FWIW, Kurzweil does address the Fermi paradox by saying that "well, since a post-singularity civilisation would be easily visible to our current SETI efforts, there cannot be any civilisations which have reached a singularity at any point where electromagnetic waves from them would have reached us by now". I'm not convinced by this argument but it's not something he hasn't thought about.

if it can happen at all, why wouldn't galactic civilization(s) where it already has be here?

Yet, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".

The sentiment of your quote is certainly comforting (to those with a similar view of the Singularity, which I share), but it does not stand well on it's own (despite Fermi's brilliance).

This is a typically Oedipal evaluation of an Interplanetary species' presence. If WE, mighty mighty WE can't "detect" so-called intelligent life in the universe, certainly it must not exist. If NASA and MIT and SETI and the US Gubmint have officially pronounced that ET is not here, has never been here nor has ever been detected, then surely ET remains entirely hypothetical.

An _objective_ evaluation of HARD evidence, e.a., what are dismissively referred to as "UFO sightings", radar returns, photographic evidence, trace evidence, multi-person accounts and thousands of documented military intercepts and interactions with "phenomena" you must come to the conclusion that ET is here, that ET is doing as he pleases without our consultation or consent, and apparently, without our knowledge. All things that I would personally characterize as ample evidence of _advanced_ technological superiority. But that's just me.

I would expect hearty chuckles and snorts and derisive laughter from the hardcore speculator-energy crowd, but it's completely irrelevant.

One of the effects of the Singularity that I use as a personal measure of Change is the rate of disintegration of institutions. Institutions are bureaucratic entities designed to centralize and control the implementation of Process, but when you reach a point when Process itself assumes, let's call it "velocity", Process escapes institutional control and at some point the institutions become irrelevant. Or, more simply put, the institutions fail.

The ET phenomenon is a perfect example of a complete failure of our institutions across the board. Confronted with evidence of a phenomenon that exceeds our technological/creative/institutional limits to understand and/or interpret. e.a., _control_, our reaction is entirely predictable. We simply dismiss it.

So across mainstream, whenever this issue is brought up, it comes down to discussing SETI and the White House Red Carpet reception and the signing of the Intergalactic Trade Agreement with the Zeta Reticulans, and how in the absence thereof, surely this entire realm of interest remains nothing but speculative fiction and whacko fringe babble.

The sad irony of ET in the "official" scientific circles is that ET only becomes real at that point that we have the ability to calculate his existence once and for all. Of course, that moment approaches, so I wouldn't be surprised to hear some "shocking" pronouncement one day soon on the "discovery" or some sort of confirmation of ET life.

Because Fermi's paradox is one of those silly arguments of scale where no one actually knows what numbers to plug in for the probabilities. Sure theres a hundred billion stars in the milky way and a hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe, but the likelyhood of civilization arising around one of those stars could easily be lower than 1 civilization in the observable universe.

Consider:

1. Rare earth, where water is liquid.
2. Precambrian life existed as simple single celled organisms for billions of years, indicating the multicellular jump may be quite a bit less likely than just forming life.
3. The jump from multicellular life to animal life with nervous systems may be quite a bit less likely still.
4. There are strong environmental factors selecting against intelligence in creatures capable of using tools.