Do you believe there are species that have mastered FTL travel?

[Xithras]

124. "We" is not "Them"

You cannot apply the Earth-based evolutionary paradigm to the evolution of life that may exist on worlds that have little in common with the Earth. An intelligent species arising on a resource-poor world prone to famine would be under reproductive pressure to maximize its genetic flexibility every generation while minimizing its actual reproductive numbers. What would such a species look like? And would a species that viewed one offspring as "normal" suddenly start pumping out babies once they found a more resource rich planet? Doubtful.

Fermi assumed that any alien life would function in a manner similar to life on our own planet. That's a false premise. Life on our planet evolved in its current form in response to external forcing unique to this planet. There is no way for us to know what forces would provide evolutionary pressure to life on other planets, and there is no reason to assume that it would lead to the same runaway population cycles that plague so many species here on Earth. There are countless theoretical scenarios in which a species could evolve with a relatively stable population.