7 ms·

Extraterrestrial life: I am a skeptic

10 points by jackfoxy 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago
Counterpoint: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090429140849.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090429140849.ht...
lutorm 17y ago
I heard Frank Drake say that he thought of the "Drake equation" as a way of parameterizing our ignorance, not as a way to "prove that there must be life". Basically, it consists of a bunch of factors and for most of them we come to the conclusion that we have no idea what the value is...
- mechanical_fish 17y ago
  The Drake equation is an awesome educational tool. It leads you to think thoughts like this: The Earth is 4.6 billion years old. Prokaryotic life is currently estimated to have formed 3.5 to 4.5 billion years ago -- not really that long after Earth formed. Now consider: Extrapolating from a few photos taken by the Hubble Ultra Deep Field camera, scientists currently think that there are on the order of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. Ours is an average galaxy, with about 200 billion stars. That implies that there are at least 10^22 stars in the universe. In other words: For every single second that the Earth has been in existence, there are about 70,000 stars in the universe. Maybe more. So it's not exactly difficult to believe that life, however rare it may be, probably exists in at least two places in the universe. Though we may well never know for sure.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    The bigger question is whether it will ever happen that there are two intelligences alive within overlapping light cones, allowing for communication. That would be a lot easier than having to scour the universe for civilizations that we missed.
DanielBMarkham 17y ago
This was actually pretty good. The question here rests on types of beliefs. I "believe" that extraterrestrial life exists, but I believe that in a completely different fashion than I believe evolution, than I believe cognitive therapy, or than I believe classical Newtonian physics. Different types of things deserve different types of belief. I believe ET simply because it seems more natural to believe that as mankind learns to travel more, he keeps meeting other intelligences. This pattern has held since we were lounging in trees on the savanna, and I expect it to continue. It's nowhere near being a scientific reason for believing -- no matter how many terms you hang out there. It's an intuitive argument and somewhat inductive, but mostly it's a religious one: the creative construct I just shared appeals to me more than others I have heard.
drunkpotato 17y ago
I gave the article a once-over but don't have any comments on it. This is a comment on another part of that page, the author description. I am not using an ad hominem attack on his ideas; rather, I am addressing the disturbing self-identification. Describing yourself as a "conservative physicist" is rather dodgy. (From the article it seems that conservative is used in the typical American political sense, though the author says he's Czech.) It gives the impression that your primary identity bound up in a false political dichotomy used as an adjective (conservative) followed by a non-sequitur, the job name (physicist). "Conservative politician" makes sense, it's identifying your primary affiliation in your primary job of politics. "Conservative physicist" puzzles me. Does this mean that your scientific search for physics truths is bound up in conservative ideology? Does it mean your conservative ideology is a result of your search for physics truths? They are at different levels of reality; I'm having trouble seeing how they are related.
- gizmo 17y ago
  He's just using the dictionary definition of "conservative". A physicist who assumes new developments have little to no merit unless shown otherwise. Contrast with a "progressive" physicist who comes up with a new radical physics theory every month. By analogy: a conservative programmer is somebody who would generally look at tools like C++ and Java and .NET to solve his problems, because the tools are proven and have well known pros and cons. A progressive programmer would be more tempted to consider the language du jour.
  - gjm11 17y ago
    No, really, he isn't. He means it in the political sense. (He's a string theorist, and whatever string theory is it really isn't "conservative" in the sense you describe; not until it starts getting experimental evidence.) See, e.g., http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/01/massachusetts-brown-vs-coakley.html http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/01/massachusetts-brown-vs-coa... . (Or, if you share my opinion that what is called with "skepticism" or "denialism" about anthropogenic global warming, depending on which side the caller is on, is generally politically motivated, see about half the posts on his blog.)
- 17y ago
albemuth 17y ago
That page messed up my eyes, what a horrible color choice

10 points by jackfoxy 17y ago

Counterpoint: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090429140849.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090429140849.ht...

lutorm 17y ago

I heard Frank Drake say that he thought of the "Drake equation" as a way of parameterizing our ignorance, not as a way to "prove that there must be life". Basically, it consists of a bunch of factors and for most of them we come to the conclusion that we have no idea what the value is...

mechanical_fish 17y ago
The Drake equation is an awesome educational tool. It leads you to think thoughts like this: The Earth is 4.6 billion years old. Prokaryotic life is currently estimated to have formed 3.5 to 4.5 billion years ago -- not really that long after Earth formed. Now consider: Extrapolating from a few photos taken by the Hubble Ultra Deep Field camera, scientists currently think that there are on the order of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. Ours is an average galaxy, with about 200 billion stars. That implies that there are at least 10^22 stars in the universe. In other words: For every single second that the Earth has been in existence, there are about 70,000 stars in the universe. Maybe more. So it's not exactly difficult to believe that life, however rare it may be, probably exists in at least two places in the universe. Though we may well never know for sure.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  The bigger question is whether it will ever happen that there are two intelligences alive within overlapping light cones, allowing for communication. That would be a lot easier than having to scour the universe for civilizations that we missed.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

This was actually pretty good. The question here rests on types of beliefs. I "believe" that extraterrestrial life exists, but I believe that in a completely different fashion than I believe evolution, than I believe cognitive therapy, or than I believe classical Newtonian physics. Different types of things deserve different types of belief. I believe ET simply because it seems more natural to believe that as mankind learns to travel more, he keeps meeting other intelligences. This pattern has held since we were lounging in trees on the savanna, and I expect it to continue. It's nowhere near being a scientific reason for believing -- no matter how many terms you hang out there. It's an intuitive argument and somewhat inductive, but mostly it's a religious one: the creative construct I just shared appeals to me more than others I have heard.

drunkpotato 17y ago

I gave the article a once-over but don't have any comments on it. This is a comment on another part of that page, the author description. I am not using an ad hominem attack on his ideas; rather, I am addressing the disturbing self-identification. Describing yourself as a "conservative physicist" is rather dodgy. (From the article it seems that conservative is used in the typical American political sense, though the author says he's Czech.) It gives the impression that your primary identity bound up in a false political dichotomy used as an adjective (conservative) followed by a non-sequitur, the job name (physicist). "Conservative politician" makes sense, it's identifying your primary affiliation in your primary job of politics. "Conservative physicist" puzzles me. Does this mean that your scientific search for physics truths is bound up in conservative ideology? Does it mean your conservative ideology is a result of your search for physics truths? They are at different levels of reality; I'm having trouble seeing how they are related.

gizmo 17y ago
He's just using the dictionary definition of "conservative". A physicist who assumes new developments have little to no merit unless shown otherwise. Contrast with a "progressive" physicist who comes up with a new radical physics theory every month. By analogy: a conservative programmer is somebody who would generally look at tools like C++ and Java and .NET to solve his problems, because the tools are proven and have well known pros and cons. A progressive programmer would be more tempted to consider the language du jour.
- gjm11 17y ago
  No, really, he isn't. He means it in the political sense. (He's a string theorist, and whatever string theory is it really isn't "conservative" in the sense you describe; not until it starts getting experimental evidence.) See, e.g., http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/01/massachusetts-brown-vs-coakley.html http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/01/massachusetts-brown-vs-coa... . (Or, if you share my opinion that what is called with "skepticism" or "denialism" about anthropogenic global warming, depending on which side the caller is on, is generally politically motivated, see about half the posts on his blog.)
17y ago

albemuth 17y ago

That page messed up my eyes, what a horrible color choice