What's so special about Earth?

Gawdzilla Sama said:
The planetary detection system wasn't "biased", it was what we had at the time.
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In the sense that the detection system was more likely to detect Jupiter-type gas giant planets than small rocky worlds, it was biased.

Do you think that using the word "biased" in this sort of context is a mistake?

I'm not saying that the astronomers who were looking for exoplanents only wanted to find gas giants, or anything like that. They were fully aware of the limitations of the equipment and methods that were using and they were the first to agree that they would expect to detect more gas giants than rocky planets, all else being equal.

No "detector" in science is capable of detecting everything. The Hubble space telescope isn't good at detecting infrared light. The James Webb telescope is great at detecting infrared light, but not as good as Hubble at visible light. We could say that the Hubble telescope is "biased" towards detecting visible light sources, whereas the Webb telescope is biased towards detecting infrared sources.

This isn't a moral judgment. It is just stating a fact about the limitations of the detectors.
 
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We do spot the elephants before the mice in most cases. I'll go with biased in that fashion. But I remember the old rule, "Never look down the barrel of a loaded word."
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
We do spot the elephants before the mice in most cases. I'll go with biased in that fashion. But I remember the old rule, "Never look down the barrel of a loaded word."
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All words have multiple meanings and usages. Context generally implies which meaning is intended. In this case, James R was pretty explicit about his intended usage:

"Due to the detection mechanisms we have used, the exoplanets we are currently aware of make up a biased sample, in the sense that it is a lot easier to detect gas giant planets that are relatively close to their parent star than it is to detect small rocky planets like Earth."

It's pretty hard to misinterpret that.
 
I think what makes earth so “special” is that it’s the only place we know of as home. I guess we’re a little biased. Without earth, we wouldn’t be alive, but since we’re here, it’s because of earth’s atmosphere, water, climate stability (well, for now). There’s no plan B as far as we can tell. Or planet B. So, from this simplistic viewpoint, earth is pretty remarkable.
 
DaveC426913 said:
All words have multiple meanings and usages. Context generally implies which meaning is intended. In this case, James R was pretty explicit about his intended usage:

"Due to the detection mechanisms we have used, the exoplanets we are currently aware of make up a biased sample, in the sense that it is a lot easier to detect gas giant planets that are relatively close to their parent star than it is to detect small rocky planets like Earth."

It's pretty hard to misinterpret that.
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I don't think I did.
 
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