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Mediocrity principle. The mediocrity principle is the philosophical notion that "if an item is drawn at random from one of several sets or categories, it's likelier to come from the most numerous category than from any one of the less numerous categories" (Kukla 2009). [ 1 ] The principle has been taken to suggest that there is nothing very unusual about the evolution of our Solar System, the Earth, humans, or any one nation. It is a heuristic in the vein of the Copernican principle , and is sometimes used as a philosophical statement about the place of humanity. The idea is to assume mediocrity, rather than starting with the assumption that a phenomenon is special, privileged or exceptional. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Extraterrestrial life [ edit ] The mediocrity principle suggests, given the existence of life on Earth, that life typically exists on Earth-like planets throughout the universe . [ 4 ] André Kukla criticizes the argument from mediocrity on two counts: Other uses of the heuristic [ edit ] See also [ edit ]
Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens. The story goes like this: Sometime in the 1940s, Enrico Fermi was talking about the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence with some other physicists. They were impressed that life had evolved quickly and progressively on Earth. They figured our galaxy holds about 100 billion stars, and that an intelligent, exponentially-reproducing species could colonize the galaxy in just a few million years. They reasoned that extraterrestrial intelligence should be common by now.
Fermi listened patiently, then asked, simply, “So, where is everybody?” That is, if extraterrestrial intelligence is common, why haven’t we met any bright aliens yet? This conundrum became known as Fermi’s Paradox. Since then, the Paradox has become ever more baffling. It looks, then, as if we can answer Fermi in two ways. I suggest a different, even darker solution to the Paradox. Fitness-faking technology tends to evolve much faster than our psychological resistance to it. Maybe the bright aliens did the same. Ethics for Extraterrestrials - Opinionator Blog. Jill Tarter's call to join the SETI search.
People got very excited in 2004 when NASA’s rover Opportunity discovered evidence that Mars had once been wet. Where there is water, there may be life. After more than 40 years of human exploration, culminating in the ongoing Mars Exploration Rover mission, scientists are planning still more missions to study the planet. The Phoenix, an interagency scientific probe led by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, is scheduled to land in late May on Mars’s frigid northern arctic, where it will search for soils and ice that might be suitable for microbial life (see “Mission to Mars,” November/December 2007). The next decade might see a Mars Sample Return mission, which would use robotic systems to collect samples of Martian rocks, soils, and atmosphere and return them to Earth.
We could then analyze the samples to see if they contain any traces of life, whether extinct or still active. Such a discovery would be of tremendous scientific significance. SETI: Is It Worth It? It's a risky long shot that burns up money and might never, ever pay off. So is searching for intelligent creatures on unseen worlds worth the candle? After all, aren't there better ways to use our monies and technical talents than trying to find something that's only posited to exist: sentient beings in the dark depths of space? This is a question that surfaces more often than dead fish. "Why should my precious dollars be used for SETI when there's so much suffering in the world? " It deserves an answer. To begin with, allow me to get a technical misunderstanding off the table. That small truth hardly silences critics, however. Well, such a circumstance has never been the case, and never should be.
A cursory glance at history shows that, even when people are routinely dying of hunger in the streets, some fraction of any civilized nation's resources have gone to seeking new things, or creating new things. Yes, but isn't "good" relative? Consider some examples. Review: Contact with Alien Civilizations. By Kenneth SilberMonday, July 9, 2007 Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears about Encountering Extraterrestrials by Michael A.G. Michaud Copernicus Books, 2007 Hardcover, 460 pp.
ISBN 0-387-28598-9 US$27.50 Will we find extraterrestrial intelligence—and should we want to? Such are the questions examined in Contact with Alien Civilizations. Contact could take various forms. One might wonder why such things aren’t happening already (or at least not with scientifically respectable evidence), given the eons in which alien societies could have arisen and expanded. Perhaps they are here, making themselves known only to government conspirators or other segments of the population. Michaud analyzes assorted factors that play into the likelihood of whether intelligent aliens exist in the first place. Once life takes hold, how likely is intelligence to arise? Another question involves the longevity of technological societies.
Other imponderables abound. Meet the neighbours: Is the search for aliens such a good idea? - Independent Online Edition > Commentators. The other side of the Fermi paradox. By Michael HuangMonday, February 19, 2007 The Fermi paradox—the estimation that extraterrestrial civilizations are common and would naturally expand into space, contradicting the lack of evidence that they exist anywhere—is the subject of fascinating speculation and guesswork. Every possible fate of extraterrestrial intelligence is proposed and explored.
These thought experiments are not only interesting in their own right, but may help evaluate the state of a more terrestrial civilization. What will happen to humankind in the future? By examining the possible futures of extraterrestrial civilizations, we are simultaneously examining the possible futures of our own civilization. Put in another way, if an alien civilization somewhere had their own version of the Fermi paradox, they would be speculating on our future in the same way that we speculate on theirs. Stephen Webb’s book on the Fermi paradox, If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens… Where Is Everybody?