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Post by rabid on Jul 29, 2017 10:03:19 GMT -7
One theory put forward is how any intelligent life we encounter is likely to be post biological. For example if a species wiped itself out, we might still have contact with their AI.
Wonder how they would feel about US if all they had to talk to was SIRI?
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Post by starcruiser on Jul 29, 2017 12:16:22 GMT -7
WAR!!! Instant destruction... Same goes for "Cortana" for Windows 10.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2017 15:29:53 GMT -7
Star Trek (TOS) actually touched on this a couple of times. Some were super-computers running a society for cute-but-stupid humans. More specifically "The Changeling" and it's expensive remake "Star Trek: The Motion Picture". Both refer to a civilization of thinking machines. It stands to reason that the first machines were created by organic beings who then died out, leaving smart machines behind.
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Post by Gorn on Jul 29, 2017 20:29:08 GMT -7
Actually....it isn't. You fail to support your claim. That sentence talking about discovering something = something not existing, there fore being undiscoverable. That is called a non-sequitor, Latin for "it doesn't make sense", or in everyday English, "whaaaattt??!?". So the default is that it isn't until you can demonstrate. Since you think your writing skills are so superior, we all just wait with bated breath for your masterful demonstration. (I bolded those words so that the attention of religious types would be drawn to them - so much goes over their heads.) That is why I go past the high school level you are stuck at. ALL CAPS and BOLD TYPE are not meant to make arguments; you misunderstand again. All the supporting words around them make the arguments. ALL CAPS and BOLD TYPE as well as underline and italics draw attention to the key concepts of those points. It would be like a student using a highlighter. Rest assured, I am not "trying" to impress, or do anything to you. I don't depend upon any opinion you have, nor do I care. I simply provide supporting evidence to shoot down more bullshit. As always. You might also consider that spelling rules do not rest entirely with your highschool education, despite the religious thinking there is only one interpretation for every singular thing. I realized some time ago you have a very active imagination. What you fantasize, yet again, is not at all what I do. I say "That's BULLSHIT," and then immediately go on to prove how it is.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2017 4:24:19 GMT -7
You can rehash this same, tired argument all you like, but you made a mistake when you posted "We won't know how rare until we find it - or fail to."
"We won't know how rare until we find [Intelligent Alien Life]" - I totally agree. "We won't know how rare until we fail to find [Intelligent Alien Life]" - I disagree. It's a non sequitur, which literally translates as "it does not follow".
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Post by rabid on Jul 30, 2017 4:48:04 GMT -7
" "He said, without a hint of self reflection.
So you don't do belief, despite every indication to the contrary. I guess some people are just lucky enough to have nigh omniscience and can therefore confirm the absolute existence of anything that is scientifically possible. It always gives me a good belly laugh anyway. Honestly this case I have to applaud the proper use of "bated". Speaking of AI, the proper us is becoming obcure to the consternation of conservative linguists everywhere, phones usually switch it as do newer versions of spell checker.
Sally, having swallowed cheese, Directs down holes the scented breeze, Enticing thus with baited breath Nice mice to an untimely death
In other words next time you catch a whiff of this nonsense try not to follow it. It kills every thread. Good for you gorn, you don't do belief.
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Post by Gorn on Jul 31, 2017 1:51:14 GMT -7
Well the great thing about statistics (and Science) ironnerd, is that it doesn't matter one bit if you agree or disagree. It's still correct until you can prove otherwise.
1) intelligent life is common (including finding civ after civ that killed themselves) = we know it's not rare. 2) intelligent life never shows up, decade after decade, expanding sphere after expanding sphere of exoplanet exploration = we know it's rare.
Since we're at the beginning of looking, we don't know which one is the situation, yet. Both of those are the different answers to the one Science question : Is intelligent life rare in our Galaxy; which we can infer to the Universe? Life itself certainly is not rare. Scientists shall be utterly surprised to find no other life in the solar system alone. I should be quite surprised to find no other multicellular life under the ice of Europa or Enceladus; or floating in the gas/ice giants.
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I say without a hint of self reflection, rabid, since Science is self-correcting. That means there is one interpretation for data to fit, and we go with the best one we have PROVEN up to date. Religion, on the other hand, can never improve itself. It is rigid, unchallengable, and unchanging. That is the difference. All the self reflection in the world won't benefit you if you remain ignorant of Science, rabid. I never once claimed omniscience, and have in fact shown where Science will give an incorrect answer, in several billion years. You've also still failed to show where I use belief rather than proof. Thanks for reminding me that ironnerd failed to demonstrate his erroneous claim I said discovering something(cat evidence) = something not existing(no cat).
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Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2017 2:53:59 GMT -7
At some point you realize you're just throwing a pig in mud.
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Post by starcruiser on Jul 31, 2017 5:33:02 GMT -7
What makes you think that?
Gorn hasn't "realized" anything yet...
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Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2017 6:13:17 GMT -7
I dunno... he's pretty smart. Got a B+ in English after all. I figure he would have caught on by now.
I don't really care how anyone comes to know that there is life on other planets, or the knowledge that some of that life is intelligent. It's just amusing to watch him spend all this energy trying to justify a poorly written sentence. I think that if anyone but me pointed it out, he would have just gone back and done a quick edit by adding the word "may". I especially like when he points out the painfully obvious in a manner that suggests only a highly trained scientist could ever figure this out.
I believe that somewhere in the really dang big, but finite universe, there are other intelligent creatures, but not nearly as many as are shown in Star Trek (People of Earth, maybe...). I doubt we will ever find any hard evidence of them. It is more likely that our future will look more like Gundam (without the giant robots) than Star Trek, and that we'll have to go through Mad Max to get there.
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Post by starcruiser on Jul 31, 2017 17:19:06 GMT -7
Considering all of the small - often rude - words he uses so casually, I would suspect it got more of a C- in English.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 1, 2017 8:23:40 GMT -7
I have evidence of organic chemistry. Geology. Evolutionary Biology for the Archean Earth. Astronomy that proves ice and water to be common, and for rocky- earth sized planets in habitable zones to look like they're very probably common, too. Plug some OBSERVED number estimates into some probability equations, taking several BILLION years into account, and even the most uneducated religious person will have a hard time dismissing the large number result. I never said the science was incorrect, only that Gorn's statement was incorrect. These are two wildly different things. Science does predict that there should be a large number of intelligent aliens races out there. Everything that scientists and theorists assume to be required to create life appears to be at least fairly common throughout the observable galaxy, and by extension the universe at large. Since there must be a large number of intelligent aliens out there, shouldn't a complete lack physical (or electronic) evidence be troubling? It would seem as though not finding something that exists in large numbers should be causing some head scratching somewhere. If our assumptions predict a large number of intelligent alien races and we never find them, at what point do we begin to question our assumptions? "Where [the hell] is everybody?" [ LINK]
I played around with the Drake Equation (in link above). For R, f p, and n e, I entered data from sources I was able to locate on the internet (mostly from Universities),based on actual observations. As it turns out, there is a lot more to a habitable planet than air, water, and the correct amount of sunshine. For f l, f i, and f c, I entered 100%, since it is assumed that if life can occur, it will occur, and that it will evolve into a race on par with our own. For L, I used 200 years, that was just a hunch. I came up with 56 races in the Milky Way with whom we could communicate, and an average distance of 7,000 LY from one another. That would be one slow chat. R * f p * n e * f l * f i * f c * L = N Realistically, it boils down to N=L*0.26 (if you want to be generous). I have always like messing around with the Drake Equation, but never really thought it meant much.
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Post by rabid on Aug 1, 2017 9:56:43 GMT -7
space is a barren, empty place when you get down to it. I also think life is bound to exist somewhere but I'll believe it when I see it. Life has only been confirmed to exist in one place, that's a retrospective cohort of one. Just because life evolved here, it doesn't follow that it must evolve somewhere else. Take the end of "all good things"--Picard created a singularity that increased the entropy in our sector of space=no life. Of course it's just a science fiction story, but it illustrates the point: the formation of life requires at the minimum the chemical evolution cyclical chemical reactions capable of oxidizing substrates. It can be said that we stay alive by passing entropy that would destabilize our cells on to our food. Anyway, there's more the appearance of life than putting in a bunch of chemicals in the primordial soup and stirring. A planet's star, ionosphere and magnetosphere can positively or negatively influence the development of complex Life. In short I'm in the "rare earth" camp but friendly toward Sagan's thoughts on the matter. It will only take one microbe to change my mind. Here is an excellent summary of the Fermi paradox+kardashev scale. Where is everybody and why havent we heard from anyone yet? waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html
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Post by Gorn on Aug 1, 2017 17:03:17 GMT -7
Ironnerd's bullshit gets shot down: the B+ was in a University course. Somewhere he's evidently never been. I will not edit my statements. Nobody has demonstrated a need to do so. Rest assured I will if proved wrong. It depends upon what troubles you. Maybe you could do something constructive and make hypotheses for the various reasons for the Fermi Paradox. __________________________ It does follow. Organic chemistry. Climatology. Geology. Astronomy. Biology. Physics. www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/039330583X/ref=tmm_pap_used_olp_0?ie=UTF8&condition=used&qid=1501632084&sr=8-1It's not expensive. Go learn something. Then you'll have more claim to your Science job.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 1, 2017 17:44:13 GMT -7
I was actually being pretty generous with n e, the number of planets, per planetary system, that are suitable for life. A lot goes into making a planet capable of not only starting life, but sustaining it long enough to evolve and gain sentience. The parent star must be stable and have a high metallicity. The planet’s orbit must be fairly circular, and its day/night cycle must not be to short or too long. The planet must be massive enough to hold a fairly thick atmosphere. This protects life from radiation and asteroids. If the atmosphere is too thin, all the water evaporates. The planet must have an iron core that spins in order to create a magnetic field (again, for protection against radiation). That's a lot of factors to consider, and there may be more. Some big thinkers (AstroBiologists) think a large moon is important to act as a shield against asteroids that might otherwise wipe out life on the surface of the planet, to stabilize the planet on its axis, and perhaps to produce regular tides. Some even think that a Jupiter-like planet at the proper distance is another requirement as they tend to clean up loose asteroids and comets keeping them out of the life-creating planet’s orbit. Add to that the "Galactic Goldilocks zone". Too close to the core, and the planet is likely to be bombarded with radiation from other stars and novae. Too far out and there is not enough heavy material available to form terrestrial planets of the right size and density. Again, a lot to digest. The University of Texas put n e at somewhere between 0.01 and 0.5 planets per system capable of creating life. I went with .25 in my math because it seemed like a good enough guess. But I think it’s high, so I lowered it to .15, and changed f l, f i, and f c to 90% each. This is still pretty good odds, but takes into account things like asteroid impacts, disease, ice ages, volcanism, and other things that could wipe out life before it attains sentience. Just for kicks, I bumped the number of years a civilization can actually communicate in a manner we might understand to 1,000! That gives me an N of 66 Intelligent Alien Races, in a galaxy 100,000 ly in diameter - that puts them about 6,200 ly from one another. Multiply that by 66 intelligent races by 2 trillion galaxies and you get a whole lot of Science Fiction Nerds out there... but they are still amazingly far apart. The best part of all this is that it proves nothing. Not a blessed thing. As I've said several times, I see the Drake Equation as an amusement. It is certainly fun to mess with the numbers, but too many of them are just SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guess) at this point. Our scientists have a pretty good handle on R and F p. n e is getting narrowed down, but still has a pretty wide range. f l, f i, and f c are SWAG, and L is the biggest unknown. rabid thinks that life itself is much rarer that I do. We both agree (in principal) that the number of planets where races that gain sentience is a very small fraction of the total number of planets where life does start. While there is a correct answer for "N", I don't think we'll ever know what that number is.
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Post by starcruiser on Aug 1, 2017 19:14:48 GMT -7
Well - there's also the factor of WHAT type of star, not just distance etc. Some classes are nasty things that produce a lot more harmful radiation than most life can tolerate. Some are very unstable and active and would make for dangerous systems for life to take root in.
Assuming that the life forms evolving on that given world are similar in biology to those on Earth, that world will need an active iron core for a reasonable magnetic field and a decent ozone layer would sure be nice as well...
I believe Frank Drake didn't intend people to take his equation too seriously. It was meant as a thought exercise at the time and it's still a good one.
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Post by rabid on Aug 1, 2017 21:39:24 GMT -7
@ironnerd rarer because of the order of reactions that have to evolve to sustainability vs degradation via entropy. Look at all the steps in glycolysis, each enzyme representing millennia of chemical evolution. It's not just the odds of forming proteins, enzymes, etc, it's forming phospholipids, cell membranes and organelles. Each stage of evolution represents a developmental hurdle, failing each boundary potentially halts development. I would posit that life has the potential to start in far more places than it actually makes it. As I said we have an example of one instance of 'successful' development of life. For every possibility on the Drake equation there are more that are stillborn. The "rare" earth hypothesis takes the approach of looking at how development of life on earth required a unique environment. Maybe it's the one "kitchen" where life was fully cooked. www.amazon.com/Rare-Earth-Complex-Uncommon-Universe/dp/0387952896Gorn I had a copy once, charts were remarkable. It's a pretty old book, so I guess you could be forgiven if you've forgotten what it's about. Demonstrating as it does how the ancient global environment was variable, constantly in flux in response to a wide variety of factors. Interestingly each one could have been catastrophic to the nascent development of complex life. This is your argument AGAINST the rare earth?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 2, 2017 6:22:33 GMT -7
rabid , even if life occurred on every planet where basic conditions are met, it's possible for it to get wiped out a few hours later. Earth has had several large extinction events, and one of those could have ended our chances of becoming intelligent. It could happen on one of these other worlds just as easily as it nearly happened here. If you really look at "f i" in Drake's Equation, you'll see a big sticking point. There are 8.7 million species on this planet, and only one has smart phones. That makes the f i 1.14942529e-7. That turns our 66 intelligent ET's in our galaxy to nothing, or at least super rare, meaning we'll never find them. The more I dig, the less likely it seems that there are very many intelligent races out there. It seems as though even if life can get going, the odds of it evolving into "us" are freakishly low. Maybe one sentient race per galaxy is enough.
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Post by rabid on Aug 2, 2017 6:45:48 GMT -7
Agreed, life will happen IF all the ingredients are in place and it's not snuffed out in the early stages by solar flares, asteroid impacts or suffocated by volcanic ash. Long odds by all counts.
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Post by starcruiser on Aug 2, 2017 7:44:18 GMT -7
Microbial life - possible in many systems, even may be common. Complex but, not Sapient life, much more rare but, still could be found from time to time. Sapient life - very, very rare.
And has been said, even if such does evolve, will they be around when we can communicate? Will we be around when they can communicate? Unlike in Star Trek where there appears to be a couple hundred space-faring Sapient species, along with many fallen powers and less advanced forms - I think we could be alone right now...
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Post by Gorn on Aug 2, 2017 21:59:13 GMT -7
Sagan was troubled by it; he thought it reflected nascent intelligence's inherency to destroy itself. Seeing the state of the planet right now, and knowing enough about how past mass extinctions played out, I tend to agree with him. If humanity survives the next few centuries, it will be far less than 7 billion that do it.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 3, 2017 6:02:25 GMT -7
Maybe the cosmic die rolls just didn't go the right way in this galaxy. Just because probability says there should be 10 cats in every old lady's house, I would not assume there to be exactly 10 cats in every instance. Some old ladies have 20 cats, while others have none. But take a big enough sample of old ladies, and you'll probably find that the average number of cats per house pretty much matches the predicted 10.
So maybe our galaxy is just an under-achiever. Other galaxies (far, far away) may be over-achievers and could be crazy with intelligent life.
Now that is fun to think about.
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Post by starcruiser on Aug 3, 2017 6:09:34 GMT -7
^ Yes, there is one but, it's currently under the control of an Empire with a propensity to nuke it's own planets
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Post by Deleted on Aug 3, 2017 8:25:47 GMT -7
See. Just one of the unforeseen events that can wipe out all sentient life on a planet.
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Post by starcruiser on Aug 3, 2017 16:05:16 GMT -7
Hmmm... Not sure if unforeseen... I seem to remember:
"All is proceeding precisely as I have foreseen."
Something, something, something...dark side, something...
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