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<blockquote data-quote="J.Quondam" data-source="post: 9639526" data-attributes="member: 7030100">To be sure, to be alone wouldn't necessarily mean we're &quot;special&quot;.We're working from a single data point, so we really have no idea what &quot;special&quot; even means. I mean, if civilization is &quot;certain,&quot; then surely it's valid to claim that there must be something &quot;special&quot; about civilization, right? Maybe evolution has some built-in predilection for popping out technological civilizations, and Sid Meier is God. (Yikes. Let's not.)All we know for sure is that we happened once; and we assume that evolution is blind and purposeless. From that all we can claim is that the probability of our existence lies somewhere between &quot;we're nothing special among millions of civilizations&quot; and &quot;we're nothing special like any other unique event in the universe&quot;. Either way, we're still &quot;nothing special.&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="J.Quondam, post: 9639526, member: 7030100"] To be sure, to be alone wouldn't necessarily mean we're "special". We're working from a single data point, so we really have no idea what "special" even means. I mean, if civilization is "certain," then surely it's valid to claim that there must be something "special" about civilization, right? Maybe evolution has some built-in predilection for popping out technological civilizations, and Sid Meier is God. (Yikes. Let's not.) All we know for sure is that we happened once; and we assume that evolution is blind and purposeless. From that all we can claim is that the probability of our existence lies somewhere between "[I]we're nothing special among millions of civilizations[/I]" and "[I]we're nothing special like any other unique event in the universe[/I]". Either way, we're still "nothing special." [/QUOTE]

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