
Yes, There Have Been Aliens - mcgwiz
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/opinion/sunday/yes-there-have-been-aliens.html
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jameskilton
This article basically states that the chance of there being intelligent life
outside of Earth is > 0% so obviously the chance of aliens is 100%. It doesn't
provide any proof so the title is technically misleading.

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jones1618
What he actually said was "a probability for civilizations to form of one in
10 billion per planet was considered highly pessimistic [but] even if you
grant that level of pessimism, a trillion civilizations still would have
appeared over the course of cosmic history."

In other words, even if the paper's calculations are off by a factor of a
billion, there must've been 1000 civilizations before us. And, no, that's not
proof but more of a rethinking of a thought experiment based on new data.

If you wanted to dispute this, you'd have to show how any of the estimated
numbers is wildly off or that the model (Drake's equation) is all wrong
somehow.

