The Drake Equation Fallacy

a reply to: TzarChasm

Wow, his astronomy was the basis of our models for over 1000 years. Until the invention of the telescope it was the most accurate description of celestial motion in recorded history. Bad by today’s standards, pretty good 2000 years ago.

originally posted by: Grenade
a reply to: TzarChasm

Wow, his astronomy was the basis of our models for over 1000 years. Until the invention of the telescope it was the most accurate description of celestial motion in recorded history. Bad by today’s standards, pretty good 2000 years ago.

Burning witches at the stake and using leeches to such the disease out of patients was also pretty good 2000 years ago. No, wait, that was 300 years ago. 2000 years ago humans were being sold as property and microbial bacteria was heresy. No longer relevant today, unless you want examples of how to be really bad at your job. Is that why we are talking about it right now? I dont understand why bad astronomy from centuries ago is being compared to a thought exercise from a few decades ago. Drake never claimed the equation would function as an actual mathematical solution to the question of life among the stars.

Screw the facts!!!

The more emotional i am, the more justified my position is!!

www.google.com... ion+is&aqs=chrome..69i57.823j0j7&client=ms-android-samsung-ss&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8

"Emotional Thinking refers to a generalized inability to distinguish emotions and thoughts. For some, strong emotions tend to interfere with balanced and realistic thought processes and can result in distorted views of situations and relationships."

The evidence there is says that our solar system is not the first one to contain earth like planets with a similar collection of elements. We are literally billions of years behind other galaxies, so weather the drake equation accurate is moot - a realistic number of the chances of alien life either co-existing, existing before or after us - the raging point is its way above zero.

originally posted by: Grenade
a reply to: Barcs

There’s no such thing as standardised scientific method. It changes over time, dependant on the subject matter and also on the scientist. Which renders your ridicule unjustified.

If not a Scientist how would you categorise Ptolemy?

The rest I can agree with.

The scientific method hasn't changed since it was first proposed and implemented a few hundred years ago, but our standards of scrutiny and knowledge has. The method itself is irrelevant to the subject matter and the scientist. It stays consistent and is designed to weed out bias. Whether you could call Ptolemy a scientist or not is 100% irrelevant to whether geocentrism is a scientific theory. Bringing that or astronomy up was a dismissive red herring, which is why I ridiculed. Scientific theories are judged on their own merit based on the results of the method, not based on who proposes them.

originally posted by: Grenade
a reply to: TzarChasm

Wow, his astronomy was the basis of our models for over 1000 years. Until the invention of the telescope it was the most accurate description of celestial motion in recorded history. Bad by today’s standards, pretty good 2000 years ago.

By that logic the Mayans were scientists as well.

a reply to: Barcs

Don’t think I ever said anything about Geo-centrism following modern scientific method.

Putting words in my mouth.

I appreciate all the opinions in this thread but nothing I’ve read has changed my stance.

The attitude and behaviour of some posters is embarrassing. Hopefully we can learn to disagree with respect in future, I certainly have had my fill.

originally posted by: Biigs
The evidence there is says that our solar system is not the first one to contain earth like planets with a similar collection of elements. We are literally billions of years behind other galaxies, so weather the drake equation accurate is moot - a realistic number of the chances of alien life either co-existing, existing before or after us - the raging point is its way above zero.

Surely you are not using "a similar collection of elements" as the only criteria for justifying the label "earth like planets"? We see the same shoddy interpretations of the so-called "evidence" to justify particular misleading and confusing labels and terms that I discussed on page 6, coming back to this thread (expressed in this thread) over and over. How about another recap of some if it, adding some things in between brackets relevant to the comment above?

...
From 1990:
...
A number of scientists are beginning to realize that their colleagues have made far too many optimistic assumptions in addressing this question. Such scientists come up with a much lower number of advanced civilizations in our galaxy. Some have said that there is but one​—us. Others have said that mathematically, there should be fewer than one​—even we shouldn’t be here!

The basis for their skepticism is not hard to see. It could be summed up with two questions: If such extraterrestrials existed, where would they live? And how did they get there?

‘Why, they would live on planets,’ some might reply to the first question. But there is only one planet in our solar system that is not downright hostile to life, the one we occupy. But what about the planets circling the thousands of millions of other stars in our galaxy? Might not some of them harbor life? The fact is that up to now scientists have not conclusively proved the existence of a single planet outside of our solar system. Why not?

Because to detect one is exceedingly difficult. Since stars are so distant and planets do not emit any light of themselves, detecting even a giant planet, such as Jupiter, is like trying to spot a speck of dust floating around a powerful light bulb miles away. [and you've already moved on to claims about their composition of elements, talk about jumping the gun on this one, but...and here comes the real kicker...]

Even if such planets do exist​—and some indirect evidence has accumulated to indicate that they do—​this still does not mean that they orbit precisely the right kind of star in the right galactic neighborhood, at precisely the right distance from the star, and are themselves of precisely the right size and composition to sustain life. [and that's not even considering all criteria for sustaining life, forget about propagandistically labeling planets as "earth like" to give that impression of the ability to sustain life before satisfying at least all of these criteria]

Yet, even if many planets do exist that meet the stringent conditions necessary to sustain life as we know it, the question remains, How would life arise on those worlds? This brings us to the very foundation of the belief in beings on other worlds​—evolution.

To many scientists, it seems logical to believe that if life could evolve from nonliving matter on this planet, that could be true on others as well. As one writer put it: “The general thinking among biologists is that life will begin whenever it is given an environment where it can begin.” But that is where evolution faces an insurmountable objection. Evolutionists cannot even explain how life began on this planet. [Or as James Tour put it: "Molecules don't care about life. Organisms care about life. Chemistry, on the contrary is utterly indifferent to life. Without a biologically derived entity acting upon them, molecules have never been shown to evolve toward life. Never."; which means your endconclusion that it's "way above zero" is wrong. "Never" means "zero" in this context, unless someone created these lifeforms. Something you're not even thinking about because of the unjustified assumption “that life will begin whenever it is given an environment where it can begin.” An assumption that flies in the face of all the evidence we have as discussed by James Tour as he justifies his statement there.]

Scientists Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe estimate that the odds against life’s vital enzymes forming by chance are one in 10^40,000 (1 with 40,000 zeros after it). Scientists Feinberg and Shapiro go still further. In their book Life Beyond Earth, they put the odds against the material in an organic soup ever taking the first rudimentary steps toward life at one in 10^1,000,000.

Do you find these cumbersome figures hard to grasp? The word “impossible” is easier to remember, and it is just as accurate. [resulting in "zero" again in the context of your commentary] The rest of evolutionary theory is equally fraught with trouble.

Still, SETI astronomers blithely assume that life must have originated by chance all over the universe. Gene Bylinsky, in his book Life in Darwin’s Universe, speculates on the various paths evolution might have taken on alien worlds. He suggests that intelligent octopuses, marsupial men with pouches on their stomachs, and bat-​people who make musical instruments are not at all farfetched. Renowned scientists have praised his book. However, other scientists, such as Feinberg and Shapiro, see the gaping flaw in such reasoning. They decry the “weakness in the basic experimental foundations” of scientists’ theories about how life got started on earth. They note, though, that scientists nonetheless “have used these foundations to erect towers that extend to the end of the Universe.”

It really doesn't matter how many planets you can speculate about, or supposed earth like planets in your preferred view of what you want to label as "earth like", life will not emerge by chance, spontaneously, on any of these supposed planets. So unless someone created the machinery and technology that makes up lifeforms on these other planets, there are zero civilizations living on other planets in the universe. So no need to speculate about their supposed level of technology compared to our own. People like Drake would do best to leave fantasy/fiction to the entertainment industry, and stop pretending it has anything to do with science/knowledge (a familiarity with facts/certainties/truths/realities) or some sort of scientific search towards the discovery of truths/certainties/facts/realities.

a reply to: whereislogic

cioting a 30 year old source ??????????????? really - is that your argument ?????????????

the hubble space telescope was not even operational then

nor were several other key projects

try using current citations - we have confirmed exo plantes out there - using various techniques

but hey - a basic question for you :

do you accept that the stars we see in the night sky - are stars - just like our own sun - some smaller - some larger - some older - some younger

if not - why not ?

further - why do you believe - as you seem too - that no other star can have a planetrary system orbiting it ?

a reply to: ignorant_ape

Do you think we understand the true nature of the process which creates these stars?

Personally I think we still have a lot to learn on that particular subject. In fact I think we’re only just now scratching the surface of the underlying mechanics with our advancements in the quantum realm. Have a sneaky suspicion the rabbit hole is even deeper than we could imagine.

Please don’t shoot, it’s just a gut feeling and opinion.

originally posted by: Grenade
a reply to: Barcs

Don’t think I ever said anything about Geo-centrism following modern scientific method.

Putting words in my mouth.

I appreciate all the opinions in this thread but nothing I’ve read has changed my stance.

The attitude and behaviour of some posters is embarrassing. Hopefully we can learn to disagree with respect in future, I certainly have had my fill.

Scientific theories follow the modern scientific method. There is no other scientific method.

You are still trying to grasp at straws based on semantics. What's embarrassing is doubling down on a misunderstanding instead of simply admitting you mixed it up and moving on from it.

a reply to: Barcs

Oh the irony.

Just to be clear you’re asking me to state that Science didn’t exist until the 17th century.

Ok pal, get over it and move on. You’re like a broken record.

Come back to me when you’ve grown up.

originally posted by: Grenade
a reply to: Barcs

Oh the irony.

Another condescending one liner. I'm sorry duke, but my last bunch of posts have been very professional and courteous. I acquiesced to your complaints, and you still act like a child about it. You once again ignore every point and just insult as a response, yet you are trying to lecture us about being civil. THAT is irony.

a reply to: Barcs

Because it’s really simple and you can’t trap the concept. The man who defined and pioneered astronomy is a scientist. Check your dictionary for the definition on Science and then do the same for Astronomy.

Then pick your toys off the floor.

Yeah professional every step of the way, try using the word pwned in a board meeting and see how well it goes down.

originally posted by: ignorant_ape

try using current citations - we have confirmed exo plantes out there - using various techniques

Can you show the empirical evidence for this? I am curious.

originally posted by: Barcs

The scientific method hasn't changed since it was first proposed and implemented a few hundred years ago, but our standards of scrutiny and knowledge has.

Science by definition has existed the moment that humans took notice of predictable observations and began creating or manipulating things based off those consistencies.

a reply to: cooperton

Can you show the empirical evidence for this?

as i predict this will be an excersise in futility - lets start here :

wiki primer

what do you disagree with ?

I am curious.

really ??

a reply to: Grenade

we have a set of theories about stellar genesis - that fits all observations to date .

originally posted by: ignorant_ape

as i predict this will be an excersise in futility

Stop. Be civil. You don't need to include condescending remarks.

- lets start here :

wiki primer

what do you disagree with ?

Why do star pulses prove the existence of exoplanets? From what I've read they are convinced that a predictable temporary dwindling of a star indicates it could be an exoplanet. Is this the extent of the evidence?

Without sending actual people outside of our solar system, there is no way to acquire "proof" that inhabitable planets exist beyond the scope of our current observational range. And if any kind of proof has reached us from the stars, there are two possibilities: they are dangerous to us, or we are dangerous to them (hence government withholding it).

Speculation abounds, and make no mistake, it is all speculation at the end of the day. But this part is not speculation: sometimes lines are drawn for a reason and self importance is a terrible basis for unlocking doors that we are not prepared to close. You never know who/what is willing to replace "God" as the "keeper" of our civilization.

originally posted by: Grenade
a reply to: Barcs

Because it’s really simple and you can’t trap the concept. The man who defined and pioneered astronomy is a scientist. Check your dictionary for the definition on Science and then do the same for Astronomy.

Then pick your toys off the floor.

Yeah professional every step of the way, try using the word pwned in a board meeting and see how well it goes down.

More silly red herrings. Look up the definition of a scientific theory. You are stuck on stupid.

originally posted by: cooperton
Science by definition has existed the moment that humans took notice of predictable observations and began creating or manipulating things based off those consistencies.

I said the scientific method. Try not to fail so hard next time.