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The mediocrity principle is the
philosophical Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
notion that "if an item is drawn at random from one of several sets or categories, it's more likely to come from the most numerous category than from any one of the less numerous categories". The principle has been taken to suggest that there is nothing very unusual about the evolution of the Solar System,
Earth's history The natural history of Earth concerns the development of planet Earth from its formation to the present day. Nearly all branches of natural science have contributed to understanding of the main events of Earth's past, characterized by consta ...
, the evolution of biological complexity,
human evolution ''Homo sapiens'' is a distinct species of the hominid family of primates, which also includes all the great apes. Over their evolutionary history, humans gradually developed traits such as Human skeletal changes due to bipedalism, bipedalism, de ...
, or any one
nation A nation is a type of social organization where a collective Identity (social science), identity, a national identity, has emerged from a combination of shared features across a given population, such as language, history, ethnicity, culture, t ...
. It is a
heuristic A heuristic or heuristic technique (''problem solving'', '' mental shortcut'', ''rule of thumb'') is any approach to problem solving that employs a pragmatic method that is not fully optimized, perfected, or rationalized, but is nevertheless ...
in the vein of the Copernican principle, and is sometimes used as a philosophical statement about the place of humanity. The idea is to assume mediocrity, rather than starting with the assumption that a phenomenon is special, privileged, exceptional, or even superior. David Bates ascribed the mediocrity principle to Sebastian von Hoerner, who as early as 1961 wrote the following:In a footnote, von Hoerner thanked F. D. Drake for his input on the subject.


Extraterrestrial life

The mediocrity principle suggests, given the existence of life on Earth, that should
life Life, also known as biota, refers to matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, Structure#Biological, organisation, met ...
exist elsewhere in the
universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents. It comprises all of existence, any fundamental interaction, physical process and physical constant, and therefore all forms of matter and energy, and the structures they form, from s ...
, it will typically exist on Earth-like planets.


Measurement of distance to stars

The mediocrity principle was implicitly applied during the 17th century, when astronomers attempted to measure the distance between distant
star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...
s and the
Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...
. By assuming that the
Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...
was just an average star, and that some stars seemed brighter simply because they were closer to us, they were able to estimate how far these stars were from the Earth. Although this method was flawed due to the differences among stars, it gave astronomers at that time a rough idea of how far the stars were from the Earth. For example, James Gregory,
Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed ...
and
Christiaan Huygens Christiaan Huygens, Halen, Lord of Zeelhem, ( , ; ; also spelled Huyghens; ; 14 April 1629 – 8 July 1695) was a Dutch mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor who is regarded as a key figure in the Scientific Revolution ...
were able to estimate the distance between
Sirius Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. Its name is derived from the Greek word (Latin script: ), meaning 'glowing' or 'scorching'. The star is designated  Canis Majoris, Latinized to Alpha Canis Majoris, and abbr ...
and the Earth through this method.


Comparison with other approaches

The mediocrity principle is in contrast with the
anthropic principle In cosmology, the anthropic principle, also known as the observation selection effect, is the proposition that the range of possible observations that could be made about the universe is limited by the fact that observations are only possible in ...
, which asserts that the presence of an intelligent observer (humans) limits the circumstances to bounds under which intelligent life can be observed to exist, no matter how improbable. Both stand in contrast to the fine-tuning hypothesis, which asserts that the natural conditions for intelligent life are implausibly rare. The mediocrity principle implies that Earth-like environments are necessarily common, based in part on the evidence of any happening at all, whereas the anthropic principle suggests that no assertion can be made about the probability of intelligent life based on a sample set of one ( self-described) example, who are necessarily capable of making such an assertion about themselves. It is also possible to handle the Mediocrity Principle as a statistical problem, a case of a single data point statistics, also present in the
German tank problem German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
.


Longevity estimation

The mediocrity principle can also be used to estimate the future
life expectancy Human life expectancy is a statistical measure of the estimate of the average remaining years of life at a given age. The most commonly used measure is ''life expectancy at birth'' (LEB, or in demographic notation ''e''0, where '' ...
of presently observable objects, and is especially useful when no hard
data Data ( , ) are a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted for ...
is available.
Richard Gott Richard Willoughby Gott (born 28 October 1938)''Winchester College: A Register''. Edited by P.S.W.K. McClure and R.P. Stevens, on behalf of the Wardens and Fellows of Winchester College. 7th edition, 2014. pp. 271 (Short Half 1952 list heading) ...
extended the mediocrity principle to argue that if there is nothing special about observing an object in the present moment (Tnow), then one can expect the present moment to occur randomly between the start (Tstart) and the end (Tend) of the observed object's longevity. Therefore, the total longevity of an observable object can be expected (with 50% confidence) to lie in the interval 1/3 ⋅ Tstart < Tnow < 3 ⋅ Tend. This estimation technique was derived after a 1969 visit to the
Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (, ) was a guarded concrete Separation barrier, barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and the East Germany, German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany). Construction of the B ...
, which was constructed eight years earlier. Gott reasoned that there was nothing special about the timing of his visit, so the above equation (with T = 8) estimates that the Berlin Wall would be likely to last for at least 2.67 years but no longer than 24 years. (The Berlin Wall fell 20 years later, in 1989.) Longevity estimation reflects the
maxim Maxim or Maksim may refer to: Entertainment *Maxim (magazine), ''Maxim'' (magazine), an international men's magazine ** Maxim (Australia), ''Maxim'' (Australia), the Australian edition ** Maxim (India), ''Maxim'' (India), the Indian edition *Maxim ...
"old things tend to last and new things tend to disappear." Most applications of longevity estimation use a 95% confidence interval, which decreases the precision of the estimate by drastically increasing the interval of estimation. One useful estimation made on this confidence interval is the survival of
Homo sapiens Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are Hominidae, great apes characterized by their Prehistory of nakedness and clothing ...
, which is thought to have emerged around 200,000 years ago. If there is nothing special about our observation of
species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...
now, in the 21st century, then longevity estimation (with T = 200,000 and a confidence interval of 95%) yields a projected timespan of between 5,100 and 7.8 million years during which the human species will be extant. Some other projected lifespans (with 95% confidence) include
industrial technology Industrial technology is the use of engineering and manufacturing technology to make production faster, simpler, and more efficient. The industrial technology field employs creative and technically proficient individuals who can help a company ac ...
(estimated to last somewhere between 7 years and 10,000 years), the
internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
(between 7 months and 975 years), and
Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...
(between 6 months and 772 years). Jim Holt analyzed longevity estimation and concluded that our understanding of
humor Humour ( Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids i ...
and
number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...
will survive for at least one million years. Humans share these traits with other species, which implies we share these traits with some
common ancestor Common descent is a concept in evolutionary biology applicable when one species is the ancestor of two or more species later in time. According to modern evolutionary biology, all living beings could be descendants of a unique ancestor commonl ...
that lived millions of years ago.


Other uses

David Deutsch David Elieser Deutsch ( ; ; born 18 May 1953) is a British physicist at the University of Oxford, often described as the "father of quantum computing". He is a visiting professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for ...
argues that the mediocrity principle is incorrect from a physical point of view, in reference either to humanity's part of the universe or to its species. Deutsch refers to
Stephen Hawking Stephen William Hawking (8January 194214March 2018) was an English theoretical physics, theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Between ...
's quote: "The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred
billion Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions: * 1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is now the most common sense of the word in all varieties of ...
galaxies". Deutsch wrote that Earth's neighborhood in the universe is not typical (80% of the universe's matter is
dark matter In astronomy, dark matter is an invisible and hypothetical form of matter that does not interact with light or other electromagnetic radiation. Dark matter is implied by gravity, gravitational effects that cannot be explained by general relat ...
) and that a concentration of mass such as the Solar System is an "isolated, uncommon phenomenon". He also disagrees with
Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator and author. He is an Oxford fellow, emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Simonyi Professor for the Publ ...
, who considers that humans, because of natural evolution, are limited to the capabilities of their species. Deutsch responds that even though evolution did not give humans the ability to detect
neutrino A neutrino ( ; denoted by the Greek letter ) is an elementary particle that interacts via the weak interaction and gravity. The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass is so small ('' -ino'') that i ...
s, scientists can currently detect them, which significantly expands their capabilities beyond what is available as a result of evolution.


See also

*
Abiogenesis Abiogenesis is the natural process by which life arises from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities on Earth was not a single even ...
*
Anthropic principle In cosmology, the anthropic principle, also known as the observation selection effect, is the proposition that the range of possible observations that could be made about the universe is limited by the fact that observations are only possible in ...
* Copernican principle * Cosmicism *
Cosmological principle In modern physical cosmology, the cosmological principle is the notion that the spatial distribution of matter in the universe is uniformly isotropic and homogeneous when viewed on a large enough scale, since the forces are expected to act equa ...
* Cosmic pluralism *
Deep ecology Deep ecology is an environmental philosophy that promotes the inherent worth of all living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs, and argues that modern human societies should be restructured in accordance with such idea ...
* Doomsday argument *
Drake equation The Drake equation is a probability theory, probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial life, extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy.Physics Today 14 (4), 40–46 (1961). The e ...
*
Exceptionalism Exceptionalism is the perception or belief that a species, country, society, institution, movement, individual, or time period is "wiktionary:exceptional, exceptional" (i.e., unusual or extraordinary). The term carries the implication, whether or ...
* Neocatastrophism * Particle chauvinism * Plenitude principle * Rare Earth hypothesis *
Uniformitarianism Uniformitarianism, also known as the Doctrine of Uniformity or the Uniformitarian Principle, is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in our present-day scientific observations have always operated in the universe in ...


Notes


References


External links


Goodwin, Gribbin, and Hendry's 1997 Hubble Parameter measurement relying on the mediocrity principle
The authors call this the 'Principle of Terrestrial Mediocrity' even though the assumption they make is that the Milky Way ''Galaxy'' is typical (rather than Earth). This term was coined by
Alexander Vilenkin Alexander Vilenkin (; ; born 13 May 1949) is the Leonard Jane Holmes Bernstein Professor of Evolutionary Science and Director of the Institute of Cosmology at Tufts University. A theoretical physicist who has been working in the field of cosmolo ...
(1995). {{DEFAULTSORT:Mediocrity Principle Earth Philosophy of science Principles Search for extraterrestrial intelligence