Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…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. I don’t believe that very strongly. Look, I’m not going to place a lot of bets here. I’m both pretty up in the air about whether or not life itself is all over the place. It’s possible when we visit other worlds, other solar systems, there’s very tiny microscopic life ubiquitous, but none of it has reached some complex form. It’s also possible there isn’t any. It’s also possible that there are intelligent civilizations that have better things to do than knock on our doors. I think we should be very humble about these things we know so little about.…

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