/lit/ - Literature

>>11437546
There has been quite a lot of predictions regarding the existence of life, one of the more popular methods used being the Drake equation. Depending on how you set-up the variables, other predictions have ranged from this galaxy supporting only 1 instance of intelligent life to having over 10^6 civilizations out there.
The fact is that we just don't know.
We have been listening to the sky for the past 4 decades and the best we got was that sappy movie with Jodie Foster.

>>11437624
>That's thinking in too small of a scale in my opinion
That was just an example to illustrate the nature of probability.
As the complexity of life grows so do the requirements for it. I have already mentioned that all those requirements are interconnected and interdependent. If we want to have our European sludge (and let's call them Germans) evolve and become intelligent, the conditions must be right. At the bare minimum there must be enough energy in the system to support our complex, multi cellular, intelligent Germans. Energy that is most likely not present in the Europe's biosphere. We are talking here about conditions worse than the abyssal zone in our oceans that somehow has to support intelligent life. That is simply not going to happen no matter how much time passes unless the conditions change. That's what I mean when I say that the requirements can not be broken, only not met. The alternative is physically impossible energy efficient organisms, intelligent single cellular life and so on.
Basically that would be saying that there are Things (from the movie) in Europa's oceans. The Things (as portrayed in the movie) had access to energy reserves that bordered on nuclear. Conservation of mass and energy simply did not apply to it, etc.

>Which managed to happen here.
Again probability. A fluke happening is not a guarantee that there will be a repeat of said fluke.

>I give our existence as evidence of the possibility of other intelligent life which is not the same as using a bible to believe in a god.
I never said it is. I am just pointing out that it's not what we are seeing. And what we are seeing is absolutely no evidence of intelligent life out there. Which of course does not mean that there is no life out there.