Related papers: The Doomsday Argument in Many Worlds
The relative abundances of exotic environments provides us with (uninformed) bounds on the habitability of those environments relative to our own, on the basis that our presence here is not too atypical. For instance, since red stars…
The early start to life naively suggests that abiogenesis is a rapid process on Earth-like planets. However, if evolution typically takes ~4Gyr to produce intelligent life-forms like us, then the limited lifespan of Earth's biosphere…
The number of people able to end Earth's technical civilization has heretofore been small. Emerging dual-use technologies, such as biotechnology, may give similar power to thousands or millions of individuals. To quantitatively investigate…
If our universe has appeared in a result of Big Bang or something like this, whether we have reasons to deny an existence of other universes appearing by the same or similar way? An objection that there is no anything like it, is doubtful,…
We discuss the Carter's formula about the mankind evolution probability following the derivation proposed by Barrow and Tipler. We stress the relation between the existence of billions of galaxies and the evolution of at least one…
We are at a stage in our evolution where we do not yet know if we will ever communicate with intelligent beings that have evolved on other planets, yet we are intelligent and curious enough to wonder about this. We find ourselves wondering…
It seems natural to ask why the universe exists at all. Modern physics suggests that the universe can exist all by itself as a self-contained system, without anything external to create or sustain it. But there might not be an absolute…
The missionary zeal of many Bayesians of old has been matched, in the other direction, by a view among some theoreticians that Bayesian methods are absurd-not merely misguided but obviously wrong in principle. We consider several examples,…
Given the vast distances between stars in the Milky Way and the long timescales required for interstellar travel, we consider how a civilization might overcome the constraints arising from finite lifespans and the speed of light without…
Earth's future detectability depends upon the trajectory of our civilization over the coming centuries. Human civilization is also the only known example of an energy-intensive civilization, so our history and future trajectories provide…
In this work, we explore constraints on the emergence and longevity of technologically intelligent civilizations in our Galaxy, considering the Fermi paradox. We argue that under optimistic assumptions about the probability of life and…
Ambitious civilizations that expand for resources at an intergalactic scale could be observable from a cosmological distance, but how likely is one to be visible to us? The question comes down to estimating the appearance rate of such…
If the origin of life is rare and sensitive to the local conditions at the site of its emergence, then, using the principle of mediocrity within a multiverse framework, we may expect to find ourselves in a universe that is better than usual…
Since its early beginnings, mankind has put to test many different society forms, and this fact raises a complex of interesting questions. The objective of this paper is to present a general population model which takes essential features…
It is often suggested that extraterrestial life sufficiently advanced to be capable of interstellar travel or communication must be rare, since otherwise we would have seen evidence of it by now. This in turn is sometimes taken as indirect…
A number of problems in physics, mathematics, and philosophy involve observers in given situations which lead to debates about whether observer-specific information should affect the probability for some outcome or hypothesis. Our purpose…
We use an argument by Page to exhibit a paradox in the global description of the multiverse: the overwhelming majority of observers arise from quantum fluctuations and not by conventional evolution. Unless we are extremely atypical, this…
This paper suggests that a universal solution to the Fermi paradox exists and can be derived directly from the definition of life and/or intelligence, therefore eliminating the need for any questionable assumptions and even for the…
An interesting consequence of the modern cosmological paradigm is the spatial infinity of the universe. When coupled with naturalistic understanding of the origin of life and intelligence, which follows the basic tenets of astrobiology, and…
We argue that whether the universe is infinite or finite is less crucial than usually supposed. Paradoxes of repeating behaviour in the infinite, or eternal inflationary, universe can be alleviated by a realistic definition of differing…