4 ms·
The known probabilities will go down, but that evidence is very weak with a sample size of < 1 solar system. Personally, I've always assumed less than 100% of
by losteric 9y ago
The known probabilities will go down, but that evidence is very weak with a sample size of < 1 solar system.
Personally, I've always assumed less than 100% of life-bearing planets will have intelligent life. Earth would have failed less than 1M years ago, and our species may not be around for long.
The interesting question, to me, is how often does life arise? If we find two origins in our solar system... that would change everything.
- delecti 9y agoI suspect that life will occur pretty much everywhere it can. It seemed to have popped up about as early as it could have on our planet, and has adapted to just about every nook and cranny here. And I agree that intelligence is unlikely to be as ubiquitous as life is. It takes an awful lot of resources to grow brains as big as ours, and it's probably just not worth it most of the time.
- losteric 9y agoI can't clearly describe this thought yet, but I believe life depends on an environment with many channels for releasing small amounts of entropy (and protection from destructive high energy levels). That's all we are, self-regulating reproducing entropy machines. Once life exists, it diversifies into every energy niche. Earth has an incredibly complex entropic ecosystem - sunlight, wind, rain/flowing water, lightning, tectonic plates recycling material, radioactive material, and lots of interesting molecules... it seems inevitable that life would evolve. The Moon? Solar radiation, and maybe some chemical reactions driven by solar radiation. No life. Mercury? Too much solar radiation, destroys anything depending on small energy deltas. Mars? Above-average entropy channels in the past, but it's pretty dead now