We are the only life form of the univers. Not even the only intelligent, but the only one. My arguments are:
Life is absolutely everywhere on earth. There is not a single isolated island or deep trench in the ocean that is not covered by life. If life can live elsewhere, univers would be covered by life. Some bacteria would have been ejected into space by some cataclysme and had colinized nearby planets. Kind of Fermi’s paradoxes.
Antropic argument. Our universe is suitable for life because if it weren’t, we simply wouldn’t be there. Add it to Okam razor. If a smaller, simpler, universe could handle life, we would be in that one. Not our current one.
“Our universe is so huge, so there must be other life form” is not the right statement. Our universe is so huge because it is the smallest universe where life could potentially appear.
Only my opinion, not a scientific demonstration.
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Well it’s definitely unpopular.
Thanks 😇
Feel like I just got baited.
Your third paragraph isn’t logical. It’s treating Occam’s razor as if it were a physical law rather than a scheme for trying to guess the correct answer when you don’t have enough information to determine it using a scientific approach. Even when used properly, Occam’s razor doesn’t guarantee anything about the accuracy of conclusions based on it.
But you’re not just treating it as if it were a physical law but also extending it to the extreme and going from “when multiple explanations are equally plausible, prefer the one that depends on the fewest assumptions” to “any scenario can only arise from the simplest system that could cause that scenario to arise”.
You exactly spot it. “any scenario can only arise from the simplest system that could cause that scenario to arise”. Nature is lazy and don’t like spending resources for nothing.
Again, it is my opinion, and I posted it here to challenge it.
If you have examples or argument against it, where scenarios did occured in over complex system, i’m interested 🙂.
I think your argument is also an argument against destruction of complexity back to simplicity.
It’s also using circular logic. You’re assuming the universe only has the complexity to give rise to one form of life and therefore the universe must be simple enough to have only given rise to one form of life.
Nature takes non-optimal “non-lazy” approaches all the time.
For example, the wiring of the eye in vertebrates is “backwards”, with the optic nerve passing in front of the retina, blocking light and creating a blind spot. It takes more resources and more energy to do it backwards than it would to wire it up “correctly”.
Complex natural systems often get stuck in local minima that prevent them from reaching true optional states. Take the fact that we haven’t experienced vacuume collapse yet as another example.
Just in the observable universe there are around 2 trillion galaxies. Our galaxy (pretty average as galaxies go) has more than 100 billion star systems, each of them with their corresponding planets.
Even if the average density of life is just 1 planet per galaxy (which frankly speaking, would be ridiculously low), you’d have a couple of trillion of planets with life. Intelligence of course would be scarcer, but I don’t think it’s that anomalous in the large scheme of things.
we arent even able to see planet surfaces in our closest neighbor solar systems. Everything outside of sol is just blurry specks if not just radio waves on a telescope
If a smaller, simpler, universe could handle life, we would be in that one.
That is a leap of logic that needs explanation. It sounds like you’re misinterpreting Occam’s razor. The razor is that an explanation is built with the smallest possible set of elements. It’s a huge leap to extend that to us living in the smallest universe.
I agree, I do an easy extrapolation of Okam razor. What I try to say is that the argument that universe is big so there must be other life form doesn’t make sense to me, and it may even be the opposite.
Assuming there are other life forms because universe is big implicitly assume probability of life apparition is higher than maybe 10e-20 per solar system. But even if our universe seem huge for our tiny brain, it is insignificant when dealing with combinatory probabilities. We can quickly reach 10e-100, 10e-1000 or even smaller probabilities just by adding some simple requirement. And as we have no ideas of the value of Drake equation, we really have no idea of probability of life apparition. Maybe this probability is so small that is it a miracle that we exist in a our “small” univese.
Your 2nd paragraph is potentially flawed, but maybe just incomplete.
We have areas that are exceptionally dry, exceptionally hot, or exceptionally acidic, among other things that have been found to be devoid of life. Even the geothermal vents example everyone points to needs a clarifier. Life lives near the vents, not on them. The temperature at the vent gets too hot for basic chemical process or even proteins to make sense.
I think watching the Pale Blue Dot video from Carl Sagan is also worth a watch just as a reminder of how big the universe is for the ‘ejected into space’ point too. The fastest we’ve ever traveled is around 25,000 mph briefly and life has been around for we think around 3.7 billion years. If we had been traveling as fast as we have ever traveled for the entirety of the time we think life has existed, we could make it around 140,000 light years (someone please check my math) compared to the observable universe being about 100 billion light years across. I think you at least get from one end of the milky way to the other with a bit to spare, just have to worry about anything that wasn’t on that straight line and at least 200 billion galaxies to go (probably dramatically more).
Also, like, there’s a reason the Weak Anthropic Principle was created along side the standard one and there’s a reason we talk about the weak a lot more. The standard Anthropic Principle is really someone just saying that they don’t want to talk about that anymore. It doesn’t prove anything on it’s own anymore than saying ‘It is what it is’.
Universe is sparse, but panspermia is a valid theory, right ? I admit I just briefly read the wiki page about it, I didn’t dig to check if it is a valid theory or not.
Regarding anthropic principle, I thought that weak one was about time and space in universe (earth around the sun and not another planet) and strong one was about the whole physic (our universe with its physical constants). Am I missing something ?
I’m clueless on what you’re thinking about with your ideas on the principle. I can’t think of a way to make either of those apply, but I could be missing something, super possible.
I don’t entirely disagree with OPs base opinion, just how we get there. Just important to remember how early in the game we really are and how big the playing field is. Panspermia is interesting, but I personally think it mostly increases complexity instead of reducing it. I’m super skeptical of the idea of it being common.
