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I always find it interesting that people expect Human existence, and therefore the environment for its emergence, is somehow atypical. I don't know the math, bu

by tcldr 5y ago

I always find it interesting that people expect Human existence, and therefore the environment for its emergence, is somehow atypical. I don't know the math, but I would have thought by definition, one would wager on it being typical.

bserge 5y ago
People are desperate to believe that something makes them special. Probably the reason most marketing works :)
- GPerson 5y ago
  In your view, what would it mean to be special?
simonh 5y ago
Only having a sample of one makes it very hard to say for sure. Let's say sapient life is very common and the vast majority of such species live on fairly similar planets in similar galaxies. In that situation, you would expect a random sample of one species to be typical. On the other hand suppose typical planets in typical systems are generally very hostile to evolving sapient life. Only very unusual circumstances can lead to suitable conditions, but there are many, many different ways that can happen and different untypical conditions that can lead to sapience arising. Well, then a sample of one simply can't tell you anything about typical sapient species, because there's no such thing. Looking at our conditions, I think there are worrying signs that out specific conditions are actually very unusual. Almost none of the extra-solar planetary systems we've found look much at all like our solar system. Furthermore we have a weirdly large moon relative to the size of our planet, which has had a huge effect on the tectonic and atmospheric development of our planet. Historically our global climatic conditions have oscillated quite widely, but always somehow managed to escape falling permanently into an extreme state. All of this seems to be very unlikely and atypical.
Pompidou 5y ago
In the same way, each individual think himself as atypical. Like if our own narrative, what we think ourself about ourself, was de facto a teratology.
nimithryn 5y ago
Under some models, there’s a non-negligible chance that humans are atypical. See this paper by Sanders, Drexler, and Ord, for instance. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf

by tcldr 5y ago

bserge 5y ago

People are desperate to believe that something makes them special. Probably the reason most marketing works :)

GPerson 5y ago
In your view, what would it mean to be special?

simonh 5y ago

Only having a sample of one makes it very hard to say for sure. Let's say sapient life is very common and the vast majority of such species live on fairly similar planets in similar galaxies. In that situation, you would expect a random sample of one species to be typical. On the other hand suppose typical planets in typical systems are generally very hostile to evolving sapient life. Only very unusual circumstances can lead to suitable conditions, but there are many, many different ways that can happen and different untypical conditions that can lead to sapience arising. Well, then a sample of one simply can't tell you anything about typical sapient species, because there's no such thing. Looking at our conditions, I think there are worrying signs that out specific conditions are actually very unusual. Almost none of the extra-solar planetary systems we've found look much at all like our solar system. Furthermore we have a weirdly large moon relative to the size of our planet, which has had a huge effect on the tectonic and atmospheric development of our planet. Historically our global climatic conditions have oscillated quite widely, but always somehow managed to escape falling permanently into an extreme state. All of this seems to be very unlikely and atypical.

Pompidou 5y ago

In the same way, each individual think himself as atypical. Like if our own narrative, what we think ourself about ourself, was de facto a teratology.

nimithryn 5y ago

Under some models, there’s a non-negligible chance that humans are atypical. See this paper by Sanders, Drexler, and Ord, for instance. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf