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Okay, but which of the following two positions are you arguing for? 1. We don't have enough data about other solar systems, so we don't know where complex life
by rwallace 10y ago
Okay, but which of the following two positions are you arguing for?
1. We don't have enough data about other solar systems, so we don't know where complex life might exist.
2. We don't have enough data about other solar systems, so complex life probably exists all over the place.
If you're arguing for the first position, fair enough; I might not entirely agree, but it is at least reasonable.
But I see too many people arguing for the second position, taking scarcity of data as a license to believe what they want to believe.
- jessriedel 10y agoThe first. I think the most likely resolution to the fermi paradox, which is not that paradoxical, is just that abiogenesis is a galactically rare event. Other proposed filters, like the advent of sexual reproduction, eukaryotes, or intelligence, seem much less robust to a failure of imagination.
- rwallace 10y agoFair enough, that's a reasonable position. My opinion, for what it's worth, is that every step is a hard step, because it's not just a matter of time elapsed to the next one, but of each step having to be taken in just such a way as to set the right preconditions for all the subsequent ones.