Lonely? Don't look to far...

We Are Most Likely Alone in the Universe [LINK]
In 1961, American astronomer Frank Drake devised an equation in which he tried to estimate the number of technological civilizations that might exist in our galaxy. Depending on the values plugged into it, the galaxy could be brimming with extra-terrestrials or we might be its only technologically advanced denizens.

A new paper in arXiv seeks to "dissolve the Fermi Paradox" by specifying various values for the parameters in the Drake Equation. The paper is by three researchers from the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, research fellow Anders Sandberg, nanotechnologist Eric Drexler, and philosopher Tod Ord.

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox [LINK]
By Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler and Toby Ord Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University
June 8, 2018

The Fermi paradox is the conflict between an expectation of a high ex ante probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and the apparently lifeless universe we in fact observe. The expectation that the universe should be teeming with intelligent life is linked to models like the Drake equation, which suggest that even if the probability of intelligent life developing at a given site is small, the sheer multitude of possible sites should nonetheless yield a large number of potentially observable civilizations.

When the model is recast to represent realistic distributions of uncertainty, we find a substantial ex ante probability of there being no other intelligent life in our observable universe, and thus that there should be little surprise when we fail to detect any signs of it.

Conclusion
When we take account of realistic uncertainty, replacing point estimates by probability distributions that reflect current scientific understanding, we find no reason to be highly confident that the galaxy (or observable universe) contains other civilizations, and thus no longer find our observations in conflict with our prior probabilities​