>Well said. The "Drake Equation" is complete and utter garbage. There is no such thing as a "probability" of any of those terms, in the way we normally understa

>Well said. The "Drake Equation" is complete and utter garbage. There is no such thing as a "probability" of any of those terms, in the way we normally understand probability, i.e. dice or card games. I'd say that any result you try to pull from the Drake Equation is "complete and utter garbage." The value in the Drake Equation isn't in any calculation we might do with it. Rather, it's a way to categorize both the variables necessary for the development of technological civilizations, and our ignorance as to both the value of such variables and variables we don't even know exist (which can be added as we learn more). In fact, the Drake equation[0] was never intended to be useful as an equation: The equation was formulated in 1961 by Frank Drake, not for purposes of quantifying the number of civilizations, but as a way to stimulate scientific dialogue at the first scientific meeting on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation