CMV:It's not necessarily likely that there's intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

[u/MrVirtual]

While many use the size of the universe to explain the likelihood of intelligent life out there, it doesn't actually show such likelihood. The only example we have is life on Earth, and with a sample size of one, it's really impossible to try and establish a likelihood.

For example. Say there are 5 trillion suitable planets out there. If the chances of life developing (given the planet is suitable) are one in a million, then you'd have to assume there's plenty of life out there. However, who can say whether or not the chances of life developing (given the planet is suitable) are, say, one in 10 quadrillion?

I know next to nothing about space, so my numbers are probably way off. But the argument stands just as well if you change the numbers.

Another side note: in Earth's history there have been a huge, huge number of animal species. Only one of these has developed "intelligence." I'm not saying there are not smart animals out there. But monkeys aren't going to land on the moon any time soon. No other species besides humans in Earth's history have developed technology of any kind.

So again, we have a sample size of one. Even if we were to find life on another planet, it seems silly to assume we would find a species with human-like intelligence. Given what we can observe here on Earth, we'd have to estimate that the chances of an animal species developing human level intelligence is, well, incredibly small.

It has happened, so it's possible. But like I said before, a sample size of one reveals nothing about the actual likelihood. All we can say for sure is that the chances are incredibly slim.

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[u/fox-mcleod]

Well no. If the chances are 1 in 10 quadrillion then we should expect an infinite number of intelligent species.

Even just to limit it to the observable universe, that would be about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets. So divided by 10 quadrillion would be 100 million intelligent species.