03 Oct '06 06:35>
Originally posted by twhiteheadAhem.
Experience does not tell us that there is no non-biological concious intelligence in the universe, only that there is none on this planet and probably none in the solar system. Unless you have visited or at least gained some sort of experience of other planets then you cannot make that sort of claims about them based on experience.
Our experience of the universe, which is obviously limited to this planet, does indeed tell us
that there is no non-biological conscious intelligence.
If you want to make speculations, sure!, there is all sort of stuff out there. But those speculations
aren't based on any experience that we have.
Sure, we can have non-carbon-based lifeforms (I know, I know, there are some apparently sulphur-
based ones on this planet), we can have robots, aliens, spaceships, Luke Skywalker, and all sorts
of things.
The issue is one of pure agnosticism -- we have no clue because we have no experience. Given
that science is experience-based, it would be just as silly to say science can prove/disprove God
as it would be for science to say it can prove/disprove non-biological conscious intelligence.
I'm still trying to get what #1 is saying above; while some people seem to think that a conscious
universe is 'plausible,' it seems to fall under the same sort of scope as telepathy, both of which seem
to be received as pretty dubious by the majority of the scientific community.
Look: is it possible electrons talk to each other? I guess. Hell, I don't even understand how an
electron can be in two different places at precisely the same time, but, by God, the experiment is
pretty conclusive.
That having been said, other explanations include talking about 11 dimensions or other weird things
that just represent our trying to explain the unexplainable.
Despite all of this, the initial 'proof' doesn't conform to any sort of deductive logic, which was really
my main point. That people take issue with my concluding that there is no reason to believe in
non-biological conscious intelligence is more of an auxiliary point. But, at least I'm learning about
Bell's Theorem.
Nemesio