• afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Ok can you please point to the part that I was factually wrong about? I did take the time and energy to use real numbers and the probabilities that people in this field use.

    • hoodatninja@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      The numbers aren’t the issue. You can’t say “something happened that was very unlikely therefore the number saying it’s unlikely was wrong.”

        • hoodatninja@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Ok so it is likely?

          No and it has no bearing on the discussion. Whether it’s likely or not is immaterial unless you’re gambling or building policy/making decisions around it.

        • Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 year ago

          We are. We are the winner. The chances of someone winning the cosmic lottery is astronomically low. The chances that there is another winner nearby is (astronomically low)2.

          • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Right so as I pointed out the distances don’t really matter all that much. A galaxy infestation of sentients doesn’t require FTL. A nuclear propelled ship could bring the nearest star systems within range in under a century. Additionally we are at the edge of the solar system which means it would be slightly harder for us than it would be on average for sentient life forms.

            The 15k doubling time I gave includes travel time. We can make the numbers worse if you would like. Make it a 45k doubling time and it takes 1.5 million years. About 3 orders of magnitude more time than is needed. You would need a double time of roughly half a million years to break it. Which would mean that earth sends out a colony ship once every 50x the duration of human civilization. The first one goes out in say 2030 the next one goes out in 500,002,030, the third 1million 2030 AD.

            • Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de
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              1 year ago

              You vastly underestimate the distances and the timescale. And as far as we can tell, you overestimate the chances of life emerging. Right now it looks like our situation is extremely freaky, and we were very lucky to get it. And the chances that there is another civilization of this type nearby (and a million light years is nothing compared to the size of observable universe, so even on non-relativistic speeds million or two years is a very small timeframe and milion or two light years is a very small distance) is extremely slow. So yes, we were very lucky, we won the lottery, go us.

              • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                You vastly underestimate the distances and the timescale.

                Ok. Would you kindly revise my numbers based on what the true situation is?

                I would like to point out that my 20% comes from the literature on the topic and the dataset that we have right now. What is the true number?

        • hoodatninja@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I am not sure the issue is clear here but I’ll put it another way.

          If I roll a D100 and get a number - any number - there was a 1% chance I’d get that number. Whether that number has value to me, such as rolling a 100 for a good outcome or a 1 for a terrible one, is immaterial. Every single outcome is 1% likely to happen.

          Should I discount the 1% chance outcome just because i got the exact outcome I did or didn’t want?