ok, thanks for the clarification. so if fermi and you are looking up at all the stars in the night sky and he says to you, "where is everyone??" you would say,

ok, thanks for the clarification. so if fermi and you are looking up at all the stars in the night sky and he says to you, "where is everyone??" you would say, "what do you mean? why would there be anyone out there?" i don't think most people would have that intuition but it's fair. drake's equation is a fun way to try to answer fermi. it seems you would assign n_e or f_1 a value close to 0