LIFE outside earth (extraterrestrial) versus INTELLIGENT life outside earth

I cannot say that I believe there is life out there. All I can say is that there are a number of reasons to think it is possible and that we have at our command the means of finding out. Those two things being the case, I would be very ashamed of my civilization if we did not try to find out.
— Carl Sagan

There are TWO SEPARATE questions when it comes to ‘life outside our planet’.

1. Is there LIFE (any LIFE , even single cellular organisms) out there?
2. Is there INTELLIGENT life – closer to that on our own planet?

The first question’s answer – according to MOST scientists – is a strong MAYBE. There are far too many planets that support the basic environmental conditions for life to arise.

The second question is a lot harder. And as per noted physicist Enrico Fermi, chances are the answer is resounding NO!  That we are the ONLY intelligent life forms in the Universe. To follow Fermi’s reasoning, some back-of-the-napkin calculations are needed (I took these from Wikipedia since they capture the essential argument):

1. The Sun is a typical star, and relatively young. There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are billions of years older.
2. With high probability, some of these stars will have Earth-like planets. Assuming the Earth is typical, some of these planets may develop intelligent life.
3. Some of these civilizations may develop interstellar travel, a technology Earth is investigating even now (such as the 100 Year Starship).
4. Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the galaxy can be completely colonized in a few tens of millions of years.

According to this line of thinking, the Earth should already have been colonized, or at least visited. Which led Fermi to ask his famous question:

Where IS everybody?

Fermi’s paradox, as it is known, is discussed in more detail here.

Anyone have any thoughts? Anyone here on earth? Or Outside?

Appendix – Why we should have been colonized by now

The technology and knowledge of a civilization only 1,000 years ahead of us could be as shocking to us as our world would be to a medieval person. A civilization 1 million years ahead of us might be as incomprehensible to us as human culture is to monkeys. And Planet X is 3.4 billion years ahead of us…

There’s something called The Kardashev Scale, which helps us group intelligent civilizations into three broad categories by the amount of energy they use:

A Type I Civilization has the ability to use all of the energy on their planet. We’re not quite a Type I Civilization, but we’re close (Carl Sagan created a formula for this scale which puts us at a Type 0.7 Civilization).

A Type II Civilization can harness all of the energy of their host star. Our feeble Type I brains can hardly imagine how someone would do this, but we’ve tried our best, imagining things like a Dyson Sphere.

A Type III Civilization blows the other two away, accessing power comparable to that of the entire Milky Way galaxy.

If this level of advancement sounds hard to believe, remember Planet X above and their 3.4 billion years of further development. If a civilization on Planet X were similar to ours and were able to survive all the way to Type III level, the natural thought is that they’d probably have mastered inter-stellar travel by now, possibly even colonizing the entire galaxy.