TIME and LIFE on other planets (9 options)

What does A >>> time >>> omega mean?

How could this be something we can have an opinion on, educated or otherwise?

By intelligent life, do you mean extrasolar, or on the Kardashev Scale? Must it be conscious, or spacefaring?

I'm an avid (but amateur/unqualified) cosmology fan and a big consumer of scifi and I wouldn't know how to answer this question at all.

The answers are a little weird in that they're mixing hard opinions with a few 'could be's. Ie 4 and 5 are not mutually exclusive, yet we're being asked to pick one only.

1) It means that Alpha is the 1st planet in the history of the universe to host intelligent life, while Omega is the last planet to host intelligent life. So there was no life before Alpha and there will be no new life after Omega.

2) It's good to have your own opinion on this, because it's much more precise than the basic question "Are we alone in the universe ?" - which doesn't consider the time factor. This one does.

3) It's probably hard to define, but I would say it means life forms which can feel emotions, be creative, learn, invent and have developed a form of communication.

4) Number 5 is different than the remaining 8 cards, because it's least precise of all cards, but it doesn't exclude any other of the remaining 8 cards. Number 5 is like thinking that all scenarios are possible. So it reaches the truth, no matter what the real truth is. It's like the safest option.

5 or 6.

You can pick only one card. I was hesitating between 5, 7 and 8. I chose number 8 in the end.

Ah right that's making more sense now. This is an exercise in certainty, then. In which case I feel fairly confident that at least 80% of cosmologists or exobiologists worth their salt will pick 5. It's not just the safest option, it's the only one that has any reasonable logic behind it. The rest are purely speculative.

On what basis did you choose 8?

1) I think majority of scientists would choose card 6, because they think with 99,99999% certainty that life does exist somewhere else (because the universe is so vast). But they don't usually mention the time factor, so I'm not entirely sure 😀

You can compare this to making bets in casino Roulette:
5 is like black or red
1, 3, 7, 9 are like numbers from 1 - 12
2, 4, 6, 8 are like exact numbers ("29" for example)

So even if other options are "speculative", just like in Casino - you can win more because of the higher risk.

2) I chose 8, because I desperately want this to be truth, it would be so beautiful 😀 Also sometimes when I see planet Venus in the night sky, I like to think that it used to be a home for an advanced civilization, long time ago. I know that's not very scientific as a basis, but well, fortunately it's not necessary here. Maybe if I read more about it and check how many of all planets are already fully formed now and if there are going to be any new ones, I will have a scientific basis also. But there's so many things still remaining a mystery that it will be hard to justify choice 2, 4, 6 or 8.

The wording is pretty important here. All the options other than 5 are expressing certainty in one way or another. 5 is the only one leaving all options open.

So even if you're 99.9999999% certain that life must have existed before and will exist after us, 5 is the only logical pick.

Win more because of higher risk? I'm not clear on how risk/reward plays into this - what are the rewards, what are we risking?

Choosing an answer based on what you want to be true doesn't seem like it's in the spirit of this game. I want there to be life and think there almost certainly is life and that that life is almost certainly both predating and postdating us, but nonetheless, according to the rules, 5 is the only logical answer.

2, 4, 6 and 8 are all making the same mistake that 1, 3, 7 and 9 are, but twice.

Those definitions are indeed too vague to be useful, and it's not hard to theorize a spacefaring civilisation that doesn't even have analogues to those ideas (with the exception of communication). We can make less vague distinctions, such as spacefaring. i.e. they've gotten off their planet, or apply the Kardashev Scale:

By that measure we may be considered at 0.4 on that scale. We could define 'intelligent life' as a 1 on that scale, for convenience, which it's anticipated we will reach in ~ 200 years, assuming climate change doesn't happen.

But 5 doesn't exclude 4, which basically says that Earth is just a rare exception from the rule that the universe was, is and will always be empty (in terms of life). And scientists don't like to say that "we are alone" and that "Earth is the only planet in the history of the universe to host intelligent life". They would want to exclude this option as it is according to some equation (Drake's I believe) that it's 0,0000000001% likely we are alone.

5 is very mathematical. It's a mathematically correct answer, but math doesn't cover the whole story here.

You're risking you will be on the darker path of thinking - which is being wrong, and you can win being closer to the light of truth although you'll never know if you made the correct choice on 2, 4, 6 and 8. I don't want to sound like a cult leader, but it's pretty obvious that it's good to follow the correct answers to important questions. God only knows who's right and who's wrong, but I like to think that my option is true and that I made the perfect bet.

wazz, please note that what you're trying to say is that 5 is the only logical answer, because it leaves open all other options, which are all in fact making a mistake. I'm just quoting your words, nothing else 😀

If your criticism is that I'm repeating myself, that's a fair shout, but if it's that my answers are inconsistent, I'm not sure I follow

I just mean that what would be the use of having a key to open all 8 doors, if all these 8 doors lead to the wrong rooms ?

Some of these 8 doors must lead to the final truth.

A better analogy here to me would be that we're told that a deck of cards has been shuffled in a different room to us that we can never access, that deck of cards has been burnt, and now we need to guess the order of that deck of cards. The ace of spades could have been the first card, or the last, and we can certainly speculate on the reasons why it's not a fair shuffle and that not all 52 positions are equally likely, but we can never rule out any of the 52.

Ok, but I didn't shuffle and burn this deck. I just made a logical use of the unknown.

Also, the difference is that deck of cards will always be just a deck of cards, while these 9 options are about the history of our home.

I'm okay at leading to the water but I've no interest in trying to make you drink water you don't want to drink, so instead I'll divert the conversation by asking:

'I desperately want this to be truth, it would be so beautiful'

Why do you so desperately want this to be true? What would be beautiful about this?

Actually my instinct tells me it's true. The human kind is the last one to exist in the universe. The whole universe is ours. We are the grand finale of this symphony. It makes us all special. But there were others in the past and they left us a lot of signs and artifacts throughout the universe, so we should search for it.

Not only this I find to be beautiful, but also the fact that science should respect my opinion as it might be truth from the strictly scientific point of view.

I've been thinking like a split personality person for 21 years that we could be alone or not alone as well. I got tired of it on April 11th 2025.

My new order of things ends this schizophrenic thinking where I must imagine 2 and only 2 universes at once (empty and full). Now I see only 1 universe in a way that partly corresponds with my previous opinion but in a revolutionary way - considering time.

I'm from group 8, you're from group 5, so this conversation can go endlessly as we might exchange explanations of two different point of views on life in the universe.

There's a lot of weird stuff going on in this post but I'm sure you already know it's weird so instead of pointing it out I'll just ask what happened on Friday?

Nothing. I created these 9 cards on Friday. I realized that I'm tired of those 3 options which I realized in 2004 that they exist:

1. We're alone
2. We're not alone
3. Both 1 or 2 are possible

So I took the tarot deck and said: "This is the key problem. I want more options." And there it is - 9 options. So now, these 3 options don't exist anymore to me.

People I talked to, were always trying to avoid this 3rd option topic, while for me it was very important. It was irritating. This was one of the main clues that something's wrong with this. Now it's all fixed.

As an encouragement to vote on this poll, I would say that not choosing a card here is like not caring about the universe at all.

Even as a joke this is in kinda poor taste

It wasn't a joke. I just expected more votes. Maybe in the future.

Card 3. I think the universe has a lot more life evolving potential in front of it than behind it.

Also, Mars might host human life in the near future. I think your cards may unintentionally allow that to count as Earth not being last.

Cool, thanks for the vote.

Good point, I realized that also after making the poll. My graphic doesn't mention it, but by "hosting intelligent life" I mean a planet on which this life originated on. In other words: "the mother planet". This meaning is included also in the dictionary definition of the word "host" I believe. So nothing to worry about 😉

Why the modality? Everybody knows nobody knows the answer.

A. Earth first? T/F
B. Earth last? T/F

Suppose I take you into a room and there is a deck of cards. I have you choose one card and record it. I don’t show you anything else to indicate what I have done or intend to do. Were you the first person who I had do this? Were you the last person I will ask to do this?

You have absolutely no evidence one way or another. You can only reasonably say that you might be the first or you might be the last. You have no information whatsoever to say any other possibility. It is analogous with regard to life in the universe. We do not actually know how life arose and what factors were necessary for that to happen. We do not know all the necessary factors for the evolution of intelligent life. All we do know is that it happened at least once - here on earth. We may be both the first time and the last time.

I voted 5.