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Comment by warent | Hacker News Reader

Inquiry: if we do find some form of life in Europa, what does that tell us about the probability of life existing in the universe? Does it necessarily increase the likelihood that life is actually highly common in the universe, and a very regular outgrowth of nature?

EDIT: Specifically just life in general, not necessarily "intelligent life"

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It would increase the number of data points from one to two and depending on the nature of the life we would learn a lot about how life develops. Right now our sample size is a little small.

It depends.

If we find unique life unlike that of earth life, it means that life is probably common in the universe.

If we find life that is similar/shares a common ancestor to earth life it means that life is probably less common in the universe but panspermia is more common than we thought.

Isn't "intelligent life" just a function of time of "life"? I am reading the book "Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness" currently and the book makes the case that intelligence and/or consciousness has evolved separately in mammals (humans) and cephalopods.

The more I look at diversity and evolution of life on Earth, it seems like "intelligent life" as we know it is just a inevitable consequence of evolution, given enough time, perhaps.

Well adapted life is a consequence of evolution. Intelligence is not necessary to survive. I am not sure who the master of the planet is: us or ants? Both are incredibly successful but with totally different strategies.

> Intelligence is not necessary to survive

It's even debatable whether it is an asset.

In fact, it can be argued that intelligence leads to low birth rates and population decline that extrapolates to eventual extinction.

Or it leads to avoiding overpopulation and depletion of resources. I think the intelligent thing for us to do would be to limit ourselves to a certain population size and stop growing.

It would be lovely, but this hypothesis is not confirmed by our observation.

Ssems we are not as intelligent as we think :-)

Either that, or intelligence is overrated.

Intelligence is overrated because non-intelligence lacked the faculties for contributing any offsetting negative ratings.

"Intelligent life" as we know it requires multi-cellular heterotrophic organisms. That depends on an abundance of resources (energy et al) able to give rise not merely to life but to a robust ecosystem. Without enough ecological niches there aren't enough ways for life to diversify significantly. Without enough energy and other resources you won't have either the generation cycle time or the carrying capacity to enable evolution of "advanced" multi-cellular life. There are environments on Earth that support life but could not support the development of intelligent life, they just lack the resources to do so. That might be true for some environments throughout the Universe as well. There might be places where some life can survive but is constrained from advancing beyond simple single cellular organisms due to lack of resources.

If we do find life there, it’s only a few assumptions away to find the great filter is ahead of us

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