Evidence receipt / uncertainty
Published · transcript-backedTyler Cowen: uncertainty
5 Feb 2025 Conversations with Tyler Ross Douthat on Why Religion Makes More Sense Than You Think
“We don’t know what’s on them, but it’s certainly more likely than if we were not discovering any such planets, so we should be raising our probability.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Tyler Cowen
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- uncertainty
- Recorded
- 5 Feb 2025
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
Transcript context
…Why does it seem likely? We keep on discovering more planets that appear possibly habitable. We don’t know what’s on them, but it’s certainly more likely than if we were not discovering any such planets, so we should be raising our probability. It’s a big place out there. I would be shocked if there was not other meaningful life in the universe. I would also be somewhat surprised. I do think that the Fermi question still seems to hold, even given lots of life-friendly or seemingly life-friendly planets. The silence of the cosmos seems quite odd if, at the very least, there are lots of starfaring species out there capable of sending messages into the deep. You might think that we are among the first, in which case, we seem fairly special, or you might think that there are just very, very few, in which case, I think, we seem fairly special again. I think it’s unlikely —…
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