Have we reached the point when it is kooky to not believe in massive amounts of intelligent life having evolved throughout the universe?

[eburacum45]

@Thrasymachus

At any given moment, there may be only a few such civilizations (say, one to five) per galaxy…

This is entirely dependent on the longevity of civilisations. A sufficiently-advanced civilisation might last millions, or billions of years. This would make the number of civilisations significantly larger at any one time.