>Calling your disagreement with the author a "misconception" on the author's part is implying a hard factual accuracy on your side - and here you are both wrong

>Calling your disagreement with the author a "misconception" on the author's part is implying a hard factual accuracy on your side - and here you are both wrong and disingenuous. The first paragraph of the article is a pretty clear statement that a calculation such as the Drake equation [1] must result in a large number of intelligent alien races and that only lack of understanding for large numbers prevents people from realizing this: > it's nearly comical to believe we're the only intelligent life in the universe. It's easy to get lost in the numbers thrown around - there are billions of stars and planets in our galaxy and billions of galaxies. Humans are rather bad at fully understanding such large numbers. To restate my point, this is wrong on two counts: 1. The Drake equation can be understood by anyone with a pre-calc background, which is by no means rare these days. 2. Different scientists have plugged in different numbers, with the most pessimistic estimates being of under one civilization in the observable universe. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation