In talk.origins Sapient Fridge <use_reply_address@spamsights.org> wrote:

In message 
<6aca6bc0-1c68-4916-ad98-32742cd69806@t54g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>, 
Friar Broccoli <EliasRK@gmail.com> writes

On Aug 13, 8:38 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@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 has been an increase in the intelligence of a broad range of
species on earth with time.

More accurately, a few isolated branches of metazoans have shown 
increases in intelligence in the last 500 million years.

The majority of metazoans show little change in intelligence in that 
time and the vast majority of biomass on the planet lacks a nervous 
systems.

Of the sort we recognize as a nervous system.  *All* living and
quite a few non-living things respond to stimuli, with or without
a nervous system.

-- 
   --- Paul J. Gans