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by chowells 2y ago

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pfdietz 2y ago
> statistically there is other life in the universe Please explain the reasoning by which one reaches this conclusion.
- zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
  Out of the dozens of planets in the universe, Earth is not likely to be so unique that it is the only place where life has arisen.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    This statement doesn't seem to follow from anything. Why is Earth "not likely to be so unique"?
    - zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
      Your comment is not worth replying to. https://www.space.com/30172-six-most-earth-like-alien-planets.html https://www.space.com/30172-six-most-earth-like-alien-planet...
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        It's weird you think that link settles things. A planet could be Earth-like without having life. We don't know how likely life is to arise on an Earth-like planet. In particular, we cannot conclude that because we are here, the probability of it happening on Earth was high, due to observer selection bias. https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/W6-Observer-selection-effects.pdf https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/W6-Observer-sele...
  - rytill 2y ago
    Dozens? Don't you mean, probably hundreds of trillions in the observable universe? Not that the number of planets really implies anything when we don't know the probability of life arising on one of them.
    - zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
      No. I meant dozens. Hundreds of trillions is dozens
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
        I don't doubt that you intended this meaning but doesn't that seem unnecessarily ambiguous to you? Usually when people say "dozens" they mean some small handful of dozens with an absolute number probably smaller than 200 (otherwise most would say "hundreds"). Few people are going to think "hundreds of trillions" when someone says "dozens". If one is expected to think "hundreds of trillions" in this case, it seems they should be equally expected to think "hundreds of quadrillions" which would be incorrect here. Even if one agrees that "dozens" is accurate to mean "hundreds of trillions" it still misses the mark for the argument because the odds come from the high number of planets. That is to say, there are very low odds that any individual planet harbors life but ostensibly much greater odds that one planet in a set of planets harbors life. Saying "hundreds of trillions" gets that point across better than "dozens".
        zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
        I had no idea if the number of planets was estimated to be in billions or trillions and I wasn't going to look it up. So I went with dozens.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  Universe really big, earth not so so so special
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    Assuming the conclusion like that is not a valid argument.
    - anigbrowl 2y ago
      You're mistaken. Life thrives in a huge variety of environments and survives in many more, and we have evidence of similar suns and the existence of planets in habitable zones. We can observe varieties of axial tilt and configurations of moons in our own solar system. We can form (bad) estimates of probability for earth-like cosmic conditions, and they're good enough that we've found some planets where we expect they might be. It seems like a far larger assumption to think Earth is unique in the cosmos, given nature's tendency to repeat itself. There are numerous natural harbors on earth, for example - places where the sea currents and land terrain combine to make a relatively calm environment even during stormy conditions. If we view Earth and the solar system as a natural harbor in space, what basis is there for thinking it can not exist anywhere else? The fact that we're uncertain about exactly how common it is is not a good reason to think the answer is 'not at all'.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        Your first paragraph there is about how life spreads around on a planet once it's arisen. It doesn't have anything to do with the chance of life arising in the first place. We have evidence of precisely one origin of life event -- all life on Earth looks to derive from a common ancestor (called "LUCA"). We don't know how common OoL is on a planet like Earth. We cannot use the fact it occurred here to conclude it's likely, since if it didn't occur here, we wouldn't be here. Our mere presence to ask the question biases the observation. The less likely it was, the more biased the observation. Second paragraph: what is this supposed tendency of nature not to repeat itself? The universe is full of objects that are unique arrangements of atoms, not repeated anywhere else. Indeed, all but extremely small objects are very likely to not recur. So this supposed universal property of repetition doesn't appear very universal. Proposing that Origin of Life is in the subset of phenomena that do repeat is just begging the question. As for "what basis is there for thinking it can not exist anywhere else?", that question is relevant only if I were asking you to believe life is not common, not if I were asking for justification of statements that it is common. The opposite of belief in X is not belief in (not X)!
- grey-area 2y ago
  10^24 stars in the Universe. ~10^25 planets in the Universe. 13 billion out of a googol years elapsed. And you think our insignificant spec of dust is the first or will be the last on which life evolved?
  - bokan 2y ago
    But the probability of life arising is an unknown. Intuitively I too feel it probably isn't that small, but it wouldn't be the first time intuition about the universe is wrong. How do you _know_ the odds of life arising aren't 1/10^30?
    - grey-area 2y ago
      We don’t know, but we can guess that it is lower than that, and have no reason to think it is that rare. The elements of life have been found to arise spontaneously, see Bartel and Szostak for example.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        The elements of life (by this I presume you mean various small biomolecules like amino acids) arising easily doesn't imply life arises easily.
    - umvi 2y ago
      We know the probability of life arising in the universe is >0 because we exist. However, we don't know if life can arise spontaneously given the right conditions (abiogenesis) or if must it be "seeded" at some level by an existing life form (i.e. deity, asteroid containing bacteria, etc)? I'm religious, so I'm more in the "seeded" camp than "spontaneous" camp but either way, I strongly believe there is life on other planets in the universe, it's just too bad the universe is so big and light so slow that it's hard to confirm.
      - jnsie 2y ago
        > I'm religious, so I'm more in the "seeded" camp than "spontaneous" camp but either way, I strongly believe there is life on other planets in the universe, it's just too bad the universe is so big and light so slow that it's hard to confirm. Hijacking someone else's comment to ask without judgement or agenda - How, if at all, would it alter your religious beliefs were life/intelligent life to be found on another planet?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
concordDance 2y ago
I can't tell if you're serious, but in case you are: The Drake Equation and anthropic reasoning are both frequently discussed in rationist circles.
lo_zamoyski 2y ago
Ah, utilitarianism. Perpetually deranged, perpetually evil.
dang 2y ago
Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? We're trying for curious conversation here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[flagged]

pfdietz 2y ago

> statistically there is other life in the universe Please explain the reasoning by which one reaches this conclusion.

zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
Out of the dozens of planets in the universe, Earth is not likely to be so unique that it is the only place where life has arisen.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  This statement doesn't seem to follow from anything. Why is Earth "not likely to be so unique"?
  - zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
    Your comment is not worth replying to. https://www.space.com/30172-six-most-earth-like-alien-planets.html https://www.space.com/30172-six-most-earth-like-alien-planet...
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      It's weird you think that link settles things. A planet could be Earth-like without having life. We don't know how likely life is to arise on an Earth-like planet. In particular, we cannot conclude that because we are here, the probability of it happening on Earth was high, due to observer selection bias. https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/W6-Observer-selection-effects.pdf https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/W6-Observer-sele...
- rytill 2y ago
  Dozens? Don't you mean, probably hundreds of trillions in the observable universe? Not that the number of planets really implies anything when we don't know the probability of life arising on one of them.
  - zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
    No. I meant dozens. Hundreds of trillions is dozens
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
      I don't doubt that you intended this meaning but doesn't that seem unnecessarily ambiguous to you? Usually when people say "dozens" they mean some small handful of dozens with an absolute number probably smaller than 200 (otherwise most would say "hundreds"). Few people are going to think "hundreds of trillions" when someone says "dozens". If one is expected to think "hundreds of trillions" in this case, it seems they should be equally expected to think "hundreds of quadrillions" which would be incorrect here. Even if one agrees that "dozens" is accurate to mean "hundreds of trillions" it still misses the mark for the argument because the odds come from the high number of planets. That is to say, there are very low odds that any individual planet harbors life but ostensibly much greater odds that one planet in a set of planets harbors life. Saying "hundreds of trillions" gets that point across better than "dozens".
      - zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
        I had no idea if the number of planets was estimated to be in billions or trillions and I wasn't going to look it up. So I went with dozens.
IncreasePosts 2y ago
Universe really big, earth not so so so special
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Assuming the conclusion like that is not a valid argument.
  - anigbrowl 2y ago
    You're mistaken. Life thrives in a huge variety of environments and survives in many more, and we have evidence of similar suns and the existence of planets in habitable zones. We can observe varieties of axial tilt and configurations of moons in our own solar system. We can form (bad) estimates of probability for earth-like cosmic conditions, and they're good enough that we've found some planets where we expect they might be. It seems like a far larger assumption to think Earth is unique in the cosmos, given nature's tendency to repeat itself. There are numerous natural harbors on earth, for example - places where the sea currents and land terrain combine to make a relatively calm environment even during stormy conditions. If we view Earth and the solar system as a natural harbor in space, what basis is there for thinking it can not exist anywhere else? The fact that we're uncertain about exactly how common it is is not a good reason to think the answer is 'not at all'.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      Your first paragraph there is about how life spreads around on a planet once it's arisen. It doesn't have anything to do with the chance of life arising in the first place. We have evidence of precisely one origin of life event -- all life on Earth looks to derive from a common ancestor (called "LUCA"). We don't know how common OoL is on a planet like Earth. We cannot use the fact it occurred here to conclude it's likely, since if it didn't occur here, we wouldn't be here. Our mere presence to ask the question biases the observation. The less likely it was, the more biased the observation. Second paragraph: what is this supposed tendency of nature not to repeat itself? The universe is full of objects that are unique arrangements of atoms, not repeated anywhere else. Indeed, all but extremely small objects are very likely to not recur. So this supposed universal property of repetition doesn't appear very universal. Proposing that Origin of Life is in the subset of phenomena that do repeat is just begging the question. As for "what basis is there for thinking it can not exist anywhere else?", that question is relevant only if I were asking you to believe life is not common, not if I were asking for justification of statements that it is common. The opposite of belief in X is not belief in (not X)!
grey-area 2y ago
10^24 stars in the Universe. ~10^25 planets in the Universe. 13 billion out of a googol years elapsed. And you think our insignificant spec of dust is the first or will be the last on which life evolved?
- bokan 2y ago
  But the probability of life arising is an unknown. Intuitively I too feel it probably isn't that small, but it wouldn't be the first time intuition about the universe is wrong. How do you _know_ the odds of life arising aren't 1/10^30?
  - grey-area 2y ago
    We don’t know, but we can guess that it is lower than that, and have no reason to think it is that rare. The elements of life have been found to arise spontaneously, see Bartel and Szostak for example.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      The elements of life (by this I presume you mean various small biomolecules like amino acids) arising easily doesn't imply life arises easily.
  - umvi 2y ago
    We know the probability of life arising in the universe is >0 because we exist. However, we don't know if life can arise spontaneously given the right conditions (abiogenesis) or if must it be "seeded" at some level by an existing life form (i.e. deity, asteroid containing bacteria, etc)? I'm religious, so I'm more in the "seeded" camp than "spontaneous" camp but either way, I strongly believe there is life on other planets in the universe, it's just too bad the universe is so big and light so slow that it's hard to confirm.
    - jnsie 2y ago
      > I'm religious, so I'm more in the "seeded" camp than "spontaneous" camp but either way, I strongly believe there is life on other planets in the universe, it's just too bad the universe is so big and light so slow that it's hard to confirm. Hijacking someone else's comment to ask without judgement or agenda - How, if at all, would it alter your religious beliefs were life/intelligent life to be found on another planet?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

concordDance 2y ago

I can't tell if you're serious, but in case you are: The Drake Equation and anthropic reasoning are both frequently discussed in rationist circles.

lo_zamoyski 2y ago

Ah, utilitarianism. Perpetually deranged, perpetually evil.

dang 2y ago

Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? We're trying for curious conversation here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html