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Because we have no evidence to suggest we are anything but, and we don't know if there will be others. Given that we believe the universe to be infinite, we co

Because we have no evidence to suggest we are anything but, and we don't know if there will be others. Given that we believe the universe to be infinite, we could be 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3 billionth, etc. But one thing is for sure, we're on the list, but our likelihood of correctly guessing our position on the list is 1/Infinity. However, if we assume that there is SOME constraint, then that list is no longer infinite. Instead of our 'guess accuracy' being effectively 0, it's 1/<list length>. If there are 3 billion, we might be 3 billionth, but if there are 2 billion, we are definitely not 3 billionth. The same follows all the way down to if there are only two, we may be either first or second. We know that there is at LEAST one, so if we guess first, we're at least certainly not guessing out of range. The probability, without any other information to the contrary, of us being 'first' is higher than the probability of us being 'second' or any other possible point on the list. Therefore it is a more logical conclusion—although clearly it should not be parroted as a fact.

amanaplanacanal 4y ago
I think that depends on the size of the universe. If the universe really is infinite, I don’t think we can say anything about where we are on the list. Even if only one star in a billion galaxies has intelligent life, there could already be an infinite number of civilizations ahead of us.
mistermann 4y ago
> Because we have no evidence to suggest we are anything but I'd say we do: - we have plenty of evidence that at a given point of time, our knowledge/evidence is incomplete (consider the history of science) - so, since we are at a given point in time, it seems reasonable to consider the possibility that we may still be in a position of non-omniscience. - we have plenty of evidence that how things appear to people (say: no evidence) is very often other than how it really is https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence-is-a-red-flag https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence... > The probability, without any other information to the contrary, of us being 'first' is higher than the probability of us being 'second' or any other possible point on the list. This seems very unintuitive to me, is it possible to demonstrate this in some sort of a mathematical form (And: is the only possible probabilistic calculation one could do)?
- d1sxeyes 4y ago
  > it seems reasonable to consider the possibility that we may still be in a position of non-omniscience. Not even reasonable, in fact, this is one of the premises of my statement. If we knew for sure how many intelligent species have spread intergalactically, we would not need to be making estimates. For the clarification of doubt, where I say 'no evidence', I am referring purely to the absence of evidence, not evidence of absence. I am not sure about representing it formally mathematically, and I am certain that it is not the only probabilistic calculation possible, there may well be better models, but consider the following: I reach into a bag, and I pull out a die. The die has a one on it. We have the following assumptions: - The bag contains at least 1 die - Dice can have 1 or more sides (let's call them 4D dice) - All dice have at least one face with a 1 on it Here, the faces represent the number of intelligent species spreading intergalactically. The specific number drawn represents humanity's place in the sequence. Let's initially start with 1, single sided die. - What is my probability of drawing a 1 sided die? 1 out of 1. - What is my probability of being position number 1 on the die? 1 out of 1. So, if there is only 1 die with only 1 face in the bag, we know for certain we must draw a 1. Now let's imagine adding dice. We add one more. - What is my probability of drawing a 1 sided die? 1/2 - What is my overall probability of drawing a 1? There are two 'ones' and one 'two', so 2/3 Let's add another. - What is my probability of drawing a 1 sided die? 1/3 - What is my overall probability of drawing a 1? There are three 'ones', two twos, and one three, so 3/6 This is enough to start to see the pattern, we can see that regardless of the number of dice we add, there will always be more 1s than any other number. We can throw 10 000 dice into the bag. There will be 10 000 opportunities to be 'first', 9 999 opportunities to be 'second' and so on. Because we don't know how many dice are in the bag, 'one' is a better guess than 'ten thousand'. [0]: It's worth noting we're not travelling intergalactically (or even interstellarly) just yet.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    > For the clarification of doubt, where I say 'no evidence', I am referring purely to the absence of evidence, not evidence of absence. Technically, you are referring to your model: a) it is possible that evidence can exist but a human does not have knowledge of it b) it is possible that people have differences of opinions on what constitutes evidence, because that is largely a subjective matter, and humans are famous for being unable to reliably distinguish between objective and subjective matters > I am not sure about representing it formally mathematically, and I am certain that it is not the only probabilistic calculation possible, there may well be better models, but consider the following... I think my (highly unusual) point of contention here is other than you intuit - your earlier comment ([emphasis] mine): >> [The] probability, [without any other information to the contrary], of us being 'first' [is] higher than [the] probability of us being 'second' or any other possible point on the list. You have made a prediction about reality based on "a" model, but speak (and perhaps believed, at runtime) that it is "the" model. As for your argument, while it's all true, I cannot see how this can cause reality itself to be a particular way. Statistics and thought experiments (~~propaganda~~ journalism, ideologies and ideology ~marketing, etc) can (and do[1]) certainly cause reality to appear a certain way, but that is something very different. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect [1] https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-heuristic-2795235 https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-heuristic-2795235
vlovich123 4y ago
> The probability, without any other information to the contrary, of us being 'first' is higher than the probability of us being 'second' or any other possible point on the list. That doesn’t make sense to me. It seems like, assuming we’re not the only ones and we’re randomly likely to appear in the list, we’re far more likely to appear in any other position than the first. There’s also a separate interesting thing where “first” is kind of non sensical when you’re talking about the universe. There’s no global ordering of events.
- d1sxeyes 4y ago
  It’s true, we’re more likely to appear in a position other than one (not “any other position” specifically though), but your assumption that we are not the only ones is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    The existence of life in the universe is clearly a non-0 probability event. Same for “intelligent” life. Although arguably almost all life on earth is intelligent so I’m assuming you mean human-level intelligence. Well, in which case we probably have a few contenders for at least getting fairly close if not matching given we have trouble defining intelligence (elephants, octopus, dolphin, some primates, crows etc). Let’s say life that can build technology and shape the world around them then. If the universe is mathematically infinite, then it’s guaranteed we’re not the only ones because any low probability event will still happen infinitely many times in that case. So let’s say the universe is very very large but not mathematically infinite. So then the question is a) what percentage of planets develop life b) what percentage of life develops a species capable of building technology c) what is the likelihood that species has access to resources on the planet to build that technology. We don’t know what a) is (just non-0) but using your equivalent argument for that of “we haven’t found any” I can counter by saying well, as far as we know b and c are 100% as the only planet we know to have life developed a intelligent technology-building species and the likelihood that that just happened by luck seems astronomically low (ie you’d need life to be extremely common and intelligent life not so but the odds seem against you if life is rare AND intelligent life is rarer still). I would argue that when life develops intelligent life is almost assured because pf evolutionary pressures. Now whether the right circumstances exist for them to evolve from basic tools to space ships, who knows. But that’s secondary. So does life exist? Given the size of the universe it would be hard to bet against the argument that life has evolved somewhere out there in the universe. And given that it has, what are the odds that intelligent life came about? Again I’d say high because the same evolutionary pressures would exist to fill in niches that intelligence wins at. So I don’t think it’s all that heavy a lift. Note that I’m not claiming they are space faring, have developed advanced mathematics, can communicate in any way that we’d understand each other or anything like that. I’m simply noting there’s multiple species even here on Earth who at a minimum come close to humans, which means the probability seems quite good unless our Earth is a magical place in the universe that is particularly special somehow at generating sentience. Thus the odds of there being intelligent sentient life out there seems to be the same as whether or not there’s any life out there. And since we know that’s non-0 and the universe is very very big, then it stands to reason there’s very likely intelligent life out there. Note even the observable universe itself is big enough that there’s likely other intelligent life within it. The total universe is much much larger than that and we’d never ever see evidence of life from there because we’ll never see anything from it because it’s forever outside of the expansion of the universe.

amanaplanacanal 4y ago

I think that depends on the size of the universe. If the universe really is infinite, I don’t think we can say anything about where we are on the list. Even if only one star in a billion galaxies has intelligent life, there could already be an infinite number of civilizations ahead of us.

mistermann 4y ago

> Because we have no evidence to suggest we are anything but I'd say we do: - we have plenty of evidence that at a given point of time, our knowledge/evidence is incomplete (consider the history of science) - so, since we are at a given point in time, it seems reasonable to consider the possibility that we may still be in a position of non-omniscience. - we have plenty of evidence that how things appear to people (say: no evidence) is very often other than how it really is https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence-is-a-red-flag https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence... > The probability, without any other information to the contrary, of us being 'first' is higher than the probability of us being 'second' or any other possible point on the list. This seems very unintuitive to me, is it possible to demonstrate this in some sort of a mathematical form (And: is the only possible probabilistic calculation one could do)?

d1sxeyes 4y ago
> it seems reasonable to consider the possibility that we may still be in a position of non-omniscience. Not even reasonable, in fact, this is one of the premises of my statement. If we knew for sure how many intelligent species have spread intergalactically, we would not need to be making estimates. For the clarification of doubt, where I say 'no evidence', I am referring purely to the absence of evidence, not evidence of absence. I am not sure about representing it formally mathematically, and I am certain that it is not the only probabilistic calculation possible, there may well be better models, but consider the following: I reach into a bag, and I pull out a die. The die has a one on it. We have the following assumptions: - The bag contains at least 1 die - Dice can have 1 or more sides (let's call them 4D dice) - All dice have at least one face with a 1 on it Here, the faces represent the number of intelligent species spreading intergalactically. The specific number drawn represents humanity's place in the sequence. Let's initially start with 1, single sided die. - What is my probability of drawing a 1 sided die? 1 out of 1. - What is my probability of being position number 1 on the die? 1 out of 1. So, if there is only 1 die with only 1 face in the bag, we know for certain we must draw a 1. Now let's imagine adding dice. We add one more. - What is my probability of drawing a 1 sided die? 1/2 - What is my overall probability of drawing a 1? There are two 'ones' and one 'two', so 2/3 Let's add another. - What is my probability of drawing a 1 sided die? 1/3 - What is my overall probability of drawing a 1? There are three 'ones', two twos, and one three, so 3/6 This is enough to start to see the pattern, we can see that regardless of the number of dice we add, there will always be more 1s than any other number. We can throw 10 000 dice into the bag. There will be 10 000 opportunities to be 'first', 9 999 opportunities to be 'second' and so on. Because we don't know how many dice are in the bag, 'one' is a better guess than 'ten thousand'. [0]: It's worth noting we're not travelling intergalactically (or even interstellarly) just yet.
- mistermann 4y ago
  > For the clarification of doubt, where I say 'no evidence', I am referring purely to the absence of evidence, not evidence of absence. Technically, you are referring to your model: a) it is possible that evidence can exist but a human does not have knowledge of it b) it is possible that people have differences of opinions on what constitutes evidence, because that is largely a subjective matter, and humans are famous for being unable to reliably distinguish between objective and subjective matters > I am not sure about representing it formally mathematically, and I am certain that it is not the only probabilistic calculation possible, there may well be better models, but consider the following... I think my (highly unusual) point of contention here is other than you intuit - your earlier comment ([emphasis] mine): >> [The] probability, [without any other information to the contrary], of us being 'first' [is] higher than [the] probability of us being 'second' or any other possible point on the list. You have made a prediction about reality based on "a" model, but speak (and perhaps believed, at runtime) that it is "the" model. As for your argument, while it's all true, I cannot see how this can cause reality itself to be a particular way. Statistics and thought experiments (~~propaganda~~ journalism, ideologies and ideology ~marketing, etc) can (and do[1]) certainly cause reality to appear a certain way, but that is something very different. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect [1] https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-heuristic-2795235 https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-heuristic-2795235

vlovich123 4y ago

> The probability, without any other information to the contrary, of us being 'first' is higher than the probability of us being 'second' or any other possible point on the list. That doesn’t make sense to me. It seems like, assuming we’re not the only ones and we’re randomly likely to appear in the list, we’re far more likely to appear in any other position than the first. There’s also a separate interesting thing where “first” is kind of non sensical when you’re talking about the universe. There’s no global ordering of events.

d1sxeyes 4y ago
It’s true, we’re more likely to appear in a position other than one (not “any other position” specifically though), but your assumption that we are not the only ones is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  The existence of life in the universe is clearly a non-0 probability event. Same for “intelligent” life. Although arguably almost all life on earth is intelligent so I’m assuming you mean human-level intelligence. Well, in which case we probably have a few contenders for at least getting fairly close if not matching given we have trouble defining intelligence (elephants, octopus, dolphin, some primates, crows etc). Let’s say life that can build technology and shape the world around them then. If the universe is mathematically infinite, then it’s guaranteed we’re not the only ones because any low probability event will still happen infinitely many times in that case. So let’s say the universe is very very large but not mathematically infinite. So then the question is a) what percentage of planets develop life b) what percentage of life develops a species capable of building technology c) what is the likelihood that species has access to resources on the planet to build that technology. We don’t know what a) is (just non-0) but using your equivalent argument for that of “we haven’t found any” I can counter by saying well, as far as we know b and c are 100% as the only planet we know to have life developed a intelligent technology-building species and the likelihood that that just happened by luck seems astronomically low (ie you’d need life to be extremely common and intelligent life not so but the odds seem against you if life is rare AND intelligent life is rarer still). I would argue that when life develops intelligent life is almost assured because pf evolutionary pressures. Now whether the right circumstances exist for them to evolve from basic tools to space ships, who knows. But that’s secondary. So does life exist? Given the size of the universe it would be hard to bet against the argument that life has evolved somewhere out there in the universe. And given that it has, what are the odds that intelligent life came about? Again I’d say high because the same evolutionary pressures would exist to fill in niches that intelligence wins at. So I don’t think it’s all that heavy a lift. Note that I’m not claiming they are space faring, have developed advanced mathematics, can communicate in any way that we’d understand each other or anything like that. I’m simply noting there’s multiple species even here on Earth who at a minimum come close to humans, which means the probability seems quite good unless our Earth is a magical place in the universe that is particularly special somehow at generating sentience. Thus the odds of there being intelligent sentient life out there seems to be the same as whether or not there’s any life out there. And since we know that’s non-0 and the universe is very very big, then it stands to reason there’s very likely intelligent life out there. Note even the observable universe itself is big enough that there’s likely other intelligent life within it. The total universe is much much larger than that and we’d never ever see evidence of life from there because we’ll never see anything from it because it’s forever outside of the expansion of the universe.