Richard Dawkins Origins Symposium Part 3/5

Richard Dawkins Origins Symposium Part 3/5

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Richard
• Dawkins
• Origins
• Symposium
• Part
• 3/5

[hughJ25]

The rather saddest point is not so much the islands of life due to distance, but also due to time. If intelligent life is a common occurrence, it's also likely that there's been countless civilizations greater than our own that have been dead and gone for millions or billions of years and we'll never know about them. Every time we catalogue a distant supernova, we could very well be witnessing such an event. At any moment, billions could be dying and their history is lost forever.

[brucegrenehan1]

Sentient or technological lifeforms in our neighborhood? Isn't the nearest star (Proximo Centauri) something like 100,000 lightyears away? Ergo, if intelligence is evolving there at earth rate, contact from or to them would find them at the very beginning of homosapiens and end of neanderthals, highly improbable. That's why we're not making contact. Their signals won't reach us for another one hundred mellinia.

[paschud]

Well I just can't believe Darwin would believe in evolution these days. Im sure of it.

[7jshelto]

thank you for posting this discussion :)

[Iambecome]

fascinating

[Shavarnarak]

@7hkey

I think a more likely thing is that sentient life is fairly rare (perhaps requiring an old biosphere (given how long it took for us to come about), and that sentient technological life is VERY rare. (most sentient species don't progress beyond the stone age.) And that sentient technological life tends to destroy itself (humanity might due to overpopulation for example.)

So there's plenty of life, just very very little advanced life.

[7hkey]

even if life is indeed very probable:

it could be that earth is situated in a least life popuplated area of the universe, while somewhere else other lifeforms have lots of neighbours in the solar systems right next to them.

Or maybe we're just the firsts ^^