[Ian] This is the great "anthropic debate" about why cosmic physics seems so finely tuned to the emergence of intelligent life (aka humanity) ....
[Arlo] I don't see it this way at all. If anything, "humanity" seems like the rarest of the occurrences in the cosmos. If the cosmos were gear towards this, I'd expect there to be a mountain of evidence that "intelligent life" exists somewhere "out there". Don't get me wrong, I do NOT think we are alone in the cosmos, I just think that "life as we know it" appears to be rare, not common. Check out the Fermi Paradox for some interesting theorizing on this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox). The way I see it, "humanity" is a lucky fluke, owing its existence to a highly _improbable_ series of events, co-occurrences and evolutionary steps. Had it not been for that one rogue asteroid (to over simply one extinction theory), the "cosmos" seemed perfectly content with dinosaurs. Some, of course, posit that "dinosaurs" were part of a large, necessary "plan" to prepare the way for an oil-loving humanity eons later, that their entire existence was a pre-ordained path to oilhood so that "God's Children" (us) would one day be able to drive SUV's to work. While I understand how special that makes some people feel, I just don't but it. We are here not by design, but by luck, and given the overall emptiness (in terms of intelligent life) in the cosmos, I'd say we are here by a great deal of luck. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
