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Why do so many people on forums like this expect intelligent life in space?
by backlava 11y ago
Why do so many people on forums like this expect intelligent life in space?
- mikeash 11y agoBecause if it's possible once, it makes more sense for it to be possible more than once.
- backlava 11y agoIt happened once out of how many "tries"? What if there are an infinity of parallel universes?
- mikeash 11y agoCould be, but historically things have leaned towards "we are not special" and it seems like a good working assumption to continue with that. Despite previous thought, we're not really any different from animals, animals aren't really different from other forms of life, living matter isn't really different from non-living matter, our planet isn't really different from other planets, our star isn't really different from other stars, etc. That obviously doesn't prove that life is a common thing, but in the absence of better info, it gives a decent starting place. There's also the fact that life arose on Earth almost immediately after conditions allowed for it. If it were an extremely rare event then there likely would have been some lag. Again, not conclusive, but suggestive.
- perdunov 11y agoBecause it's incredibly improbable that we are alone given how much stuff there is in the Universe (something about 10^23 stars) and how prevalent are the chemicals we consist of.
- backlava 11y agoBut 10^23 could be vanishingly small compared to what's in the denominator of that probability. How do you have any idea what the odds are on the formation of life?
- perdunov 11y agoIt's too hard of a question. Of course, this is just an intuition. No formal proof or calculation implied.