Ignoring 500 Billion Galaxies: Mathematics vs Common Sense in the Debate About the Probability of Extraterrestrial Life

Carl Sagan said that “extraordinary claims, require extraordinary evidence.” In a stunning display of mathematical logic vs common sense, David Spiegel of Princeton University and Edwin Turner from the University of Tokyo published a paper last summer that turns the Drake equation upside down using Bayesian reasoning to show that just because we evolved on Earth, doesn’t mean that the same occurrence would necessarily happen elsewhere; “using evidence of our own existence doesn’t show anything” they argue, “other than that we are here.”

 

 

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