The Enigmatic One wrote:

In article <W7Lok.19952$uE5.19027@flpi144.ffdc.sbc.com>, jharshman.diespamdie@pacbell.net says...

In conclusion? You have just denied the entire rest of your post. First you claim that life is rare but intelligence is inevitable given life. And to conclude you claim that life is common but intelligence is rare. What exactly are you smoking?

Not true.  He stated that there is lots of life, but that it is extremeky rare,  1 in 10^75 planets puts an awful lot of space between worlds.

Note that I really don't mean to disagree with your well-reasoned conclusions.  The post you responded to really was a mess.  I just wanted to point out your own substantial error in understanding the post.

It would help me understand much better if you wouldn't snip the statements we're talking about here. But looking back, I see that you are right about this. He's talking about 1 in 10^90 stars supporting life, which means there's very unlikely to be another instance in our galaxy. Silly claim, but not the silly claim I was attacking there.