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The Origin of Life
The origin of life is a question that we may be able to understand and serious people are working on. I think many of us would indeed bet that probably some kind of life exists elsewhere. But even if you accept that, then there are many contingencies going from simple life to present day life. Some biologists like Stephen Jay Gould thought that if you re-round evolution, you'd end up with something quite different. So the contingencies in evolution may militate against the emergence of intelligence, even if life gets started in lots of places. And that's why it's just an exciting time now that we are starting to address these.