[ChainOfFools]

not sure I agree, the universe could go on to be hundreds of billions or trillions of years old, against which 13 (or maybe 26) billion years is really the same scale as the first humans venturing out of Africa just a few tens of millenia ago.

[Timon3]

The universe potentially getting really old doesn't make it more likely for us to be the first. It is incredibly unlikely.

[ChainOfFools]

I don't follow your reasoning at all. Unless intelligent life appeared everywhere in the universe spontaneously at the same instant, which seems rather unlikely, then someone has to be first.

If the universe has, on the scale of potentially uncountable trillions of years, just barely reached a stage where the probability of life appearing has risen above "infinitely small" then there's nothing chauvinistic or anthropocentric about speculating that we're it.

[Timon3]

> Unless intelligent life appeared everywhere in the universe spontaneously at the same instant, which seems rather unlikely, then someone has to be first.

Yes, and for any given species, it is incredibly unlikely they are the first.

> If the universe has, on the scale of potentially uncountable trillions of years, just barely reached a stage where the probability of life appearing has risen above "infinitely small" then there's nothing chauvinistic or anthropocentric about speculating that we're it.

That is a humongous if that you have to prove, and it still would mean that it's very unlikely we are the first.

[pfdietz]

It's only unlikely that we are first if it's likely there are others. But we don't know that it's likely that there are others.

The argument "there's lots and lots of stars, therefore it's unlikely we are alone" is mathematically bogus. It presumes the chance that life arises at any given star can't be "too small". But there is little basis for making that assumption.

[Timon3]

Since we're in a thread that started with:

> if other life exists, the chances of us being first would be really low given the size and age of the universe

I assumed that I didn't have to re-state the assumption that other life exists as the basis for my argument.

[pfdietz]

That quoted statement is weird, since it doesn't make any use of the "size and age of the universe". I was assuming it was a poorly worded way of saying the size and age of the universe implied it was likely other life exists.

[simmerup]

We don't need to be the first, we just need to be the first to survive and figure out some practical method of space travel. Space travel may even prove to be impossible for us.

[Timon3]

"We don't need to be the first" to do what? We do need to be the first to be the first. If we're not the first, we're not the first, even if we figure out space travel.