Re: thoughts on the Drake Equation




Brian Tung wrote:

Guy Macon <http://www.GuyMacon.com/> wrote:

How do you figure? The most sucessful organisms are all quite stupid.

He means that intelligence is a strong predictor for success, not that
it's a strong prerequisite. (Think of it as a statistical version of
sufficient but not necessary.)

I understand what he meant. The problem is that intelligence is
not a strong predictor for success outside of certain specialized
ecological niches.

By any reasonable measure of "success" most intelligent animals do
rather poorly. Yes there are a lot of humans around, but the other
primates are very intelligent and are mostly endangered species.

Number of indiduals:
Humans: 6,000,000,000
SAR-11 bacteria 240,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Longevity as a species:
Humans: 250,000 years.
Cyanobacteria: 6,000,000,000 years.


--
Guy Macon
<http://www.GuyMacon.com/>

.

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