What is the answer to the Fermi Paradox?

[Siege]

You're really flogging that singularity shit for all its worth, ain't you.

It is one of the few Wikipedia articles he thinks he can understand.

Logic is to Siege as bicycle is to fish.

[Razgovory]

To take these in turn

Evolution of Life is extremely rare - this is not the case, life is a consequence of biology. The three big steps towards making intelligent life on earch (cyanobacteria creating oxygen, whatever resulted in animals in the cambrian explosion and walking apes getting large brains which are capable of abstract thought) are not necessary consequences of biology.

I think he means life appearing in the first place.  That's not well understood.

[Admiral Yi]

I didn't see if the article mentioned the likelihood of planets having water in liquid form.  To this layman that seems a rare pre-condition for life.

[Ideologue]

I didn't see if the article mentioned the likelihood of planets having water in liquid form.  To this layman that seems a rare pre-condition for life.

They did.

[MadImmortalMan]

Intelligent species are all either exterminated by the Kohr-Ah or imprisoned on their homeworlds by the Ur-Quan.

[jimmy olsen]

Evolution of Intelligent Life is extremely rare - this one is my pick. Animals on earth are as stupid as they can get away with being. If they could survive with a smaller and less complex brain evolution would result in those animals getting stupider.

That's true, but since the development of complex animal life 500 million years ago there seems to have been constant natural selection working in favor of more complex brains. The benefits of such are obvious (more complex senses, better ability to hunt, avoid predation, jockeying for position in social groups, etc) so why would this not be a factor on other worlds.

[Ideologue]

The costs of such may be more subtle, but they're certainly there.  Sophisticated central nervous systems require serious energy.

[jimmy olsen]

The costs of such may be more subtle, but they're certainly there.  Sophisticated central nervous systems require serious energy.

Actually, the fact that they cost so much energy, yet were still selected for indicates that the selective pressures favoring intelligence were strong indeed.

[Caliga]

How about the possibility that alien civilizations exist and are passively or even actively communicating with us, but for whatever reason we lack the ability to understand them?  Perhaps they use some communications technology that is beyond our comprehension, or maybe they 'speak' so quickly (or slowly) that we cannot distinguish their signals from galactic background noise?

[Darth Wagtaros]

Or that the comm. Equipmentin the pyramids is broken.

[Caliga]

Or that the comm. Equipmentin the pyramids is broken.

Apparently so.

[Queequeg]

Timmy I don't know if it's reasonable to think like that.  Pterosaurs had massively complex flocculi and theoretically hyper-sensitive wing membranes, birds still won.

[jimmy olsen]

Timmy I don't know if it's reasonable to think like that.  Pterosaurs had massively complex flocculi and theoretically hyper-sensitive wing membranes, birds still won.

Birds didn't seem to have much to do with that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterosaur#Extinction

[Josquius]

1,2 and 3.
Though I will add the notes that it depends how you define extremely rare and that with 3 it may just be a case that it evolves into a situation where it can't escape its planet- for instance the planet is too young and hydrocarbon poor or they use it all up before they become spareborne.
I suppose 5 could come into play somewhat with my take on 3 but I wouldn't go as far as impossible.

[Queequeg]

Timmy I don't know if it's reasonable to think like that.  Pterosaurs had massively complex flocculi and theoretically hyper-sensitive wing membranes, birds still won.

Birds didn't seem to have much to do with that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterosaur#Extinction

Which species exists today, and which had the more complex brain?  Which, if the bigger brain always wins out, should be bumping in to windows today?