I written something that is somewhat related to this. “Now Fatigue” is the opposite of Toffler’s future shock wherein the person afflicted feels that social and technological progress just simple isn’t happening fast enough.

I’m not an economist and I’m not going to go round and round about it. I merely suggested that people have thought about this for centuries and have come up with answers for it.

Read the thread through. I’m talking about likelihood, not possibility. There’s a difference. Hanson’s hypothesis just seems very unlikely. I can’t agree with it until we have more evidence that all the suppositions he’s making are correct. He’s drawing a conclusion before the facts are in. The principle of mediocrity…

Still a confusing statement in that it kind of sounds like a question. Please, clarify what you mean. I’m still confused.

“Earth would be “special” in a merely statistical sense of a very small probability of a similarly hospitable planet arising in a randomly-selected star system,...”

Which is just like Douglas Adams’ puddle:

That’s unrelated to what I’m specifically referring to. Please read the link I point to.

Your question is confusingly worded. Can you clarify what you’re asking about here?

There is a difference between what science means by mediocrity and what you’re assuming here. You may to read more in my first link to see the differences.

Honestly, I’d rather avoid surgical implants until it gets to this level of subtlety:

Here are a few takes on one possible answer to that:

“...I would also say that we have a lot of data, at least in some respects, that suggests that our little corner of the universe is pretty unusual in a number of ways that definitely make it much easier for life to evolve.”

The Day After Tomorrow of neuroscience movies.

This all makes sense to me. Let’s do it!

No, it’s not the reason for the paradox but at least it explains why we think there is one, which is not the same thing.

Assuming mediocrity has predictive power as evidenced by Copernicus’ simplification, Darwin’s theory of evolution and Einstein’s discarding of Newton’s absolute reference frame.

I’m not an expert of any kind but I’m automatically skeptical of any hypothesis that marks Earth out as special. I’m a firm believer in science’s assumption of mediocrity.

Yes, that’s informative! I had wondered how all the different forks of Android would cope with this. But it sounds like they’ve got ways. Cool.

This makes sense to me. Star Trek, at least until JJ Abrams turned it into highly marketable Hollywood action drek, was about human social progress and trying to make things better. It was about the 1960s and changing the world.

It’s not even the dorkiness of strapping this monster to your head, it’s the creepiness of some of its applications that worries me: