“First, the approach of multiplying many parameter intervals with an upper bound at one, but no corresponding lower bound, predisposes the resulting distribution of the number of alien civilisations to exhibit a very long negative tail, which drives the reported result.”
I sort of thought this was the logical structure underlying why the paradox was dissolved—specifically that given what we know, it is totally plausible that one of the factors has a really, really low value.
There only is a paradox if we can be confindentally lower bound all of the parameters in the equation. But if given what we know there is nothing weird (ie the odds of it happening are at least 1/1000) about one of the parameters being sufficiently close to zero to make a nothing else in the visible universe likely, then we should not be surprised that we are living in such a world.
Or alternatively the description I once saw of the paper, that if god throws dice a bunch of times in creating the universe, it isn’t surprising that one of the rolls came up one.
What would actually resurrect the paradox is if we could actually create lower bounds for more of the parameters, rather than simply pointing out that there isn’t very good evidence that the probability is really, really low for any given one of them—which of course there isn’t.
“First, the approach of multiplying many parameter intervals with an upper bound at one, but no corresponding lower bound, predisposes the resulting distribution of the number of alien civilisations to exhibit a very long negative tail, which drives the reported result.”
I sort of thought this was the logical structure underlying why the paradox was dissolved—specifically that given what we know, it is totally plausible that one of the factors has a really, really low value.
There only is a paradox if we can be confindentally lower bound all of the parameters in the equation. But if given what we know there is nothing weird (ie the odds of it happening are at least 1/1000) about one of the parameters being sufficiently close to zero to make a nothing else in the visible universe likely, then we should not be surprised that we are living in such a world.
Or alternatively the description I once saw of the paper, that if god throws dice a bunch of times in creating the universe, it isn’t surprising that one of the rolls came up one.
What would actually resurrect the paradox is if we could actually create lower bounds for more of the parameters, rather than simply pointing out that there isn’t very good evidence that the probability is really, really low for any given one of them—which of course there isn’t.