Stop looking for ET: modelling suggests we’re alone in the universe

Started by Unbeliever, April 25, 2019, 08:25:36 PM

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aitm

Quote from: Unbeliever on April 26, 2019, 01:34:04 PM
But they are the universe, since the universe is within them as much as it's outside them. We humans, for example, are made of the same atoms and molecules we see out there in deepest space, and in the same proportions. So if we have meaning for ourselves, the meaning we give to our lives, then the universe, through us, has meaning as well. We give meaning to the universe, not the other way round.

Well,  I won't be so nice as Zilla, I will just say.....well....allllllrighty then!
A humans desire to live is exceeded only by their willingness to die for another. Even god cannot equal this magnificent sacrifice. No god has the right to judge them.-first tenant of the Panotheust

Gawdzilla Sama

Used bubble gum has awareness of the cosmic all. I know, it says so on the flip side of the comic.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

SGOS

I'm partial to the Drake equation, but as already pointed out, what's the difference?  I'm guessing we will never know about it.  It seems to me that that the vastness of the known universe contributes to the likelihood that someone else is out there, but timing is also a critical factor that works against us.  Assuming that extra terrestrial intelligence resembles ours, the chances go down that both of us exist at the same time.  Species go extinct, even the most resilient like turtles and crocodiles.  And mankind, for all our glory and dominance, hasn't been around long enough to even produce a pickup load of fossils.  Even our less intelligent kin, now long extinct, have lasted longer than we have.  Hopes for mankind as specialized as he is to survive in a temperate but extraordinarily atypical Earthly environment don't bode well for our long term serviceability.  On cosmic scale, I picture intelligent life like us popping in and out of existence like isolated flashbulbs separated by long drawn out periods of lonely darkness.

Gawdzilla Sama

We would need at least one extraordinary race of beings before connections between more mundane races could be made.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

Unbeliever

There may be intelligent life out there that's just too far away for their light to have gotten here yet. A million light years away there could be something like us, but they only evolved in the last few hundred thousand years, like us, so we couldn't know about them yet, or they us.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Gawdzilla Sama

Quote from: Unbeliever on April 26, 2019, 04:12:22 PM
There may be intelligent life out there that's just too far away for their light to have gotten here yet. A million light years away there could be something like us, but they only evolved in the last few hundred thousand years, like us, so we couldn't know about them yet, or they us.
Ed Zachery. That's why interstellar/intergalactic communications/travel must wait on a race that can transcend mundane limitations.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

Mr.Obvious

Quote from: Unbeliever on April 26, 2019, 04:12:22 PM
There may be intelligent life out there that's just too far away for their light to have gotten here yet. A million light years away there could be something like us, but they only evolved in the last few hundred thousand years, like us, so we couldn't know about them yet, or they us.

And Soundwaves take evn longer than that to reach us. Especially if our celestial bodies are moving apart from one another (if I'm getting that right).
And it don't need to be intelligent. We had millions upon millions of years of life without civilisation or technology on earth. Let alone invent radio waves. Fuck it, maybe they don't even use the same senses and sound means nothing to them.
"If we have to go down, we go down together!"
- Your mum, last night, requesting 69.

Atheist Mantis does not pray.

Gawdzilla Sama

I picture a super-civilization, one that roams the galaxies looking for intelligent life. It samples Earth every billion years. Why? Because even they could be subject to inherent biases and that's how long it took them to get to their current position.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

trdsf

Quote from: Mr.Obvious on April 26, 2019, 01:48:27 AM
The Fermi paradox never truck me as a paradox anyway.
Just an inability to comprehend the vastness of space.
The Fermi paradox is only a paradox in an infinite static universe -- which theory was still viable at the time he posited it.  In a universe with a beginning in time, there is necessarily a time lag before enough supernovæ have exploded to provide sufficient concentrations of heavier elements for life to develop.

As for the original article linked in the OP... wow, what a sloppy piece of writing.  Virtually nothing of any use with regard to methodology, and what they do mention suggests an unnecessarily Earth-centered basis for their calculations.  Who says advanced life has to be based on Terrestrial-style RNA, DNA, and/or eukaryotic cells with mitochondria?  That's just the way it happened here.  It's not the way it has to happen, period.

And nothing of any use with regard to results except for the vague phrase "no reason to be highly confident that the galaxy (or observable universe) contains other civilizations".  I want to see that quantified.  One in a quintillion?  Sextillion?  Septillion?  Decillion?

And more to the point, how do you draw probabilistic inferences from one data point?

Now, I looked at the original paper, and the range of estimates they give at the end are so broad that they're hard to call conclusions... and their starting point of assuming life developing the same way it did on Earth (RNA World or an analogue thereof) is a spectacular failure of scientific imagination, especially considering the single data point problem.  Lastly, relying on the canonical Drake Equation, which is only really useful in framing one's thinking about ETIs rather than having any actual predictive power, causes the whole enterprise to fall down.

Ultimately, the only thing the might have done is to give a reasoned argument not to expect to find mitochondrial cells based on DNA elsewhere.

My greater worry is various fundamentalists grabbing hold of this and claiming "scientists just proved we're so improbable that goddidit".  Because they only give a shit about science when it can be twisted into backing up what they already believe.
"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." -- Barbara Jordan

Baruch

Quote from: Mr.Obvious on April 26, 2019, 04:24:29 PM
And Soundwaves take evn longer than that to reach us. Especially if our celestial bodies are moving apart from one another (if I'm getting that right).
And it don't need to be intelligent. We had millions upon millions of years of life without civilisation or technology on earth. Let alone invent radio waves. Fuck it, maybe they don't even use the same senses and sound means nothing to them.

What, no sound?  Then they will never reach the Rock & Roll stage of civilization ;-(
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Baruch

Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on April 26, 2019, 04:10:54 PM
We would need at least one extraordinary race of beings before connections between more mundane races could be made.

That is the theory behind Contact.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Mr.Obvious

Quote from: Baruch on April 26, 2019, 09:49:28 PM
What, no sound?  Then they will never reach the Rock & Roll stage of civilization ;-(

Asad sad thing indeed.
"If we have to go down, we go down together!"
- Your mum, last night, requesting 69.

Atheist Mantis does not pray.