[Space] Panspermia and the Campgaign

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I'm not doing that. I think we're having a miscommunication rather than disagreement.
I'm saying that human intelligence is incredibly rare if it's only occurred once on a known life giving planet in 4.54 billion years. To the best of our knowledge and archaeological research.

I don't think "rare" is meaningful. There is only one known life giving planet, and it has human-level intelligence. You could just as well say that the observed probability of a life-bearing planet having intelligence is 100%. We're speculating with a sample of one, and probability adjectives don't really mean anything. Wait until we have close observation of a hundred or so planets with biospheres and we can talk.

It will have to be really close observation, though. Suppose you observed Earth, say, a quarter millennium ago. What signs of intelligence could you spot from a modest interplanetary distance, let along from parsecs away?

Bill Stoddard