| Subject: Re: The Fermi Paradox and SETI Success |
| From: Robert Carnegie |
| Date: 18/08/2008, 13:45 |
| Newsgroups: sci.astro.amateur,alt.sci.seti,alt.sci.planetary,talk.origins |
On Aug 18, 3:14 am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
Ever seen the TV show "Survivor"?
You mean, the anthropological documentary series, with all the
unbiased unedited video?
In two seasons, they tried dividing the Survivors into a male tribe
and a female tribe. Each time they tried this, the all-male tribe
got organized promptly and ran their camp well. The all-female
tribe spent all their time bickering, and all the women kept running
off doing their own thing instead of working together. Their camp
was a mess.
Now, first problems with this: These are, as I understand it,
volunteers; people who think that going away to participate in this
television programme for an extended period of time is a positive
investment of a significant fraction of their finite lifespan - which
probably biases it towards selecting people whose home housekeeping is
going pretty badly. And then they're selected by audition, I presume,
to provide the greatest amusement to a television audience, just as
_The Weakest Link_ game show players are, I cannot but imagine,
carefully picked to be conspicuously stupid. So surely the _Survivor_
cast are not anthropologically typical?