[ExI] Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

[John Clark]

> from Paul Tyma.
> <http://paultyma.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/why-well-never-meet-aliens.html


>If you combine all our current knowledge of statistics and astronomy, it's
> nearly comical to believe we're the only intelligent life in the universe.
> It's easy to get lost in the numbers thrown around - there are billions of
> stars and planets in our galaxy and billions of galaxies. Humans are rather
> bad at fully understanding such large numbers.
>

Yes, when astronomers observe the universe they can come up with some very
large numbers, but if biologists try to figure out the probability of life
forming, and then the probability of a Eukaryote cell forming, and then
probability of multicellular life forming. and then the probability of
intelligent life forming, and then the probability of a technological
civilization forming, the biologists may be able to come up with numbers
just as big as the astronomers and maybe even bigger. And if ET does exist
and is a hundred or a thousand or a million or a billion years in advance
of us then why the hell isn't that fact obvious?

  John K Clark

  John K Clark
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20130430/80efe130/attachment.html>