I have to agree that he seems a bit pessimistic about the whole alien contact situation.↪ — NotAristotle

I don’t know what you’re complaining about, I was only off by six orders of magnitude. That being said, if there were 100 million star systems with intelligent life evenly distributed throughout the observable universe, the average distance between them would be roughly 125 million light-years.

Keeping in mind that that might be six orders of magnitude off also.

Chatgpt flubbed then — Mijin

Yeah, it was Chatgpt, the machine that is built to say smart things, that's probably who messed up in this situation.

I don’t know what you’re complaining about — T Clark

I'm not complaining.

Yeah, it was Chatgpt, the machine that is built to say smart things, that's probably who messed up in this situation. — NotAristotle

There is no doubt in my mind that it’s not ChatGPT’s fault. I’m sure I set the problem up wrong. That’s why they wouldn’t let me design bridges.

Did you want to design bridges?

Did you want to design bridges? — NotAristotle

No.

T Clark -- "Okay everyone, who wants to test out this wooden bridge I designed?" "I designed it within 6 orders of magnitude so it will either hold all of you or collapse immediately."

"No thanks."

optimistic NotAristotle "Sure! I'm sure it'll be fine."

Do you think the biological process necessarily leads to sapience in all cases; if so, what are your reasons? — NotAristotle

No. "Sapience" seems quite rare (i.e. an evolutionary fluke), probably much more so than it is on Earth, if only because it is a feature of life that is least required for survival and species propagation. Clearly, the universe is "fine-tuned" only for nonsapient life.