• hoodatninja
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    1 year ago

    Thinking about this discussion some more, and I would like to share an example with you.

    If I roll a D100 there is a 1% chance it’ll land on any given number. What I want it to land on, such as a 100, does not change the likelihood. Yet we have this natural inclination to see 100 as “impossible on the first try,” but not say, 34. Because 34 is not a number we generally care about when rolling a D100. We usually want a 100, we usually don’t want a 1. But they’re as likely as anything else and our feelings on the issue, as well as the result, will never change the fact that it’s 1% every single time for every single result, so each result is equally “special.” This goes for a coin flip, a D100, or a D1000000000. Every result is equally likely and special. We had an insanely unlikely chance of being here, but stats says “whelp it can happen so shrug.”

    • @afraid_of_zombies
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      11 year ago

      Right so you aren’t telling me stuff I don’t know here. Sorry to be blunt. I been dealing with atheist-theist arguments about the Fine tuning problem for years at this point. I know about survivor bias, I know about the misassignment of probability.

      I gave you actual numbers. Based on what we know life like us should have predated us by billions of years. We have the first few terms of the equation solved. Number of stars, number of planets, number of liquid water zone planets, and we have a dataset that gives a hint at the odds of life starting. As I also pointed out any kinda barrier you throw up (passed sentient stage) gets crushed by the amount of time we are discussing.

      So something is very wrong. Maybe planet formation happened much later than we think (no evidence for this), maybe the two star systems identified with Goldilocks zone planets were black swan events (given the data size of over 5,000 very unlikely), maybe life just about never gets going.

      I am leaning towards the life formation stage being hard based on the data we are not seeing from Europa.

      • hoodatninja
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        11 year ago

        That’s fine, I feel you. I’m not sure I’m onboard with your takeaway but ultimately we’re just approaching this and coming away with different takes. Have a good one!