Are we alone?

[Moontanman]

Yet another take on the OP, if we are alone then we should do something about it!

 

Professor: We have a 'moral obligation' to seed universe with life

[geko]

So you are assuming that everything we know about the universe is not true...

 

I'm pretty sure my post didn't even hint at such an assumption.

 

....any sufficiently advanced civilization will be able to ignore the laws of nature?

 

Again, my post didn't hint at such an assumption.

 

My guess is that a civilisation doesn't become technologically advanced by ignoring laws of nature, rather by using and utilising them... with a million years of study you're going to get pretty good.

 

Humans can already create biological specimens in a lab.

[sman]

In reply to the OP, I agree that our chances of ever making "contact" as portrayed by popular culture is vanishingly small, I would not call it an "unfounded fantasy" or impossible.

 

It's simple, really - the rest of the universe is made with the same stuff we are made of, and follow the same laws. It is therefore completely likely that life might exist elsewhere, especially if it is kept in mind that there is absolutely nothing special about our sun, our solar system, our planet, or our position in the Milky Way. I'm even tempted to say that life must exist elsewhere, because of the immensity of space and available resources strewn through it.

 

I agree. But the existence of life somewhere doesn't qualify for "contact". It must be close enough to us in space and in time for us to detect them or them us. Popular culture invariable underestimates the quarentine of inter-stellar space. :steering:

[sman]

that's a reef alright, but not the one i was charting. what i'm saying is, i think you have a mis-impression about what randomness looks like, and so by extension what probability describes about it. it doesn't matter how many zeros you add to a probability to try & make a thing less possible, because anything possible, i.e. probability >0 (your rubicon if you will) is just that, possible. also possible, as given in my quote, is the occurance of a string of unlikely things. moreover as the author points out, this is in fact what happens in the real world as shown with the real coin tosses. so in regard to are we alone, it is entirely possible that a whole bunch of intelligent species evolved either in some close proximity of space or time. . . . . . :steering:

 

 

Okay, but still...with a large enough sample, like the amount of molecules in my body or - a simpler example - the amount of molecules in a glass of water, strings of heads & tails fade into the background. The molecules in a glass of water move about randomly, from one side of the glass to the other. It is possible (probability > 0) that all of the molecules will, at some point, find themselves on one side of the glass and none on the other. It is the possibility of one moving to the right, as opposed to the left (50%) times the possibility of the next....times the possibility of the very last one. The wait-time for an event like this exceeds the amount of time we have, the age of existance (~15billion years). I am very comfortable calling 1/2 column glasses of water, or spontaneously disembodied smans, impossible events, even though their possibilities are calculably greater than zero. I merely want to apply this to the possibility of contact to see if our unfounded fantasy will float or founder.

 

Now, on my southern front:

 

 

No you do not understand me, humans did not originate from a chain but if you follow hominids back they go from a bush with many branches back to a single branch of an already quite complex creature.....

 

....Life was inevitable, once the Earth settled down to a reasonable level of parameters complex life was inevitable, and once life became complex enough intelligence was just as inevitable. I think the fossil record bears this out, as soon as large brained animals with the ability to manipulate tools came to be, intelligence followed quite quickly.

 

The fact is I don't know that intelligence-from-life is rare or one-off any more than you know that it is common. But when you say things like "life was inevitable...complex life was inevitable...human intelligence was inevitable..." you must expect me to accuse you of teleology.

 

It may be that we will have to concede & accept our ignorance on this matter, but until then I don't want the issue muddled with archaic misconceptions. "Contact" is something, for whatever reason, we really want. We don't want to be alone - regardless where that notion came from, we should be aware of it & be extra cautious. If our thinking seems even remotely teleological - and is leading us to favorable conclusions - we should back up & rework our thinking. Or at leas re-word our posts so that sman doesn't blow that whistle. :lol:

[Turtle]

Okay, but still...with a large enough sample, like the amount of molecules in my body or - a simpler example - the amount of molecules in a glass of water, strings of heads & tails fade into the background. The molecules in a glass of water move about randomly, from one side of the glass to the other. It is possible (probability > 0) that all of the molecules will, at some point, find themselves on one side of the glass and none on the other.

 

 

no; that's not possible. probability 0. something in here about physics laws i imagine: >Fluid dynamics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

It is the possibility of one moving to the right, as opposed to the left (50%) times the possibility of the next....times the possibility of the very last one. The wait-time for an event like this exceeds the amount of time we have, the age of existance (~15billion years). I am very comfortable calling 1/2 column glasses of water, or spontaneously disembodied smans, impossible events, even though their possibilities are calculably greater than zero. I merely want to apply this to the possibility of contact to see if our unfounded fantasy will float or founder.

 

so again no. not only has this never been observed in water, it violates the laws of physics & is a mis-application of probability theory. as to the last sentence, contact is a different question entirely than "are we alone?". i'll leave that to the speculators. :lol:

[Moontanman]

The fact is I don't know that intelligence-from-life is rare or one-off any more than you know that it is common. But when you say things like "life was inevitable...complex life was inevitable...human intelligence was inevitable..." you must expect me to accuse you of teleology.

 

It may be that we will have to concede & accept our ignorance on this matter, but until then I don't want the issue muddled with archaic misconceptions. "Contact" is something, for whatever reason, we really want. We don't want to be alone - regardless where that notion came from, we should be aware of it & be extra cautious. If our thinking seems even remotely teleological - and is leading us to favorable conclusions - we should back up & rework our thinking. Or at leas re-word our posts so that sman doesn't blow that whistle. :lol:

 

Teleological? You think I'm, being Teleological? Really, REALLY REALLY? Blow the whistle but first read something about prebiotic evolution and why the development of life is inevitable before you accuse me of archaic thinking. Read Rare Earth, The Deep Hot Biosphere, Life Not as We Know It, oh god the list goes on and on. The idea that life is inevitable given the conditions of the early Earth is not archaic thinking, thinking that life is nothing but the luck of the draw is archaic. I'm not saying anything is predestined just inevitable given the conditions and the ability of life to eviolve and adapt. i give up, go blow the whistle.... My ignorance is a badge i wear with pride, at least I am too ignorant to think chance is why life is on the earth.

[Moontanman]

I'm pretty sure my post didn't even hint at such an assumption.

 

 

 

Again, my post didn't hint at such an assumption.

 

My guess is that a civilisation doesn't become technologically advanced by ignoring laws of nature, rather by using and utilising them... with a million years of study you're going to get pretty good.

 

Humans can already create biological specimens in a lab.

 

Humans are already primed to see technology, not gods, if I saw an apparition that was unexplainable i would think technology not god. I see no reason to assume advanced technology would create stars or planets and if they did i doubt it would so miraculous that humans would see it and think god instead of high tech. Even now we see a light in the sky and think aliens not angels, at least most of us do and the number who would think god is falling every year. I can't think of anything an alien is likely or even unlikely to be able to do that i would assume to be god.

[Boerseun]

I have to agree with sman here.

 

Given the initial conditions of Earth and our Solar System in general, and given the fact that there is absolutely nothing special in any way about our neck of the woods, I would say that life somewhere else is, in fact, inevitable. I would even say that "intelligent" life is inevitable, if intelligence is defined as the ability of a species to utilize energy extrasomatically, i.e. fire, nuclear power, windmills, watermills, industry, burning oil, etc.

 

But space itself, the vast distances involved, and the limit imposed on us by the speed of light, makes physical contact pretty much impossible. I would not say completely zero, but close enough to zero as to make no difference. Radio communication might be possible, but it would most likely be a one-way once-off contact - by the time any sort of reply is received, the initial sender would have advanced with thousands of years. Its a bit like the ancient Egyptians having sent a signal off to space, and we're still listening today for a reply. I can't imagine any society being stable enough to allow a project to run over such a period of time.

 

Colonizing neighbouring solar systems might be possible over thousands of years - it might even be possible that totally isolated civilizations creep through the solar system at the same time, their outposts intertwining through each other without ever being aware of the other.

 

Space is just too big and empty. We might as well assume we're alone, because for all practical purposes, we are.

[Moontanman]

oh great cow, i am the one who said it's all inevitable not sman.

[Boerseun]

Humans are already primed to see technology, not gods, if I saw an apparition that was unexplainable i would think technology not god. I see no reason to assume advanced technology would create stars or planets and if they did i doubt it would so miraculous that humans would see it and think god instead of high tech. Even now we see a light in the sky and think aliens not angels, at least most of us do and the number who would think god is falling every year. I can't think of anything an alien is likely or even unlikely to be able to do that i would assume to be god.

Now that is a major leap, Moontan.

 

I am on your side when confronted with the unexplained - my first reaction will also be "aliens" or "high-tech".

 

But the sad and sorry fact is that you, me, and people sharing our view, are by far the minority on this planet.

 

Today, in this modern age of ours, where we have stood on the moon and regularly go up to space, where we probe the deepest secrets of matter, people go absolutely apeshit when a little girl finds a burnt cockroach in a loaf of bread that looks like Jesus.

 

People blow themselves up on a daily basis because they will go to heaven and receive 72 virgins for their eternal pleasure (did they keep the 72 mothers-in-law in mind?)

 

We live on a planet where a tiny percentage of us understand what's cooking, but the vast majority of the planet are still stuck in the 13th century.

 

If the aliens were to arrive, I can almost guarantee you that instead of rationally trying to communicate with them, the majority of Earthlings' first instinct will be to fall to their knees and pray.

 

We are by far the minority. Sadly so.

[Moontanman]

Sadly, i have to agree i was giving wishful thinking a try.

[Turtle]

...read something about prebiotic evolution and why the development of life is inevitable before you accuse me of archaic thinking. Read Rare Earth, The Deep Hot Biosphere, Life Not as We Know...

 

first a review:

Thomas Gold presents interesting and controversial theories concerning the origins of petroleum hydrocarbons and the abundance of deep-subsurface microbial life in his book, The deep hot biosphere. Essentially, the book expounds upon ideas that Gold originally presented in a PNAS paper in 1992 (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 89:6045-6049). Gold's book encompasses two general theses: 1) that the majority of Earth's hydrocarbons were entrapped during the coalescence of pre-planetary materials (not the metamorphic remains of past biomass), and 2) that these hydrocarbons provide the food source for a vast underground biosphere consisting of hyperthermophilic, hyperbarophilic microorganisms.

...

Gold notes that while his theory has been met with considerable skepticism in the Western Hemisphere, Eastern scientists have considered similar ideas for quite some time. During his research for the book, Gold found that he was not the first to propose the idea of a deep, hot biosphere. Russian (or ex-Soviet) scientists have pursued the idea for about one hundred years.

...

Thus, the educated lay person may have difficulty following some parts of the book while the scientist may yearn for more detail. I found this imbalance to be especially true of Gold's explanations of anaerobic metabolism and alternate electron acceptors in the subsurface environment. One glaring mistake that caught my attention was where Gold stated that methane was an atom. ...

The deep hot biosphere. - Review - book reviews | Ecology | Find Articles at BNET

now from Gold himself:

page 168: ...Before then, the spontaneous assembly of molecules that can undergo energy-yielding reactions would have been a rare event, and concentration of such molecules into a "primordial soup", perhaps sloshing around in a tide pool, would have been even rarer. ...

The deep hot biosphere: the myth of ... - Google Books

 

so, Gold is also mistaken about probability in the same way as y'all. :lol: thanks for that link moosetan. :doh: :singer:

 

so too are these couple of guys, who again rely on the false argument that a rarity, read low probability, is predictive of how, when, where, or if such a thing manifests.

 

page xxii ...We know, too, that mass extinctions can end life on a planet abruptly, at any time, and that the number of mass extinctions might be linked to astronomical factors, such as the position of a planet in its galaxy. Prior to the publication of the first edition of Rare Earth in January 2000, neither of these concepts had publicly appeared in discussions of planetary habitability. Now they do, as a matter of course, and this has been a great satisfaction to us. Our hypothesis that bacteria-like life might be quite common in the Universe, but complex life quite rare, may or may not be correct...

Rare earth: why complex life is ... - Google Books

 

so again, no matter how small a probability a thing has, or is assigned, that says nothing about how that thing manifests, or does not manifest as the case may be. there is no proven principle or reproduceable evidence that life is inevitable. that intelligent life exists in the universe is a certainty, which is to say has a probability of 1, and we be them. this alone justifies the question, are we alone, but it justifies nothing about answers to the question. :Alien:

 

.... My ignorance is a badge i wear with pride, at least I am too ignorant to think chance is why life is on the earth.

 

acknowledged. :eek2:

[lemit]

Is it possible that other intelligent life forms have come and gone without reaching a level of sophistication we ourselves probably won't achieve before our extinction?

 

Yes, I know, we're different. We'll live forever. I'm sure whale narrative history assumes they'll live forever too.

 

I like the Drake equation. I did it a couple months ago and came up with 1.3. Would we be the one or the three? Or could we be .7 to someone else's .6? Or, given the possible homes for life forms, are there a whole bunch of .0000001's out there? And since we don't know if the technology required to visit other planets is feasible, are we among the .0000001's? In terms of development, are we closer to slime molds than to interstellar travelers?

 

Also, I know the the probabilities of intelligent life, when you consider the number of planets, seem huge. But the hoops we've had to jump through, both physically and mentally, are fairly huge too. How many comfort levels could we have found along the way?

 

I know that's a lot of questions. I just don't have many answers.

[Boerseun]

Okay - this is a bit of a left-fielder, but consider:

 

The argument is made that the selective pressure for intelligence is about the same as the selective pressure for, say, camouflage. Intelligence is merely another device to give the species an advantage over other species in its niche. Considering nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, intelligence by no means guarantees survival any more than horns or big canines (forgetting for a second the fact that you need intelligence to get off the planet when the sun explodes - but that's still billions of years in the future).

 

Intelligence, however, gives a species the ability to utilize more energy than it can metabolize.

 

The Second Law of Thermodynamics might just prefer intelligence over feathers, so to speak.

 

And the Second Law is in operation throughout the entire universe.

 

Should that not be included somewhere in Drake's infamous equation? And what effect would that have on the outcome?

[geko]

Humans are already primed to see technology, not gods, if I saw an apparition that was unexplainable i would think technology not god.

 

I think there's a misunderstanding. Maybe i didn't explain myself correctly i don't know, but i wasn't saying technology = god, i was saying that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from our idea and definition of a god.

 

Why is a god classed as such? Because it created the world and the universe etc. If a civilisation can create those things, where is the distinction?

 

I see no reason to assume advanced technology would create stars or planets...

 

Why is that? Are the initial conditions 'impossible' to replicate? If not, then technology will do it.

 

Likewise with the universe.

[Moontanman]

I think there's a misunderstanding. Maybe i didn't explain myself correctly i don't know, but i wasn't saying technology = god, i was saying that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from our idea and definition of a god.

 

Why is a god classed as such? Because it created the world and the universe etc. If a civilisation can create those things, where is the distinction?

 

The distinction is that "God" is a single supernatural being that simply wills things into existence totally outside the restraints of the natural laws of the universe. Any civilization no matter how advanced would be working inside the basic laws of the universe, so creating a star would be necessity follow the same laws that all star formation follows, to be god like the star would have appear out of nothing in 6 days or so.

 

Why is that? Are the initial conditions 'impossible' to replicate? If not, then technology will do it.

 

Likewise with the universe.

 

Even if you could create a star or planet by creating the initial conditions the act would still take many millions of years and not appear to be any more god like that natural star formation to beings like us. Also God is supernatural, he guards an afterlife, wants souls, cares whether or not you have sex or kill or steal. I doubt really advanced beings would pass the test unless the were intentionally trying to imitate God through trickery, then you might have problem but i doubt their real everyday actions would qualify them as gods.

[Moontanman]

first a review: The deep hot biosphere. - Review - book reviews | Ecology | Find Articles at BNET

now from Gold himself: The deep hot biosphere: the myth of ... - Google Books

 

so, Gold is also mistaken about probability in the same way as y'all. :eek2: thanks for that link moosetan. :doh: :evil:

 

so too are these couple of guys, who again rely on the false argument that a rarity, read low probability, is predictive of how, when, where, or if such a thing manifests.

 

Rare earth: why complex life is ... - Google Books

 

so again, no matter how small a probability a thing has, or is assigned, that says nothing about how that thing manifests, or does not manifest as the case may be. there is no proven principle or reproduceable evidence that life is inevitable. that intelligent life exists in the universe is a certainty, which is to say has a probability of 1, and we be them. this alone justifies the question, are we alone, but it justifies nothing about answers to the question. :Alien:

 

 

 

acknowledged. :eek2:

 

Very bad turtle :shrug: cherry picking excerpts from a book you haven't read about a subject you do not understand to make a point you have no idea about is totally wrong, very bad almost theological :hihi:

 

I know you don't like the idea of abiotic oil but Golds Book goes quite a but beyond just abiotic oil, try it, you might like it. At the very least it shows the mental processes of a man who is not afraid of things he is ignorant of and pursues knowledge even in places where he is a stranger.

 

Let me try this one more time and see if you can wrap your mind around the idea that life is part of the natural processes of the universe not some outrageous game of chance.

 

The solar system formed, a great many of the building blocks of life were already present, carbon, carbon compounds, not to mention all the ingredients of planets and the star it's self.

 

All these things are swirling around coalescing smashing each other far to much chaos to really predict anything but the possibilities were there!

 

I am not the first person to suggest that the formation of life is natural consequence of terrestrial planet formation.

 

Ex astra: Life from the Stars Organic chemistry amidst the stars

 

I suggest you read a few books on the subject, actually read them, dom't break them down into small bites of what you like and don't like, digest the books as whole not in tiny peices, you just might find out that life is both tenacious and opportunistic.

 

Once the conditions of the Earth made life possible, life appeared, almost immediately, a blink of an eye in geologic time, this makes life a very likely thing, not some wild gazillion to one freak show.

 

Once life was established it clung to the earth, multiple impacts were set backs but life persisted and grew more complex and eventually began to influence it's own environment. Once this happened life began to expand opportunistically. As the Earth cooled, (some of this cooling was due to life removing carbon from the atmosphere) life became more complex and began to influence it's own environment.

 

Oxygen was one the the most significant new things life made and once oxygen became available even more complex life forms evolved to take advantage of the energy available through the use of oxygen. Lowering temps and rising oxygen allowed the evolution of large complex organisms the effect of this complexity was a snow ball effect that resulted in the Cambrian explosion.

 

The real point here is that as each step became possible it happened immediately in terms of geologic time. Life became ever more complex, eventually it came to the point where even environmental disasters contributed to that complexity. Each time life was set back by calamity it came back stronger and more complex. Intelligence came into being almost instantly once it became possible.

 

Now you can argue til the cows come home about how likely the formation of the Earth was but once the earth formed and the initial conditions allowed life, life was there and it was tenacious and opportunistic, even as primitive life forms and it has become ever more opportunistic as time and evolution has passed.

 

Now could you have picked out an animals 500,000,000 years ago and said that one will lead to cows, or elephants or tigers or t-Rex or sauropods or humans? No of course not but you could have easily looked at life and predicted it's rise toward complexity driven by thermodynamics and energy, energy from chemicals at first but later from the sun.

 

The march of life toward complexity could have been predicted, not it's eventual destination but the journey's direction was obvious, complexity driven by energy and the laws of thermodynamics and chaos.

 

No i admit the idea of intelligence is hard to have predicted but the way it followed the other advances of life would seem to show that intelligence , given the correct conditions of very complex life, was just as inevitable as all the other steps and barring some outside catastrophe i would expect life on many planets to follow this course in it's very broad outlines.