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by Almaviva
3532 days ago
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Say a 1080p monitor display is completely randomized, until it shows a clear visible five-pointed star. Given I'm looking at a star, what is the likelihood there is another one on the screen? Practically 0, I'd think. Why is the emergence of an intelligent civilization in the universe different, assuming I take a multiverse and the anthropic principle seriously? (In other words, given that a universe could have multiple intelligent civilizations, why is it the case that if I'm in a random sample with at least one, there is likely to be another?) |
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That's an unnecessarily convoluted example, a way of asserting that you think the probability of a technological civilization arising is vanishingly small, and taking into account the vast time intervals in question, therefore unlikely for more than one to exist simultaneously.
Is that a valid point of view? Sure. It just means at least one of the factors in the Fermi equation is exceedingly small. Barring further evidence, that thesis may well turn out correct. But we still need to know what that inordinately small factor is, because we haven't found anything that fits the bill yet. Granted, there are big questions about the probability of things like abiogenesis, but over the entire history of science, arguments from exceptionality or uniqueness have almost always turned out to be incorrect.