an intelligence capable of inventing interstellar communication and/or travel.

That is, in the Drake equation, f_L should be far smaller than most people think it is.  Even on planets that are life friendly the formation of life should be extremely rare for the below reasons.

The Drake equation assumes that the ETs will be blasting out electromagnetic waves at a furious rate.  *We* started doing
that only in around 1920 or so and already we are doing less
and less of it.  By 2120 we could easily be using wired or
directed sources and no indiscriminate electromagnetic radiation
at all.

Yes, one solution would be for all civilizations to render themselves undetectable very soon after becoming detectable. This assumes they don't go in for travel or communication, and never make noticeable changes to their habitat (like Dyson spheres and such). It seems to me that this assumption would require humans to be a very unusual sort of intelligence, because we're going to go in for communication and travel as soon as we figure out how, if we don't collapse first.