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Actually, they are possibly rare. Rareness is a percentage, so as long as only 1% or less of planets are earth like, that's rare, even if there are millions of
by tsherr 6y ago
Actually, they are possibly rare. Rareness is a percentage, so as long as only 1% or less of planets are earth like, that's rare, even if there are millions of them.
- ubertoop 6y agoIsn't that such an interesting thing to think about. They're "rare" as a percentage, but because of their abundance, they're not "rare" at all.
- kaesar14 6y agoAnyone know of a language that has vocabulary that distinguishes these two meanings of rarity?
- gibolt 6y agoFeels similar to the distinction between accurate and precise
- runawaybottle 6y agoCountably and uncountably rare?
- nondave 6y agoI think English could work here with terms like "sparse" vs "low in number".
- keenmaster 6y agoThat seems like a great way to mitigate the availability bias.
- pavlov 6y agoMaybe “uncommon” vs “scarce”?
- darepublic 6y agoTheir rarity might mean that its impossible to travel to one, despite positing millions in existence
- nine_k 6y agoNo, in my book, these are different things. Rare: if we take a sample of N random planets, only n << N of them will be Earth-like. E.g. 0.1% is "rare". Scarce / few: if we take all the planets in the Universe, only a small absolute number of them will be Earth-like. E.g. 100 Earth-like planets is "scarce" or "few". That is, Earth-like planets can be not scarce at all, but still rare. Much like while all water in Earth oceans contains 20 megatons of dissolved gold, molecules of gold are rare among molecules of water, which makes extraction of them impractical.
- jacobush 6y agoThere is also the angle, rare as in practically relevant to us. Too low percentage, a human will never come into contact with a not even single photon originating in these worlds.