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Comment by archonis | Hacker News Reader

>> And there's lots of evidence that we've hit a million unlikely goalposts.

What makes them unlikely?

Because in our solar system, they happened from highly specific events (e.g. Jupiter traveling towards the center of the solar system, rather than staying out near the middle… but only for a little while, then returning to its standard position as a gravitational shield for earth.) We just don’t see evidence of that, let alone even seeing solar systems with planets of a varied-enough size to even theoretically support the CHANCE of it happening.

And that’s besides things we don’t have comparative evidence for, but which took ages on earth. It took a seriously long time for multicellular life to pop up. Easily could be a great filter. We also need tides. Another filter. We also need a planet rotating and orbiting at the right rates. Another filter. Etc.

OP here. I should not have used "Copernican Principle." I knew that was sloppy at the time. I wanted to use something that covered anti-human exceptionalism, except I don't know what other phrase that might be.

I totally get where you are coming from. The Rare Earth solution appears to be the answer to the Fermi Paradox. Is it really a paradox though? Maybe it was just naive to think that life should be common, because solar systems and planets are very plentiful.

This is actually where I sit. In no way do I claim we’re the only intelligent life that will ever exist! I think the universe is extremely young. I imagine it’s more likely humans are “forerunners”, if you will, than that we’re actually special in some permanent sense.

Right now, humans are special. I don’t know if that will always be the case. In fact, I doubt it.

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