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And why not? Extraterrestial life is a hypothesis just like many other possible explanations. I had hoped we've long past the anthropocentric attitude, at least
by dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
And why not? Extraterrestial life is a hypothesis just like many other possible explanations. I had hoped we've long past the anthropocentric attitude, at least the discovery of exoplanets should finally end it.
- mc32 7y agoBy ET it’s not clear to me they mean beings but rather objects outside our solar system.... That said sure, when evidence suggests such rather than as the immediate hypothesis to grab it, given the odds.
- ganzuul 7y agoCould even be a huge plant branching out into stellar orbit. Panspermia is a Von Neumann probe after all.
- Gene_Parmesan 7y agoThe specific initialism used in the quote was "ETI," or extra-terrestrial intelligence.
- ganzuul 7y agoHuman exceptionalism seems to have a lot of cognitive inertia behind it, regardless of how educated we are. What do you do when first contact is made? There are a lot of mental hurdles to overcome trying to answer this question.
- grenoire 7y agoI don't think the answer will ever get anywhere beyond, "we'll see." Even if you attempted to build a guidebook for the what and the how, it will never be what we expect it to be.
- pts_ 7y agoIt will be same shit different planet, trust me.
- ivalm 7y agoThe way I see it humans are the stupidest possible animal that can form planet-spanning civilization (in a sense that other homo primates failed to do so despite being very close to us in mental capability). There is absolutely no reason to think that the scale of intelligence does not extend further beyond humans. One problem is that since we are stupid and we don't know anyone qualitatively smarter we do not have the tools to reason about super-intelligent behavior. Even the smartest chimp performs incomparably worse in most mental tasks than a median human, even the smartest human will perform incomparably worse than median super-intelligent being in most mental tasks. At least chimps can learn to avoid poachers since they have experience with humans, despite not being able to reason about reasons why poachers do what they do.
- projektfu 7y agoOr, humans are so stupid that they decided to cover the planet, shit all over it, destroy their habitat, and pat themselves on the back.
- ivalm 7y agoThe reason other animals on Earth didn't do it is not because these animals made a choice to not pollute/destroy habitat/etc. There are very real very significant mental deficiencies in all other animals relative to humans. Whether smarter beings might act differently is entirely a hypothetical; it is unreasonable for us to think we can imagine the thought process of a super-intelligent being. Maybe resource consumption + migration is optimal for some objectives, maybe conservation and reuse is optimal for some other objectives, etc.
- projektfu 7y agoNot going to disagree that there are clearly differences in intelligence. However, the same intelligent humans managed for tens to hundreds of thousands of years to not destroy their environments until all of a sudden that became their imperative. In numerous parts of the world during the last 10,000 years there have been plenty of humans living within their means until they were assimilated or eradicated into the culture that dominates and destroys. People hopefully say, "at least we're becoming a space-faring society." As if we're really going to be able to outgrow this planet and move on and destroy another one. We're definitely an exploring species, and for that space is gratifying, but there is no indication that there will be another Earth to colonize anytime soon.
- rumanator 7y ago> And why not? Occam's razor. Until now zero ET have been found, thus it has the same likelihood as being Santa Claus.
- jstummbillig 7y agoThat must be technically incorrect, because the theoretical amount of ETs is infinitely bigger than the theoretical amount of Santa Clauses (which his capped at 1) :^)
- adrianmonk 7y agoOn the other hand, our best available information is that Santa Claus has a surprising ability to appear in many locations within a short period of time (at least on one night per year). Also, these are red and Santa Claus is red.
- imiric 7y ago> Also, these are red and Santa Claus is red. Rudolph's nose, most likely.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoYes, when Rudolph turns away from us the light goes out, and when he turns toward us, the light abruptly appears.
- rumanator 7y ago> because the theoretical amount of ETs You're referring to a theoretical model which is not backed up by any empirical proof other than the fact that there is life on Earth. Thus the model is yet to be validated, thus as far as we know it outputs nonsense. Until then we only have empirical proof, and so far the count of proven alien contact is zero.
- robbrown451 7y agoI don't think that's how probability works. There are lots of things that are hypothesized, and later found to exist (sometimes after explicitly searching, sometimes not). Comparing to Santa Claus without taking into account things like laws of physics/magic/supernatural doesn't make a lot of sense. Also, "zero ET" have been found because, although we are speaking of life, you have explicitly defined it as excluding the one example of life we know about, that on Earth. That seems a bit unfair. Given that we know of one example, hypothesizing another example isn't that extreme.
- pc86 7y agoIt's not anthropocentric to ignore the least likely possibility until presented with evidence to the contrary.