Philosophical Principles and Puzzles of SETI

A discussion of some of the more abstract arguments around SETI, including the Copernican Principle which argues we should not expect ourselves to be particularly special or unique, the Anthropic Principle which argues that our own existence is compatible with our own uniqueness or the extreme unlikelihood of similar species elsewhere in the Galaxy, the Sleeping Beauty Paradox and its lessons for these sorts of arguments, and Doomsday arguments which suggest that human civilizations are necessarily short lived and there do not exist large populations of similarly sentient creatures.