"It appears that consciousness is a very rare & precious thing & we should take whatever steps we can to preserve the light of consciousness. Only now, after 4.5 billion years has that window been open. That’s a long time to wait and it might not stay open for long.” -
Conversation
One detail your forgetting to mention is human consciousness it’s a little tad arrogant to believe we are the only consciousness in the universe if there is a probability even 1 in a billion chance that living consciousness can exist well there are more then a billion galaxies.
There are roughly 400 billion galaxies in the observable universe. He's not discounting other forms of sentient life though. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Humans have existed for around six million years.
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