Water being common doesn't mean life is common. We have the intuition to be aware that the exact atomic configuration of a boeing 747 getting replicated by pure chance on a planet 500 light years away is impossibly low. So impossibly low that I'm willing to bet my life that it won't ever happen, not just on a planet 500 light years away, but on every planet in the universe. What are the chances of life being on a planet 500 light years away? Unfortunately the definition of life is vague and the chemical processes required by life aren't even completely understood.
Without knowing the processes/materials necessary to ignite the self replicating processes required for life we don't possess the information necessary to know whether life is probable or improbable. Even in a universe with plentiful water and plentiful habitable planets, without context on what started it all we can't make any meaningful prediction. Is life like the boeing 747 or is it not?
I always find it ludicrous when someone says the universe is just so vast that life has to exist somewhere else. We just don't have enough understanding/context to know.
Without knowing the processes/materials necessary to ignite the self replicating processes required for life we don't possess the information necessary to know whether life is probable or improbable. Even in a universe with plentiful water and plentiful habitable planets, without context on what started it all we can't make any meaningful prediction. Is life like the boeing 747 or is it not?
I always find it ludicrous when someone says the universe is just so vast that life has to exist somewhere else. We just don't have enough understanding/context to know.