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Ask HN: What are your odds that "we are not alone" is confirmed this year?
HN prediction market, table your bets.
- andsoitis 9mo ago0% - assuming you're referring to intelligent alien species
- keepamovin 9mo agoYes, and noted with thanks.
- andsoitis 9mo agoYou're welcome. I see you're more optimistic :-) I will add that "not alone" also implies we are able to be aware of "them" as they currently are, not billions of years ago. Put differently, if we discover signs of a civilization OR even traces of something akin to life, but we cannot validate they still exist, we are still alone.
- keepamovin 9mo agoFair enough and that’s an interesting situation nonetheless. In some ways emotionally, I’d prefer the archaeological previous advanced civilization discovery that both confirms: We’re not alone in the extent of time, but we don’t really have anything else to consider in the present, so we can study and learn from something static. Though I feel, optimistically, I guess, that the reality is more dynamic than that.
- keepamovin 9mo agothat said a dynamic present is pretty fucking interesting and exciting. If it’s all dead, it’s kind of sad and forboding for us as this civilization. But if there’s others out there now that’s so cool and imagine the opportunities for learning interaction and trade science spirituality society it’s just such a cool idea.
- PaulHoule 9mo ago0.5%
- keepamovin 9mo agoRespectably non-zero. 1 in 200. I think I'm at 1 in 30 rationally. But 61.8% emotionally. Intuitively, I'd say 86-87%.
- FrankWilhoit 9mo agoZero. We cannot possibly be alone, but confirmation depends upon our ability to imagine the unimaginable. Life, yes. Intelligent life, yes. Intelligent life whose manifestations we can recognize, no.
- keepamovin 9mo agoExcellent point and intellectually honest. There’s no guarantee that EXO intelligence would be anything we could fathom. That said we could probably recognize it via traces and I’m sure we’re about to confirm it’s existence.
- NedF 9mo ago[dead]
- JohnFen 9mo agoInfinitesimally close to zero.
- keepamovin 9mo agoDiscard as Chinese propaganda.
- JohnFen 9mo agoDiscard what? My opinion?
- keepamovin 9mo agoYep
- JohnFen 9mo agolol! What a bizarre reaction. I didn't see that one coming.
- keepamovin 9mo agoGlad you’ve seen something strange
- borderprepper 9mo ago[dead]