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Life may not be "special", but we (our lineage) has gone through a few demonstrably evolutionarily rare events to get to the point we are.

defrost 3y ago
The question is whether there is life elsewhere, not whether we have replicants "out there". That said, the entire universe as is appears to be in incredibly rare event, moreso than mere evolution.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  I kind of meant "we" as "intelligent life" capable of astronomical science. We have no idea how rare the universe is because we can't compare it to anything. We can compare terrestrial species to all of the other terrestrial species we know of. This shows that some evolutionary trajectories and forms appear to be more or less frequent outcomes.
  - defrost 3y ago
    > We have no idea how rare the universe is because we can't compare it to anything. Good luck floating that past your typical theoretical astrophysicist, there are several quite different approaches to taking a stab at that one - all fall into can't be resolved either way basket though, I see your point. fnordpiglet mentions the rare earth notion, I first came across that in the mid 70's reading an Asimov non fiction essay collection The Tragedy of the Moon which raised the importance(??) of having a moon to create tides to create intertidal zones to nudge life from water to land. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tragedy_of_the_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tragedy_of_the_Moon There's a long chain of chance that lies behind ourselves arriving where we are ... the argument can still be made (as it was by Douglas Adams) that "The universe is big. Really Big." The latest JWT images convey just a smidgeon of how big with high res images of tiny arc areas of the night sky packed with tiny lights that are each galaxies the size of the milky way and more. That's a lot of rolls of the dice out there.
    - fnordpiglet 3y ago
      The space is big, but time is vast too. There was a time in the universe when the entire universe averaged a temperature conducive to life and there was oxygen, carbon, and other crucial elements available (although not as plentiful as now). Life could have formed then, and largely died out. In fact life may only pop up rarely in both space and time, so rarely that it’s unlikely two planets have life within a detectable distance at the same time. In fact it’s even possible a highly advanced civilization formed on the earth many millions of years ago, and at those time scales all detectable traces of its existence would be wiped out. The scales of time and space are so vast we fail to comprehend how infinitesimal our scales are and make huge assumptions about what’s plausible based on our scales projected to universal scales. That’s geocentric! Also, possible doesn’t mean plausible. Objects can teleport to the moon through quantum principles it’s just so unlikely it’s never actually happens in reality. Life may be such a vastly implausible thing that our existence is a miracle so improbable it beggars the imagination.
RHSman2 3y ago
In the universe we inhabit, what does rare mean? I think we think it is rare but we have no concept of the scale of the possible interactions.

defrost 3y ago

The question is whether there is life elsewhere, not whether we have replicants "out there". That said, the entire universe as is appears to be in incredibly rare event, moreso than mere evolution.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
I kind of meant "we" as "intelligent life" capable of astronomical science. We have no idea how rare the universe is because we can't compare it to anything. We can compare terrestrial species to all of the other terrestrial species we know of. This shows that some evolutionary trajectories and forms appear to be more or less frequent outcomes.
- defrost 3y ago
  > We have no idea how rare the universe is because we can't compare it to anything. Good luck floating that past your typical theoretical astrophysicist, there are several quite different approaches to taking a stab at that one - all fall into can't be resolved either way basket though, I see your point. fnordpiglet mentions the rare earth notion, I first came across that in the mid 70's reading an Asimov non fiction essay collection The Tragedy of the Moon which raised the importance(??) of having a moon to create tides to create intertidal zones to nudge life from water to land. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tragedy_of_the_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tragedy_of_the_Moon There's a long chain of chance that lies behind ourselves arriving where we are ... the argument can still be made (as it was by Douglas Adams) that "The universe is big. Really Big." The latest JWT images convey just a smidgeon of how big with high res images of tiny arc areas of the night sky packed with tiny lights that are each galaxies the size of the milky way and more. That's a lot of rolls of the dice out there.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    The space is big, but time is vast too. There was a time in the universe when the entire universe averaged a temperature conducive to life and there was oxygen, carbon, and other crucial elements available (although not as plentiful as now). Life could have formed then, and largely died out. In fact life may only pop up rarely in both space and time, so rarely that it’s unlikely two planets have life within a detectable distance at the same time. In fact it’s even possible a highly advanced civilization formed on the earth many millions of years ago, and at those time scales all detectable traces of its existence would be wiped out. The scales of time and space are so vast we fail to comprehend how infinitesimal our scales are and make huge assumptions about what’s plausible based on our scales projected to universal scales. That’s geocentric! Also, possible doesn’t mean plausible. Objects can teleport to the moon through quantum principles it’s just so unlikely it’s never actually happens in reality. Life may be such a vastly implausible thing that our existence is a miracle so improbable it beggars the imagination.

RHSman2 3y ago

In the universe we inhabit, what does rare mean? I think we think it is rare but we have no concept of the scale of the possible interactions.