I certainly understand the "numbers" argument, however I am not a fan (or believer) in quantity-conjecture logic when there is no data to support it. We live in an infinite universe with infinite possibilities and that being the case, very small probabilities are likely. So matters not if there are an infinite number of planets because this does not preclude, statistically, there being only one case. If we use the logic that just because there are a lot of circumstances (i.e., exoplanets) that because of the shear numbers there must be life elsewhere, well that is just as nonsensical as saying that because there are most likely an infinate numbers of planets elsewhere, so there must be life elsewhere, then there also must be a large number of human beings that are an exact copy of me also because with all those numbers my exact genetic makeup and upbringing cannot be unique! So you can see how one can really justify anything with a numbers argument. But alas I have no data indicating that the human DNA has ever been existent in any other organism than here on Earth. So regardless of the numbers of other planets, I cannot deduce or interpolate that "I" exist anyplace else. Just makes no sense the numbers-based arguments without other supporting data to bring some validity to it.

If one wants to use statistics of numbers to do a prediction, they would need to have knowledge of the exact circumstances which allowed biogenisis to happen then make a case that those exact circumstances would indeed be possible given what is known about the formation of exoplanet systems. Minus that, there is no validity to the assumption that just because more worlds that this must mean that other life must exist. From a deductive standpoint, all we can say is that there is one world with life on it. Given that we have no clue how life came about here, we cannot predict, deduce, or interpolate that there is more elsewhere because we have no data to support the notion. I mean it is just as likely, that perhaps we had no biogenisis here on Earth at all, and that the only reason there is life here is that some civilization long ago did here just what this Project Genesis is contending. And if this is so, then who know what the circumstance might have been for that other civilization's life to begin was! Could have been a radically different environment for them and what they seeded here they engineered to work here. So the conjectures are really endless since we no nothing about biogenesis. Heck, we don't even know exactly when life first appeared here. Recent findings now suggest that microbial life was here on Earth while it was still molten!

https://www.livescience.com/60537-oldest-evidence-of-life-found.html

 

I kind of look at it this way...there are probably many processes, that given the physics and circumstances and conditions of this universe, will have odds of happening more than once of let's say on the order of 1:1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. And of course there are other processes that may yield something with odds of 1:1 or 1:2. Just choose your odds. So if life is one of those things that is a rarer event to happen (biogenesis), then a bit of a rarer event to survive once it does get created, then a somewhat rare even to eventually be able to reproduce, etc., etc., then perhaps the current age of our universe is insufficient for it to be likely that there are more than one occurrence...or more than a handful in all the universe. So perhaps it will take a universe that is over 100 billion years old for life to be a less statistically rare thing. No one really knows since we've not found it anyplace and do not know how it starts. It's all just conjecture. Sure it would be cool if life was everywhere, but right now all we know is that it is no where we've looked with the tools we have. That being the case I'd rather seed lifeless places we know might sustain the life we have here just in case biogenesis is one of these ultra-rare processes.

 

Interesting point. But seems we have the right to crash things into Mercury and the Moon and Saturn? Leave space trash all over the solar system? Burn up Plotonium 238 reactor in Saturn's atmosphere, etc. (Note that between U.S. and Russia there are probably around 100 radio isotope generators abandoned in the solar system)?

IMO there is no "morality card" to play here. If there is no life on another world, then we would just as much right to seed it with life as some country has the right to crash or lans a probe with a nuclear generator on it or a passing asteriod has a right to crash into it and devastate or destroy it. Perhaps this seems like a harsh attitude but I'm not exactly comfortable with some government or group of governments here on Earth dictating what free explorers can do in a place they do not own. The current Outer Space Treaty can say all it wants, but we all know that as soon as the first human colony becomes fully independent of Earth for anything, that that will be the day they claim ownership of the world they are on and warn Earthers that they need permission to visit or face arrest and imprisonment. So governments and explorers and probably even corporations will lay claim to things the moment the umbilical chord to Earth is no longer a necessity.

 

Thanks for the book recommendations!