The aliens question was interesting to think about.
I realized that if I put anything other than zero for ‘probability of aliens existing within our galaxy’, then it seems like it would make little sense to put anything other than 100 for ‘observable universe’, given how many galaxies there are! Unless our galaxy is somehow special…
The probabilities for life in different galaxies aren’t independent if you’re uncertain about the fraction of stars/galaxies that spawn life. You could think that with p=.5 life is super-rare and with p=.5 life is super-common; then you’d put .5 on both questions.
Yeah. Checking back over questions can be interesting. At first, I had a greater probability for cryonics working than anti-agathics, but then I realized—hold on, if cryonics worked, wouldn’t aging have more or less been solved? Isn’t cryonics a subset of anti-agathics?
The aliens question was interesting to think about.
I realized that if I put anything other than zero for ‘probability of aliens existing within our galaxy’, then it seems like it would make little sense to put anything other than 100 for ‘observable universe’, given how many galaxies there are! Unless our galaxy is somehow special…
The probabilities for life in different galaxies aren’t independent if you’re uncertain about the fraction of stars/galaxies that spawn life. You could think that with p=.5 life is super-rare and with p=.5 life is super-common; then you’d put .5 on both questions.
Yeah. Checking back over questions can be interesting. At first, I had a greater probability for cryonics working than anti-agathics, but then I realized—hold on, if cryonics worked, wouldn’t aging have more or less been solved? Isn’t cryonics a subset of anti-agathics?