this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
285 points (85.2% liked)

politics

18651 readers
5053 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
  2. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  3. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  4. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
  5. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  6. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ok so it is likely? You know exactly what I said.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ok so it is likely?

No but to be blunt it has little to no bearing on the discussion to decide if it is or isn’t likely. Whether it’s likely or not is immaterial unless you’re gambling or building policy/making decisions around it. It doesn’t impact the results.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.”

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 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!