Desrtopa comments on 2011 Survey Results - Less Wrong

94 Post author: Yvain 05 December 2011 10:49AM

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Comment author: Desrtopa 05 December 2011 02:29:48PM 1 point [-]

If the strong filter is propagation through space, then for rates which people could plausibly assign to the rate of occurrence of intelligent life, the probabilities could be near identical.

What are the odds that a randomly selected population of 10000 has any left handed people? What are the odds that an entire country does?

Comment author: Nornagest 05 December 2011 06:02:53PM *  1 point [-]

Ditto if the strong filter is technological civilization (which strikes me as unlikely, given the anthropological record, but it is one of the Drake terms). If there are ten thousand intelligent species in the galaxy but we're the only one advanced enough to be emitting on radio wavelengths, we'd never hear about any of the others.