I've just finished reading "Extraterrestrials: Where are they?" by
Zuckerman and Hart. It really scotches the idea that SETI might
actually be successful, even though the Fermi paradox is a bit
overdone "Any ET civilisation of substantial duration would have
colonised the Galaxy by now. So where are they?"
However, Gott raises an interesting point. Anthropic reasoning eg
Doomsday argument really rules out galactic colonisation - at least
for our reference class. It would appear that the Doomsday argument is
in direct contradiction with the Fermi paradox. I am rather
uncomfortable about this, and my preference would be to accept the
Fermi paradox argument over the anthropic reasoning.
Any comments?
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Dr. Russell Standish Director
High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965
Australia R.Standish.domain.name.hidden
Room 2075, Red Centre
http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
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Received on Tue Aug 01 2000 - 22:18:44 PDT