4 ms·

I'm pretty sure Shostak is talking about probabilities al the time as he is the director of the seti institute. The founder and friend of Seth came up with the

I'm pretty sure Shostak is talking about probabilities al the time as he is the director of the seti institute. The founder and friend of Seth came up with the drake equation. "The Drake equation is a probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy." We are the only known intelligent species in the universe. So we model these exceptions after ourselves. Just like we search for earth like planets in the goldylock zone. Carbon and (possibly) silicon live forms are the only ones we know can happen.

jonnathanson 12y ago
I'm also sure Shostak is thinking about probabilities. My point was that we shouldn't necessarily think about the probabilities along a presumed straight-line path. The logic Shostak is using here begins with a sort of reverse-engineering of how humanity made its progress, followed by an implicit presumption that other advanced civilizations will follow the same path, until such time as they advance beyond us (by way of AI). I don't believe we can confidently say that technology has to progress along the path we walked.