New published study concludes: Yes, There Have Been Aliens!

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

You have to remember, it is humans only that define intelligence whether or not something has been here longer and has a better prospect of survival then us, consider ants?

a reply to: Brotherman

The article is referring to human-like intelligence and above.

originally posted by: BO XIAN
a reply to: Harte

My Dissertation was rife with complex and simple statistics.

I'd hope anyone writing about statistics would be aware of the logic and mathematical rigor involved.

The DRAKE EQUATION

CANNOT

say anything sensible

about

PROBABILITIES

because

TOO MANY of the components are ABSOLUTELY OFF THE WALL BARE ARSED GUESSES!

BRAZENLY GUESSING, fantasy picking numbers out of thin air

IS

NOT STATISTICS.

It is not remotely anything sensible about probabilities or any other aspect of statistics.

However, I thank you for providing such a vivid image of THE RELIGION OF SCIENTISM AT WORK.

Sigh.

You didn't read the paper, did you?
This isn't the Drake equation, for starters.
But, even so, the Drake equation certainly DOES provide probabilities.
Just probabilities of existence given the assumptions that you make for the variables, many of which can be estimated quite well.
The other variables, if expressed as a range, allow the Drake equation to yield a range of probabilities.

I wouldn't call it a useful tool, but it is useful in a way - where one can plainly see the change in probability given a change in one (or more) of the variables.
Yes, it's elementary. But it wasn't meant for anything more.

Harte

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

The issue I had with this article when I read it on Sunday was that it implies that intelligence is somehow part of the natural evolutionary process. I think we are a bit of a fluke in that regard and life can successfully evolve for hundreds of millions of years without the requirement of developing intelligent life.

I tend to agree with you here.

Harte

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus
a reply to: Brotherman

The article is referring to human-like intelligence and above.

Ants, Bees, and Dolphins present both civil and human like intelligence and society. If we found an ant hill on mars or elsewhere would humanity say they found bugs or intelligent life?

Either way doesn't matter to me, I just want to buy some booze and hound after ladies that are nice. Find that on another planet consider me your best space monkey I would be on my best behavior.

outside that I believe you and I are over due for a beer man

originally posted by: Brotherman
Ants, Bees, and Dolphins present both civil and human like intelligence and society. If we found an ant hill on mars or elsewhere would humanity say they found bugs or intelligent life?

In the context of the article; bugs.

originally posted by: Urantia1111

originally posted by: TheConstruKctionofLight
a reply to: Urantia1111

Our "technology" is only a couple hundred years old at best

Wrong, more like thousands of years old - at least know what the word means before making "bold statements"

No.

I don't consider anything earlier than the steam engine to be technology.

If you want to count sharpened sticks and stones tools, I suppose technically you're correct.

Certainly nothing that would contribute to space travel.

Like it or not, we're still in our infancy as a civilization.

You don't consider tools technology? What about smelting of metals and working them into tools? What about the control and creation of fire by humans? Believe it or not...these things have been happening for thousands of years.

No doubt our species is still in its infancy. But that's a whole other assumption too.

a reply to: carewemust

That skewed-image thought had crossed my mind before posting about the potential of our living inside a hologram.

Not real, huh?

When Galileo resolved the image of Jupiter and its moons in his eyepiece he realized for the first time that Earth was not the center of 'things'. The entire theory was washed away. I bet lots of people still refused to change . But since then we have sent probes, we have been there. We have confirmed our thinking was skewed, not the wider reality.

Same here… What we see out there is really real, not an illusion.

But lets say its a hologram. What is outside that? And that? From Jupiters moons to Galactic super clusters, the Universe is infinite, it goes on forever, it has always been there.

So has life.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

oh bird seed AM

Well, given the fact that among the billions upon billions of star systems that exist there is a high chance they contain a planet capable of supporting life and at the same time taking into account the fact we've never scientifically proven life on any other planet than earth, I'd say that the chances of life on other planets is somewhere between 0 and 1.

originally posted by: Brotherman
oh bird seed AM

The authors make it clear that they are referring to human-style or better intelligence/sentience.

Do I see some Disclosure patterns in the making?

They were or were not. will or will not. they are here among the people as the salt in the soup, or they do not exist amongst us now - much more interesting and more important... if you go on the trail of gold, blood, and rare earth metals, if you have enough courage and knowledge to get to the end users it will they , you do not need dead-end path, to find them with the help of equations

Great study that reminds me somehow what Paul Davies said in its "must read" book "Are We Alone?" (One of Hillary's favorite book BTW...)



Extract pages 105 and 106 :

[...] Thus we have a schematic picture of the universe emerging out of the laws of physics. The laws of physics are somehow already there, underpinning everything [...]

I believe that consciousness is not as trivial a thing as it appears in the standard biological picture. In fact it's not a trivial thing at all. It's a fundamental emergent property of nature, a natural consequence of the outworkings of the laws of physics.
In other words consciousness is something that doesn't depend crucially on some specific little accident somewhere along the evolutionary way.

To be sure, the details of our mentality will depend on the minor and accidental specifics of evolutionary history, but [...] the emergence of consciousness, somewhere and somewhen, in the universe is more or less guaranteed, I claim.

It isn't something that "just happened" as a result of some trivial fluke somewhere that wouldn't be repeated if you ran the movie again. In other words, given the laws of physics and and the initial conditions of the universe, the emergence of life and consciousness can, I assert, be expected. [...]

I think the general trend (the tendency from simple to complex to consciousness) is something that is part of the natural outworkings of the law of physics. It was "already there", implicitly, in the basic laws of the universe.

originally posted by: Urantia1111
a reply to: Outrageo
With regard to whether technological civilizations can survive their own existence for more than a thousand years, how are they assuming that just because the human species is a irresponsible trainwreck of an animal, that ALL civilizations would be?
-- snip --

I was thinking along the same lines. The book and author don't come to mind (I've read too many) but years ago I read a science fiction paperback that dealt with battling a race that had evolved along the lines of ants. Technology wouldn't change the basic makeup of a race that functioned like bees or ants etc. Each individual would have their place and go about life without ever considering having a different role. (Please understand that I shudder at considering being part of such a race. How life could feel at all rewarding is hard to picture, but I'm aware that someone born into that reality would know no alternative.)

I have no problem with the Drake equation in spite of my natural aversion advanced mathematics. Since I first read of it I've considered it a mathematical way of expressing what countless children have thought while laying under the sky on a dark night and looking at the Milky Way.

A bigger conundrum has always been the tech that would be necessary to cross such mind-numbing distances. Even a vessel miles in size doesn't sound large enough. As Arthur C. Clarke said, what ever the tech it would seem like magic to us.

a reply to: CornShucker

That is the problem, the technology to become interstellar is incredibly hard. There could be a thousand societies that are technological in our galaxy and it is possible that none of them ever become intertellar. Further, they may find signs that each other are very highly likely there without ever being able to prove it beyond doubt. As our technology improves, I am sure that with some degree of certainty, life will be detected within the next 100 years. I am far less certain that contact will ever be made in a meaningful way.

Regarding length of civilization survival, this is sobering. www.livescience.com...
The first existential threshold humans crossed was not blowing ourselves up with the bomb. The Second existential threshold appears to be over population and the resulting political fall out. The third will be controlling green house gases. I think civilizations should be able to thrive for millions of years. But, it is going to require a more thoughtful planning process for the global population going forward in the near future. That is going to consist of controlling the right to give birth, food and water supply and the ability to contribute meaningfully to society. That may trample a few human rights in the future. But, what is more important, absolute rights or survival?

a reply to: Brotherman

LOL... You do realize there is only one absolute right?

Jaden

What percent of planets have life? Since that is the biggest key to the equation, and there is literally no information available for an input, they simply made a number up. That means this is really just a bunch of crap.

originally posted by: OccamsRazor04
What percent of planets have life? Since that is the biggest key to the equation, and there is literally no information available for an input, they simply made a number up. That means this is really just a bunch of crap.

It means that the Drake equation can't absolutely state that there are, or have been, other examples of intelligent life.
But, again, the Drake equation makes no such claim.

Harte

I could of told them aliens have been about for centuries, there's even some here on Earth.

Just let anyone know that if they want to meet one, give me a shout on a thursday. That's when i drop some shopping off for the mother-in-law.