No. It boils down to the following fact: If you take given estimates on the distribution of parameter values at face value, then:
(1) The expected number of observable alien civilizations is medium-large
(2) If you consider the distribution of the number of alien civs, you get a large probability of zero, and a small probability of “very very many aliens”, that integrates up to the medium-large expectation value.
Previous discussions computed (1) and falsely observed a conflict with astronomical observations, and totally failed to compute (2) from their own input data. This is unquestionably an embarrassing failure of the field.
No. It boils down to the following fact: If you take given estimates on the distribution of parameter values at face value, then:
(1) The expected number of observable alien civilizations is medium-large (2) If you consider the distribution of the number of alien civs, you get a large probability of zero, and a small probability of “very very many aliens”, that integrates up to the medium-large expectation value.
Previous discussions computed (1) and falsely observed a conflict with astronomical observations, and totally failed to compute (2) from their own input data. This is unquestionably an embarrassing failure of the field.