Sean Carroll: belief

Transcript context

…It seems like life finds a way. Intelligent alien civilizations, sure, maybe there is somewhere along that chain a really, really hard leap. But once you start life, once you get the origin of life, it seems like life just finds a way everywhere in every condition. It just figures it out. I mean, I get it. I get exactly what you’re thinking. I think is a perfectly reasonable attitude to have before you confront the data. I would not have expected earth to be special in any way. I would’ve expected there to be plenty of very noticeable extraterrestrial civilizations out there. But even if life finds a way, even if we buy everything you say, how long does it take for life to find a way? What if it typically takes 100 billion years, then we’d be alone. It’s a time thing. To you, really most likely, there’s no alien civilizations out there. I can’t see it. I believe there’s a ton of them, and there’s another explanation why we can’t see them.…

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