Normal_Anomaly comments on 2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey - Less Wrong

77 Post author: Yvain 01 November 2011 06:28PM

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Comment author: gwern 05 November 2011 06:21:17PM 5 points [-]

I took it too. Disturbs me how much my alien probability changed when framed as 'in universe' vs 'in galaxy'.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 06 November 2011 03:05:42PM 4 points [-]

I'm not sure why it should disturb you. If the probability of intelligent life evolving in galaxy x is the same for all x, and there are about 100 billion galaxies in our observable universe, then the chance of intelligent life in the observable universe is about 1-(1-x)^100 billion. This assumes that whether life evolves in any one galaxy is independent of whether it evolved in another.

I wish I had remembered to use this formula when I took the survey.