Yeah, yeah, I'm roughly number 5 stating that, blame the new thread design here.

It's a surname, so Mouses should be correct.

In 5 billion years the sun will go red giant. In 500 million years it will allegedly be bright enough to raise temperatures on earth to over 1000° C - combined with a strong green-house effect. Think Venus.

At some point in the early twenty-first century all of mankind was united in celebration.

Cool location for small rave.

Well, 50 million years is a long time, chances are we either go extinct much sooner or rise to technological levels unimaginable today - gaining the capacity to deal with this. Also, I still doubt the 50 million years claim.

Jeff did it.

Inglou rious Basterds, heretic.

No worries, it's absolutely readable.

Really looking forward to reading this. Deutsch's "The Beginning of Infinity" blew me away. Twice.

Just be careful not to get any into your blowhole, no prob.

This has to be the most hilarious comment ever written on the threads of a SF/Fantasy website.

Would you agree that since you bring up "observational data", the claim is true only if "typical" is interpreted solely in terms of characteristics that can be to some degree measured for extrasolar planets, like size/density/mass and orbital distance?

If you conclude anything about what an observation says about objective reality, aren't you always doing so on the basis of some theory or model whose predictions match up with your observations?

But if you say there is "observational data" to suggest it, that would be "evidence" in the hypothetico-deductive sense that the observations are more likely to occur in a world governed by one theory than another, no?

I don't see why a new class of weaponry should in any way change our perception or judgment of war as such. What we see these days are illegal wars of aggression, fought in cyberspace.

Yes, but you omit the fact that we do have plenty observational data that clearly suggests that we are a pretty typical rocky planet, circling a typical class G star in the typical outer arm of a typical spiral galaxy. And this isn't changed by the fact that Earth is pretty atypical compared to empty space, I honestly…

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I absolutely agree with your basic hypothetico-deductive reasoning, I just think that you don't apply it correctly.