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jacob_cannell comments on [Link] Study: no big filter, we're just too early - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: polymathwannabe 21 October 2015 01:13PM

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Comment author: jacob_cannell 21 October 2015 09:49:10PM *  6 points [-]

Even ignoring uncertainty in their estimate, being in the first 8% is hardly statistically unusual or 'early'. It's just what we'd expect from the mediocrity principle. Unusual would be say 10^-20, like some physical constants which are apparently under significant observational selection pressure and have extremely improbable values.

Knowing that we are not improbably early does perhaps suggest that some alien models are unlikely - for example it is unlikely that aliens are very common and very aggressive/expansive in our region of the multiverse, because if that was the case then observers like us would always tend to find ourselves on an unusually early planet. But we aren't.