Is this an valid argument?

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

The argument in the Fermi Paradox isn't to say there CAN"T be life elsewhere as you phrased it, but rather, if there is life everywhere, then where the heck is it? Why have we seen no evidence for it other than ALH84001 which is the closest thing to evidence we have and even that is questionable?

What kind of evidence for life would we expect to see, were it to exist?

Another thought to ponder: There seems to be lots of everything in the universe; lots of stars, lots of galaxies, lots of planets, lots of asteroids. Have we ever discovered any type of thing out there of which there is only a single example?

Originally posted by Orkojoker

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

The argument in the Fermi Paradox isn't to say there CAN"T be life elsewhere as you phrased it, but rather, if there is life everywhere, then where the heck is it? Why have we seen no evidence for it other than ALH84001 which is the closest thing to evidence we have and even that is questionable?

What kind of evidence for life would we expect to see, were it to exist?

Good question, you should read the wiki link I posted for an answer, but one possibility is, evidence right here on Earth that aliens have visited our planet (some people think we have such evidence, but I mean real tangible evidence like artifacts with isotopic compositions indicating an origin off the Earth).

Fermi Paradox

The Fermi paradox can be asked in two ways. The first is, "Why are no aliens or their artifacts physically here?" If interstellar travel is possible, even the "slow" kind nearly within the reach of Earth technology, then it would only take from 5 million to 50 million years to colonize the galaxy.[6] This is a relatively small amount of time on a geological scale, let alone a cosmological one. Since there are many stars older than the sun, or since intelligent life might have evolved earlier elsewhere, the question then becomes why the galaxy has not been colonized already. Even if colonization is impractical or undesirable to all alien civilizations, large-scale exploration of the galaxy is still possible; the means of exploration and theoretical probes involved are discussed extensively below. However, no signs of either colonization or exploration have been generally acknowledged.

The argument above may not hold for the universe as a whole, since travel times may well explain the lack of physical presence on Earth of alien inhabitants of far away galaxies. However, the question then becomes "Why do we see no signs of intelligent life?" since a sufficiently advanced civilization[7] could potentially be observable over a significant fraction of the size of the observable universe.[8] Even if such civilizations are rare, the scale argument indicates they should exist somewhere at some point during the history of the universe, and since they could be detected from far away over a considerable period of time, many more potential sites for their origin are within range of our observation. However, no incontrovertible signs of such civilizations have been detected.

Or maybe there is evidence and we just don't see it:

Should alien artifacts be discovered, even here on Earth, they may not be recognizable as such. The products of an alien mind and an advanced alien technology might not be perceptible or recognizable as artificial constructs. Exploratory devices in the form of bio-engineered life forms created through synthetic biology would presumably disintegrate after a point, leaving no evidence; an alien information gathering system based on molecular nanotechnology could be all around us at this very moment, completely undetected. The same might be true of civilizations that actively hide their investigations from us, for possible reasons described further in this article.

So we could be missing the evidence or they don't want to be seen and are hiding. But the biggest problem seems to be that 50 million years should be a long enough time to colonize a large portion of the galaxy, so the fact that we find no evidence of such colonization in the billions of prior years is at the heart of the Fermi paradox.

Aside evidence on Earth, we also might expect to find evidence in space. The searches SETI is doing in radio and visible light spectrums would be one example. Other examples are advanced stellar-scale artifacts like Dyson Spheres mentioned in the Wiki link.



[edit on 6-4-2010 by Arbitrageur]

Originally posted by cripmeister
reply to post by HDD09

 

No it's not a valid argument, it's called a negative proof fallacy in fancy language.

Actually, I thought it would be an Informal Fallacy of Weak Induction: Appeal to Ignorance.....

...its fun to be back in school at 48.....mid term next week on Fallacious Arguments....

ATS Fallacy thread
I made that a while back for those that are interested in the whole fallacy thing, i tried like hell to make it as entertaining as possible while staying neutral on most issues.

I would say that it's not a valid argument due to one assumption...we haven't heard from them...is this true? I believe that we have, yet I am open to the possibility that we have not. Have you ever seen the movie K-Pax? Definitely a movie with a different paradigm than most alien stuff, like the Star Trek "all aliens are ugly humanoids" slant. Although it's a movie, an alien visited earth and was seen by psychologists and deemed to be delusional and not an alien. He even pointed out a solar system where he was from that baffled astronomers...they concluded that he couldn't possibly know this, so they assumed he hacked into their computers. That's about how it would go down if they appeared human...but who knows?

reply to post by HDD09


Your argument is great because it includes a island. The funny thing about the history of civilizations inhabiting islands on Earth....SUPER ADVANCED.

We all know the Hawaiians are very mysterious. The Hawaiian Islands especially. UFOologist love the Easter Islands. Some of the most ancient people. Interesting facts about Hawai'i, Kilauea, is the tallest mountain/volcano in the world if you measure it down to ocean floor level.
What one thing you can't look up about Hawaiians on the Internet is that all their Heiau's line up with the constellations in the sky.

I'm sure others can share stories of unusual island tales...

When the guys on the desert island see a fully applied technological naval fleet show up which plots and communicates by GPS satellite, has weapons enough to destroy the entire island in a minute and are told that their island will be a new harbour for future vessels - the argument becomes obsolete.

Until then it is not a valid argument.

So what are we gonna be, sitting here waiting or building up our knowledge?

-m0r

I dont beleive the argument is valid at all. Just because we have not located / heard from them (assuming our Government is not hiding stuff from us) does not mean they are not out there.

One of the biggest irritations I have when seeing comments by Scientists is what they use to base life off of. Namely, how life evolved here on earth. So we assume that there must be an atmosphere like ours, water must be present, it must be in a goldilocks zone.

If we search for Human's where Dolphins live, we will not find humans - I.E. Intelligent Life as we know it.

By far, one of the most arrogant assumptions, even more so since finding life on this planet where we thought it could never have occured.

I have seen 2 quotes that I love when describing this topic:

1- It is the supreme arrogance of man to assume we are alone in the Galaxy.

2 - (From Calvin and Hobbes) - The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere is that they have not tried to contact us yet".

If intelligent life exists, and assuming they have space travel abilities, which would mean the ability to communicate over vast distances relatively quickly if not instantly, why would they contact us?

We have yet to crawl off this rock and achieve anything of importance in space other than the ability to send probes to planets in our solar system.

We have yet to set aside petty differences between ourselves...
war....famine...plague... etc etc..

If I were an alien, and came across earth, my initial thought would be how the hell did they make it this far. My second thought would be why would I want to get involved in a family domestic.. I will come back in a few thousand years to see if they fixed it, or killed themselves off.

In the meantime, I will wtch from a distance for free amusement.



[edit on 7-4-2010 by Xcathdra]

[edit on 7-4-2010 by Xcathdra]

reply to post by Toxicsurf


See, the teacher was right - logic isn't a useless subject and a waste of the kids time The argument the OP presented is also called an argument from ignorance. A prime example of this would be a person that sees a light in the sky that he/she can't explain, because he/she can't explain the light it must be an ET spacecraft.