论文标题
客观的贝叶斯分析生命的早期开始和我们的迟到
An Objective Bayesian Analysis of Life's Early Start and Our Late Arrival
论文作者
论文摘要
生命在其可居住窗口的第一个五分之一之内出现在地球上，但是直到最后一个技术文明才开花。根据选择效果，如果智力的演变是一个缓慢的过程，那么推断出基于其早期出现的努力，就会感到沮丧，那么生命的早期开始可能只是我们生存的先决条件，而不是乐观的有用证据。在这项工作中，我们在贝叶斯框架中解释了这两个事件的时间顺序，通过考虑进化时段本身是未知的，需要共同推断出来，而不是预信心设定，从而在先前的工作中扩展了这两个事件。我们进一步采用客观的贝叶斯方法，以便即使使用截然不同的先验率的物质发生和进化率的人也可以同意我们的结果 - 这个问题的共同争论点。然后表明，最早的微化石证据表明，典型过程中的生物发生率至少是一个速度快的过程，而不是缓慢的过程。如果我们接受C13耗尽的锆石沉积物的更有争议的证据，那么这种适度的限制贝叶斯因子将上升到8.7（Bell等人，2015年）。对于智力演变，发现在3：2的博彩赔率时，稀有的情景略有青睐。因此，如果我们重新运行地球的时钟，则应该从统计学上倾向于经常重新出现生命，但智力可能并不是不可避免的。
Life emerged on the Earth within the first quintile of its habitable window, but a technological civilization did not blossom until its last. Efforts to infer the rate of abiogenesis, based on its early emergence, are frustrated by the selection effect that if the evolution of intelligence is a slow process, then life's early start may simply be a prerequisite to our existence, rather than useful evidence for optimism. In this work, we interpret the chronology of these two events in a Bayesian framework, extending upon previous work by considering that the evolutionary timescale is itself an unknown that needs to be jointly inferred, rather than fiducially set. We further adopt an objective Bayesian approach, such that our results would be agreed upon even by those using wildly different priors for the rates of abiogenesis and evolution - common points of contention for this problem. It is then shown that the earliest microfossil evidence for life indicates that the rate of abiogenesis is at least 2.8 times more likely to be a typically rapid process, rather than a slow one. This modest limiting Bayes factor rises to 8.7 if we accept the more disputed evidence of C13 depleted zircon deposits (Bell et al. 2015). For intelligence evolution, it is found that a rare-intelligence scenario is slightly favored at 3:2 betting odds. Thus, if we re-ran Earth's clock, one should statistically favor life to frequently re-emerge, but intelligence may not be as inevitable.
