> If life on Earth had to achieve n “hard steps” to reach humanity’s level, then the chance of this event rose as time to the n-th power. Sounds like a somewha

> If life on Earth had to achieve n “hard steps” to reach humanity’s level, then the chance of this event rose as time to the n-th power. Sounds like a somewhat simplistic model? Compare with this recent paper that actually analyzes the individual genetic evolution steps required: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 Also it turns out that the Drake Equation itself is bogus because it simply multiplies together probabilities without considering error bars on each point estimate; if you use Monte Carlo across the uncertainty ranges of your variables, the paradox dissolves.