I had the same reaction. The only defense I can imagine is that the second proposition is “in our galaxy” and not “in a random galaxy”—before looking, we should expect to find more other intelligent species in ours, which we know at least doesn’t rule out the possibility :)
I tried to guess how many our-galaxy intelligent-life-expectation equivalents exist in our universe. I personally find 50 (the 25% quartile) laughably low.
1:50 and (100-99):(100-80) are fairly extreme—just not extreme enough.
I had the same reaction. The only defense I can imagine is that the second proposition is “in our galaxy” and not “in a random galaxy”—before looking, we should expect to find more other intelligent species in ours, which we know at least doesn’t rule out the possibility :)
I tried to guess how many our-galaxy intelligent-life-expectation equivalents exist in our universe. I personally find 50 (the 25% quartile) laughably low.
1:50 and (100-99):(100-80) are fairly extreme—just not extreme enough.