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The article deals with The Principle of Mediocrity as applied to extra terrestrial life in an optimistic way, essentially saying we've been here before, many ti
by mellosouls 7y ago
The article deals with The Principle of Mediocrity as applied to extra terrestrial life in an optimistic way, essentially saying we've been here before, many times, convinced of our special place and we've always been corrected by some new perspective.
So, while not actually countering current challenges - eg. The Fermi Paradox - head on, the reminder was reassuring for those of us sceptical about life elsewhere, but longing to be proved wrong.
- pfdietz 7y agoThe Principle of Mediocrity has also been applied to hilariously wrong results. If you go back to the early scientific age, you will find a widespread belief that the other planets in our solar system were inhabited! After all, why should the Earth be special? It was only after this was shown to be nonsense that SETI moved out to planets around other stars. What all this does, of course, is ignore anthropic selection. If life is extremely rare, then Earth will be special just by the fact we are here to be making observations. In the end, a PoM argument for intelligent life being common is just circular reasoning.