HigHurtenflurst said:
The distances involved are ridiculous. The middle point I disagree with happydolphin so I can't answer for what he might say.... though I guess it could depend on how sentience is measured, I suspect that anything developing similar intelligence to us is an incredible rarity compared to life in general, so in that sense: Yes we are probably pretty special, but again compared to the distances involved it doesn't mean much... for example if 10% of star systems develop life, maybe only 0.01% of those develop complex life (it took 2.5 billion years from simple to multi-cellular life developed on Earth), and 0.01% of those develop any kind of sentience, and 0.01% of those become self-aware to higher mammal-like level... we are already down to a few dozen star systems in our galaxy and while i'll admit I am pulling figures out of my ass, I believe I am underestimating the difficulty life can have in advancing to more complex stages... probably particularly the change to multicellular. |
But what exactly do we have to know what the "distance" would be? You pretty much need 2 points to have distance. All we have is earth. It's not like we know where an Alien hive is =P
We are special because we have the intelligence that we have. The real question is.. are we the "only" forms of intelligent life.