[willis936]

> we are not special

This is a very common trap. I see this way of thinking applied to the presence of life on Earth all the time. It’s gilded in the Drake equation. It is very possible that Earth is the only planet in the galaxy or even universe with life on it. As the most powerful species on that planet, we should make responsible decisions. There is zero evidence, or even a compelling argument using existing data, that contradicts this possibility.

[varjag]

Old enough to remember the times before the fist extraterrestrial planet was detected. The pessimist argument was then that circumstances leading to planetary system formation could be so extremely rare that we could possibly be the only habitable range planet in the galaxy.

It turned out since the planets are abundant. Planets being abundant increases the chances of life countlessfold, so there is a reason for cautious optimism.

[goatlover]

But the Fermi Paradox is reason for cautious pessimism about technological life.

[sailingparrot]

> As the most powerful species on that planet, we should make responsible decisions.

I think you mistake the meaning of the "we are not special" statement. From a statistic point of view, we have to assume that everything about us is roughly average (and so far our observations kind of confirm this), otherwise any probabilty you come up with is completly skewed by the bias you introduced by assuming from the get go that we are special.

But interestingly, by assuming that we are average and knowing the abundance of other planets, we should see a lot of activity out there, but we don't. So maybe that indicates that we are, in fact, not average.

[willis936]

>From a statistic point of view, we have to assume that everything about us is roughly average (and so far our observations kind of confirm this).

This is the part I disagree with. It’s a hasty generalization to extrapolate from a single data point (Earth). The law of small numbers is alluring, but we must stick to our proper statistics guns and not fall into intuitive traps.

[sailingparrot]

> It’s a hasty generalization to extrapolate from a single data point (Earth).

But we have no choice, we have to extrapolate. And if you have a single data point, assuming that this datapoint is average makes more sense.

If there is an urn containing 100 balls some red some green, 99 of one color and 1 of the other color, and you blindly pick one ball from it that is red, you should bet that there are 99 red balls and 1 green ball, not the other way around.

[willis936]

We do have a choice: not to make hasty generalizations. Your example is the exact classic case of hasty generalization as a fallacy. You can say next to nothing about a bin of balls from one sample.

We can ponder the possibilities as long as we don’t start playing favorites. Saying “we aren’t special” is playing favorites. Saying “we may be special” is not.

We aren’t even confident about the state of life in the solar system. There could be life on Venus, Mars, and/or Europa. Earth may have seeded that life or those places could have seeded Earth, maybe a common ancestor seeded all three, or maybe genesis is common. Maybe life is all over the universe, or maybe Earth is the epicenter, or maybe something in between. We can say next to nothing about the state of life in the universe.

All we know for sure is that we are alive and stars have periodic dips in light intensity. We should act like we are the only life in the universe when weighing the pros and cons of self-inflicted armageddon, at least until proven otherwise.

[sailingparrot]

> We do have a choice: not to make hasty generalizations.

I don't think anyone is making a generalization in the sense you seem to be implying. No one is saying: given our current observation we have concluded that we are (or not) the only ones around. Things are being discussed in term of likelyhood, not in term of certainties.

> You can say next to nothing about a bin of balls from one sample.

You can definitely say something: That there are 99% likelihood that the urn was filled with 99 red balls and 1 green ball, and 1% that it was the other way around.

[willis936]

You can only say that the likelihood of a red ball is at least 1% and the likelihood of a green ball is 99% or less.

We can say the universe can support life because here we are. We can say nothing of how common it is other than it has occurred at least once in 10^24 planets over 10^9 years. It’s difficult to overstate how insignificant this amount of data is in a statistics sense.

[strogonoff]

Note that you will always pick a red ball because it’s the only color you can pick, regardless of whether there are 99, 50 or 1 red balls in the urn. I believe that makes such a single data point meaningless, sidelining any statistical argument about its averageness—we have to rely on our understanding of physics, cosmology, astrobiology, etc. when estimating how frequent a red ball can be, at least until we have a large enough sampling of red balls.