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Douglas_Knight comments on Open thread for December 9 - 16, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I don't think this is frightening. If you thought life couldn't have arisen more than 3.6 billion years ago but then discover that it could have arisen 13.8 billion years ago, you should be at most 4 times as scared.
The number of habitable planets in the galaxy over the number of habituated planets is a scary number.
The time span of earth civilization over the time span of earth life is a scary number.
4 is not a scary number.
If it were just a date, then, yes, a factor of 4 is lost in the noise. But switching to panspermia changes the calculation. Try Overcoming Bias [Added: maybe this is only a change under Robin Hanson's hard steps model.]