From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Nov 24 1999 - 20:02:23 MST
Eric Watt Forste wrote:
>
> >>Perhaps Universe is so young that we are the first kids on the
> >>block.
>
> On Wed, 24 Nov 1999, Rob Harris <rob@hbinternet.co.uk> wrote:
> > Consider the number of stars in this galaxy, and then the number
> > of galaxies in the universe, and then the fact that our galaxy is
> > far from the most outward-lying (ancient). For us to be No.1 in
> > this universe would be quite incredible luck. In fact, I'm sure I
> > couldn't even write the odds in standard form and fit all the digits
> > on all the computers on earth.
>
> Um, since when is outward-lying the same as ancient? Outward lying
> from what, anyway? Our own galaxy is the *most* ancient galaxy that
> we can observe, because we are looking into the past at younger
> and younger galaxies as we look further away.
I think maybe he means "outward-lying (ancient)" as in "farthest out on
the age curve". Or not. Either way, that business about all the digits
is untrue. No matter how normal or how young our star is, I sincerely
doubt the odds are greater than 10^400:1, given that there are only
10^22 stars in the Universe and the average odds of each one evolving
life probably aren't higher than 10%.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
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