Intelligent life in the universe, Part Deux:

Originally posted by sonhouse
Yes except for the fact that this is not the spiritual forum. I don't think anyone brought in the concept of god here. This has nothing to do with a god, your god, his god, whatever. We are discussing SETI, the attempt to find extra terrestrial civilizations from their radio or laser broadcasts. This is a totally technological discussion.

I forgot which forum I was on again. They only believe in man on this forum.

The header at the top says "Science Forum". Unscientific concepts have no place here and are not welcomed.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I don't like your analogy, it is far from accurate.
Much better is this:
You are on a farmstead in a fairly remote part of the country. You stand on your porch at night and look around for signs of other people walking around.

No, that is not more accurate. You see, even if you don't know that there are people anywhere near you, you do at least know that people exist. People are somewhere out there, this is undebatable, and you are justified in assuming that, even if you don't see them, they are still there, somewhere not too far from the positions where you saw them last.

Aliens, by contrast, very well may not exist. When we look for aliens, we do not look for something we know was once out there and should still be there - even if not where we saw it last, even if not the same aliens we saw last time. We're looking for something we hope is out there.

Richard

Originally posted by RJHinds
Isn't this the same argument atheists use for "there is no God" comment?

No.

Even most atheists are not that stupid. After all, most of them do not quite descend to your level of dishonesty.

Richard

Originally posted by sonhouse
Negative evidence does not mean they don't exist of course.

No. But UFOlogists and their ilk would do well to remember that neither does it mean that scientists are (intentionally, through stupidity, out of fear, or because The Greys have brainwashed them, take your paranoid pick) overlooking any "fact" that they "must" be out there.

Remember that a negative result, however small, of however little significance, is still a negative result, not an excuse to fiddle it into a positive one.

Richard

Originally posted by Shallow Blue
No. But UFOlogists and their ilk would do well to remember that neither does it mean that scientists are (intentionally, through stupidity, out of fear, or because The Greys have brainwashed them, take your paranoid pick) overlooking any "fact" that they "must" be out there.

Remember that a negative result, however small, of however little significan ...[text shortened]... s still a negative result, not an excuse to fiddle it into a positive one.

Richard

Well it seems just like the search for gravity waves, LIGO and the like. No luck so far but they still have confidence in relativity which predicts such radiation. Same situation with detectors not quite there yet to detect either life elsewhere or gravity waves.

We just have to get better instrumentation. Of course that might be decades down the road.

It seems a safe bet to say there has to be life SOMEWHERE in our galaxy at least. It would be a shame if after say, 300 years, of searching in the future, we still find nothing.

Personally I think life will be found within 30 years at least somewhere else in our solar system if not around some other star.

Originally posted by Shallow Blue
No, that is not more accurate. You see, even if you don't know that there are people anywhere near you, you do at least know that people exist. People are somewhere out there, this is undebatable, and you are justified in assuming that, even if you don't see them, they are still there, somewhere not too far from the positions where you saw them last.

But not necessarily in the vicinity of the person looking in my analogy.

Your analogy on the other hand suggested that we had actually done some searching. We haven't. We have hardly even glanced out of the corner our eyes, and you think that because you didn't notice a sparkle that is evidence that there is no gold ring in the country you live in. Sorry, but its so insignificant as to not even count as negative evidence.

Originally posted by twhitehead
But not necessarily in the vicinity of the person looking in my analogy.

Your analogy on the other hand suggested that we had actually done some searching. We haven't. We have hardly even glanced out of the corner our eyes, and you think that because you didn't notice a sparkle that is evidence that there is no gold ring in the country you live in. Sorry, but its so insignificant as to not even count as negative evidence.

You are discounting all the SETI searches as insignificant? It adds up to terabytes of data, even if negative, that is not insignificant. Even if we end up with exabytes of data it is still not nothing.

Originally posted by sonhouse
It seems a safe bet to say there has to be life SOMEWHERE in our galaxy at least.

No, it does not. That's my whole point. We do not know. The only safe bet, with all the complete absence of any evidence and, which too many people forget, no credible theories either way, is this: we do not know. There is no convincing reason to believe that there is life somewhere in our galaxy outside Earth, and no convincing reason to believe that there is no life outside Earth. No evidence - only hopes and speculations.

Again, please remember: not for, nor against.

It would be a shame if after say, 300 years, of searching in the future, we still find nothing.

Perhaps. But do not let your fears become the master of your science.

Richard

Originally posted by Shallow Blue
No, it does not. That's my whole point. We do not know. The only safe bet, with all the complete absence of any evidence and, which too many people forget, no credible theories either way, is this: we do not know. There is no convincing reason to believe that there is life somewhere in our galaxy outside Earth, and no convincing reason to ...[text shortened]... thing.

Perhaps. But do not let your fears become the master of your science.

Richard[/b]

That's not quite true - we know some things about what other planets look like, and we know approximately what ingredients are required for life. So even though our knowledge of planets, particularly outside our solar system, is limited, we can make guesstimates of the number of planets expected to have life on them. You make it sound like it's a metaphysical question, but it's not.

Originally posted by Shallow Blue
No, it does not. That's my whole point. We do not know. The only safe bet, with all the complete absence of any evidence and, which too many people forget, no credible theories either way, is this: we do not know. There is no convincing reason to believe that there is life somewhere in our galaxy outside Earth, and no convincing reason to ...[text shortened]... thing.

Perhaps. But do not let your fears become the master of your science.

Richard[/b]

I despise these kinds of vacuous arguments people try to make. What the hell is your point? The reasonable position for a scientist to take regarding the existence of life elsewhere in the universe is clear: since life exists on Earth, it quite likely exists elsewhere. That is a common thread found throughout the history of science: whatever we think is unique about us and our position in the universe, the universe has a way of showing that we are not all that unique. There was a time when it was thought that Earth is the only world, and that it is at the center of the universe, and that our sun is the only sun, and that our galaxy is the only galaxy. Such conceits are consistently found to be false.

So, while no one can say that life exists elsewhere in the universe with 100% certainty, it does seem to be logical that it does. Otherwise we are left to explain why, magically, life managed to appear in just one place, and only one place. We would have to try to explain why Earth and our solar system was blessed with bacteria eons ago, and no other physical system -- however similar -- managed to turn the same trick.

A couple of decades ago or so someone like you would have been running around in rags accosting pedestrians with spittle-foamed rants about how we don't know that other planets exist beyond our solar system, and anyone who said they did exist is "letting fear master their science" or some similar twaddle. Well, we now know of hundreds of exosolar planets, many of which are candidates for having liquid water on their surfaces. The probability of extraterrestrial life has just risen significantly as a result.

Science is all about speculation. Without speculation there cannot be theories, and without theories there cannot be experimentation. Without experimentation, no progress can be made. You may find it upsetting that scientists bet on a thing being true before it has been proven true, but that is the way of things. However, no honest scientist will say that anything not proven is 100% certain to be proven. Many will say, though, that something is certain to be true with 90% or even 99% certainty. Take your 10% then, or your 1%, and give it a rest.

quOriginally posted by Shallow Blue
No, it does not. That's my whole point. We do not know. The only safe bet, with all the complete absence of any evidence and, which too many people forget, no credible theories either way, is this: we do not know. There is no convincing reason to believe that there is life somewhere in our galaxy outside Earth, and no convincing reason t ...[text shortened]... thing.

Perhaps. But do not let your fears become the master of your science.

Richard[/b]

Of course we do not KNOW, we don't have starships, That is not the point. The way you are thinking, you are putting the Earth and all life in it in a completely unique position, like we live in some kind of special place and for some reason not duplicated anywhere else in the universe.

But just think a bit more logically:

The atoms that make up our bodies, our atmosphere, our very Earth are not unique in the universe nor even in our own solar system. A carbon atom is a carbon atom is a carbon atom.

There is nothing unique about the Earth except for having life and liquid water and so forth. Conditions worked out just right for life here.

Don't you ever think about the fact there are literally hundreds of billions of stars in our own galaxy and then hundreds of billions of galaxies we have already seen in our universe and if some theories are right, there could be hundreds of billions of universes.

Doesn't that say SOMETHING to you about statistical possibility?

What reason do you give for your idea that Earth is totally unique in the universe? What makes us so outstandingly special that life CANNOT possibly exist elsewhere?

You need to limber up your mind a bit and do some speculation.

One invention of mine has to do with a variable fret ruler. Frets are on some stringed musical instruments like guitars, mandolins and such. But the fretboards come in many different lengths and they all follow a certain rule, the 12th root of 2, or the inverse of that. So each fretboard has to be constructed and tested for a specific length. I wanted a method to be able to see if a luthier put the frets in the right place, a quick visual check.

So the first thing I did was to speculate about certain stretchable fabrics. This was before I ever actually built anything. I did not have the slightest idea if what I was speculating about could actually be constructed.

So from that speculation, I started actually designing and building and came up with a way that proved to work and thereby validated my speculation.

Which has nothing to do with SETI of course. The point is I started from absolutely nothing but a gem of an idea, a speculation, an internal question about what would be possible in that particular concept and I proved myself right.

Without that original speculation I would never have followed the path that led to my making a unique and simple invention.

Using my variable fret ruler I in fact was able to show luthier's sometimes DON'T put the frets in the right place btw.

Speculation is what drives science.

Originally posted by sonhouse
You are discounting all the SETI searches as insignificant? It adds up to terabytes of data, even if negative, that is not insignificant. Even if we end up with exabytes of data it is still not nothing.

There is a difference between 'nothing' and 'insignificant'.
If you determined that there was no life on mars, would this have any significance towards the question as to whether there is life on one of the approx 10^8 planets in the observable universe?

Originally posted by twhitehead
There is a difference between 'nothing' and 'insignificant'.
If you determined that there was no life on mars, would this have any significance towards the question as to whether there is life on one of the approx 10^8 planets in the observable universe?

No but what about the inverse? Suppose we find life on mars, does that say anything about life in the interstellar region?

Originally posted by sonhouse
No but what about the inverse? Suppose we find life on mars, does that say anything about life in the interstellar region?

Yes, I think it would. I think it would be a very significant find. It would either tell us that life travelled from Mars to Earth or vice versa, or that life is very common in the universe.

But do you get my point that even if we have terrabytes of data (with no signal found) it may be insignificant if it is only covering a tiny proportion of the universe?
Would you also agree that we have only actually looked at a very small proportion of the universe? I very much doubt that any signal we have sent from earth would be detectable from another galaxy using our current SETI technology. Therefore at most, we have only looked at our own galaxy for earth type signals (less than a billionth of the visible universe) (actually Wikipedia says: "There are probably more than 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe"😉.
Even within our own galaxy, most SETI searches do not cover the whole sky, and only a small proportion of the spectrum, and only search for certain types of signal.
And after all that, we are, after all, only searching for intelligent life. Unintelligent life is not currently observable outside our own solar system and we haven't even rule out it existing on Mars.