[wat10000]

I think it does. It’s not proof that this place is insignificant, but the fact that it’s just a tiny dot in an unimaginably vast universe is strongly suggestive.

Compare with a hypothetical universe consisting of a million-kilometer-diameter crystal sphere with the Earth at its center. Again not proof, but absent any further information, one would reasonably conclude that Earth is much more significant in that universe.

[christophilus]

Dunno. The crystal sphere wouldn’t tell me anything. If I’m the kind of life form that requires such sphere in order to evolve in the first place, then of course I’d observe such a sphere around my planet— otherwise I wouldn’t be there to observe anything!

If I lived on such a planet, I might say, well, I’d need a big sun-like outer gas giant in order to prove we’re significant. As it is, we’re just a little crystal sphere in a huge universe.

[donkeybeer]

What he was saying is if the total universe was merely a few million kilometers, the earth would form a much larger and non-trivial portion of it compared to the vast size of the observable universe in real life.

[christophilus]

Ah. Yep. I skipped the part about the universe being tiny.

[lo_zamoyski]

It suggests no such thing. Why should it?

That you find such things suggestive entails dubious presuppositions of value.