Odds of communicating with 36 other possible intelligent civilizations are small
I read the paper and I find it highly unserious how frivolously they assigned some probability to the question how many intelligent civilizations there are in the universe.<p>Their key assumption is: &quot;We assume that if an SP remains in the circumstellar Habitable Zone (HZ) for a time
equal to the current age of the Earth it will develop
intelligent, communicative life.&quot; (page 5 at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;ftp&#x2F;arxiv&#x2F;papers&#x2F;2004&#x2F;2004.03968.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;ftp&#x2F;arxiv&#x2F;papers&#x2F;2004&#x2F;2004.03968.pdf</a>)<p>Why? Why do you assume a planet will develop intelligent life when it remains in the Habitable Zone long enough? Just because it happend on Earth?<p>And they continue with: &quot;[...] according to the Copernican Principle – we propose that the likelihood of the development of life, and even intelligent life,
should be broadly uniformly distributed amongst any suitable habitats&quot;<p>We have no clue how likely it was at Earth that life developed at all. Maybe it was just a chain of many lucky coincidences that happen once in 10 billion years. How is distribution any relevant then?