Why we're the only intelligent life in our galaxy

[Tahir2]

I just want to add I am not going to hole myself up into an ID or a Evolutionist camp.

I don't know either theory well enough to ally myself but realise there are problems with both at this time and perhaps some of these problems may never be full resolved no matter how much we advance in knowledge and technology.

Chalnoth:
And I do come from a somewhat poor scientific background, having studied and failed Chemistry and Biology so it is best not to assume about the ignorance or knowledge of a person on a forum based off a statement that was not meant to be taken at face value but had a hidden meaning to it as well.

To me the questions are why is there evolution and random mutation and out of it order still exists. Why is there order in this Universe and why are we able to experiment on it to gain knowledge of how it works.

That is in itself very strange and miraculous (please add your own definition of miraculous).

 

[NANOTEC]

Yeah, well, it's somewhat hard to convey the culture of science that I've been exposed to in my three years of gratuate school, and two years of undergraduate study at a research university prior to this.

To put it simply, scientists are incredibly skeptical. It takes a lot of convincing to get the majority of the community to move to a new view. It requires multiple experiments performed by completely independent groups just to verify the same set of experimental data. It requires multiple experiments on completely separate data to convince people of a theory that connects the separate data. And even with all of this convincing, every scientist out there will probably tell you, if you ask the right question, that they don't believe that the theory in question is absolutely correct.

But when you're working on the origins of life, there are some simple assumptions that you must make in order to get any amount of work done. One of those simple assumptions is that all natural laws which we can measure today worked in the same way in the past (note that this in part defines what we mean by natural laws). The entire idea of intelligent design is antithetical to the use of natural laws to describe our world: it states that some intelligence interfered with the natural laws.

Intelligent design is therefore, by the structure of the "theory," not subject to experiment: one cannot, in a lab, manifest the same intelligent designer that is proposed to have started life out here on Earth and get it to do something for you.

Therefore, Intelligent Design must be thrown out as a possibility for performing science. This isn't an argument that it didn't or couldn't happen. This is just a statement that if we want to do any work at all in understanding our universe, we cannot make use of the idea of Intelligent Design.

This doesn't come down to belief, or bias, or personal preference. It is pure and simple logic: if we want to make use of logic to discover the nature of the universe, we need to make certain assumptions, and one of those is that everything can be described through a set of (possibly not yet known) immutable natural laws.

Note to DemoCoder on immutability: Stating that currently-known laws may change with time is merely a statement that there is some higher framework which describes this change, and this higher frame work does not change in time.

Actually if you believe in intelligent design, it is man's natural curiousity that will lead us to reverse engineer the design. Maybe this was part of the master plan to get us to traverse the stars looking for the designer.

 

[Tahir2]

it states that some intelligence interfered with the natural laws.

And I state that some Intelligence is interferring.. all the time. Including keeping the speed of light at its level and making sure frozen H2O floats rather than sinks.

These laws however are so exact, so consistent (but not perfectly so) that from them knowledge of our surroundings can be obtained, and can be exploited to suit our needs... e.g. electricity.

Forget the idea of trying to prove this Intelligence exists or does not exist. If you believe or don't believe that is set and you are likely to change your opinion through other circumstances rather than science. It should not hamper your experiments or cause you to become extremely biased one way or another when conducting them. Skepticism should not give you the right to force your own opinion and make judgement on a scientist's worth in salt down everyone elses throat.

It did not hurt Einstein's scientific prowess that he believed in God now did it?
Or Carl Sagan's for his lack of belief in an Intelligent being.

 

[KimB]

Btw, don't you all think that the possibility of the predominant lifeform having silicon ancestors is much higher than them having, say, human, DNA based, or any other kind of ancestors? Xbdestroya might be right in suggesting silicon life as a good candidate after all.

Huh? The predominant lifeform where? Silicon is a horrible candidate, due to the available variety of chemistry, and the solid metabolic waste (as opposed to the gas CO2).

 

[Frank]

Huh? The predominant lifeform where? Silicon is a horrible candidate, due to the available variety of chemistry, and the solid metabolic waste (as opposed to the gas CO2).

Robots. Man-made or made by other lifeforms. First generation using silicon brains.



Edit: REALLY. That was my main point this whole thread, and what DemoCoder discussed as well!

(Where is the whip icon when you need it? BAD Chalnoth!)

 

[KimB]

There's no need to connect the chemical basis for the builders with the materials used in the construction of some sort of artificial life forms.

 

[NANOTEC]

Chalnoth, wiich theory or hypothesis do you believe best explains the orgnin of life on earth?

I support the directed panspermia hypothesis which loosely relates to ID.

 

[DemoCoder]

I accept that science has its uses, but I also accept that it has limitations.

It's all we got.

(more lame attacks on evolution deleted. To read the talk.origins FAQ, your concerns will be answered)

No I did not suggest it was started by another life form. I only said ID may be one of the many possibilities.

You speak like a politician, the words that come out of your mouth are equivocal. You spoke that ID and directed panspermia are possibilities. Most people would interpret that to mean you are suggesting it was started by another life form, since you already eliminated evolution from your list of correct theories. Stop weaseling around and stand up for what you believe, or else admit you are wrong.

(in response to a question about what are 'non-random' natural events)
Sleeping, eating, drinking, deficating.

Oh, how clever. Too bad it's a side step of the question. You don't believe life arose from "random natural events" but can't define what "non-random natural events" would mean vis-a-vis life and the fossil record.

I didn't say we don't know anything. I said we don't know enough to say we're likely the only intelligent life in our galaxy. The fact we exist says there is likely others who exist or have existed.

The fact that we exist does not necessarily imply anything life in the rest of the universe, anymore than the fact that I flipped a penny and it came up heads implies that the next flip will be tails.

For that implication to work (we exist -> imply life likely elsewhere), you'd have to believe that the conditions of the universe are right to permit spontaneous evolution of life, *OR* you'd have to argue a faith based reason about God's/ID intention to create X number of planets with lfie. But please, entertain us with your psychoanalyzing of God/ID's "intent"

And what you don't get is that the Theory of Evolution is one guess among many guesses. Whether it has more supporting evidence than other theories says nothing.

The only difference between any set of scientific theories is whether that have supporting evidence, and whether there is a lack of contradictory evidence. Contrasy to "saying nothing", it says EVERYTHiNG.

Whether it is 2, 5, or 9 makes no difference. The point is still the same. We're likely not alone.

Look, you're an intellectual coward. You are unwilling to give any likelihood figures, and unwilling to speculate on the distribution of life, at the same time you make bold statements about how "200 billion stars" somehow makes it a certainty. You can't make statements like "certainty" unless you are able to calculate the odds.

If the number of planets makes no difference, then the number of stars makes no difference. You just won't admit you were wrong and erroneously tried to handwave large numbers around.

In science you have a hypothesis then you test it. A theory has no defined sample size. The origin of life cannot be tested to show that single celled organisms from the ocean evolved into humans. It only shows how one species of organism can evolve over time.

First of all, cross speciation has been demonstrated. Secondly, by induction. Your statement is like saying "Quantum Mechanics cannot be tested to show how all of the individual atoms in an automobile can precisely cause it to drive down the road." Science works via reductionism and induction, not via "holistic" theories.

Actually I do understand it, I just don't take it as gospel. It has limitations and the Theory of Evolution exposes those limitations.

No, you have overwhelming demonstrated in this thread that you don't understand how science works, other than what you seem to have been taught in grade school. You also don't understand the theory of evolution either.

Until that day comes Evolution will still be one of many possibilites.

ID/God can never be ruled out, so it is impossible in PRINCIPAL to satisfy you with certainty. You can always fall back on your "God did it" possibility. Just as I can fall back on "we're all living in some guy's MMORPG simulation of the universe"

And there will never be any evidence that can ever be presented to distinguish the two. It's just your belief vs others.

So don't go telling people you are a "science guy". You're a faith guy, deal with it.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

But we still have no qualms at all about killing in droves those animals that are very abundant.

Note that the abundant animals we kill freely are also ones which we are fairly certain are not capable of high-intelligence and reasoning. Granted, we have had quite a long time to study them to come to that conclusion, but it illustrates the point that we do, as a civilization, draw a line (a broad, blurry, shifting one, but still...) between sentient and non-sentient. If chimpanzees were equally abundant as cows, I do not think we would be using them as readily as food sources. Sure, some might try it , but there would be a large level of resistance to that idea.

I really don't expect this to change, nor do I think that it would be different for other civilizations: a civilization that cares too much about other life forms would become paralyzed and unable to grow or progress.

I understand what you're saying, but you are making moral assumptions about advanced civilizations for which I don't see any reasonable basis of support. As the only example of a (semi-) advanced civilization that we are aware of, we attempt to weigh our own growth and progress against the destruction it brings to other species. Yeah yeah, we have done a piss poor job of that in the past, and still today, but the point is that we at least are attempting to improve in that aspect. I don't see the logic for why continuing advancement would not continue that trend... why should it suddenly reverse?

Well, I think it's obvious in our case because we have a rather large civilization. But if we were to run into a group of early, pre-civilization homo sapiens, or pre-homo sapiens species, how would we even know that they have the capacity for intelligence? We would probably think that these species were just intelligent apes: it would take a significant amount of work to realize that they had the capacity for sentience.

That makes sense, at least in part. I could easily imagine an advanced colonizing society making "mistakes" in this way. Even with morals, and perhaps laws and procedures in place that attempt to differentiate various life forms and weigh the consequence of their destruction, societies that are on the verge of high intelligence (which could be anything from a few hundred years before technological development to tens of thousands or more) might be mis-classified or overlooked. Additionally, a highly intelligent society that didn't develop technology for whatever reason might go unnoticed.

But any society having developed technology would be quite easily spotted I would think. At the very least, we would. Which I guess brings us back to the scale of time involved. The assumption underlying the colonization argument is that within a short amount of time any society having developed technology would advance to having the ability to colonize. In which case, the likelihood is that only one of such societies would exist at any one instant in the galaxy. In which case the only life-forms destroyed in the process of colonization would in all probability be much more primitive.

In which case... I'm not sure what my point was. I suppose it is that in the rare event that another advanced civilization is out there, hellbent on galactic colonization, and heading our way, there is no reason to assume that they are evil world-destroyers. The only datapoint we have would suggest that it is at least as likely that they would be respectful of us.

 

[KimB]

In which case... I'm not sure what my point was. I suppose it is that in the rare event that another advanced civilization is out there, hellbent on galactic colonization, and heading our way, there is no reason to assume that they are evil world-destroyers. The only datapoint we have would suggest that it is at least as likely that they would be respectful of us.

Well, right, I don't think we'd have to worry too much about that that. I mean, granted, I don't think there's any nearby intelligent life at all, but if we take as a hypothetical that there is one out there right now that is in the process of colonizing the galaxy, it is highly likely that if they have seen our planet by now, they probably spotted it before we started sending out copious amounts of radio tranmissions. As such, they would have no way of knowing whether or not there was an intelligent species on the planet, would assume not, and would have sent a colony ship our way.

But what would they do when they were greeted with the surprise that we were already here? Given the huge time and fuel requirements for an interstellar trek, it's unlikely they'd just turn around. My guess would be that if they could manage to stay in orbit long enough for us to learn to communicate, they would do so, and negotiate the purchase of some land for technology, information, or possibly machines they brought with them. Otherwise they'd attempt to land in a remote region and do the same. But, of course, this would just be my guess based upon what I believe humans would do in a reverse situation, and as such is highly subject to speculation (I think much more so than my other statements about what I think extra-terrestrial intelligence will do, statements for which I believe I had sound logic).

 

[zidane1strife]

Robots. Man-made or made by other lifeforms. First generation using silicon brains.



Edit: REALLY. That was my main point this whole thread, and what DemoCoder discussed as well!

(Where is the whip icon when you need it? BAD Chalnoth!)

Macro-scale robots are owned by molecular machina based ones, and carbon and many of the smaller(hence more stable bonds) atoms, often used in natural m-machina, appear to be ideal for those.

 

[DemoCoder]

Chalnoth, we only need to kill other animals because resources are scarce. It is unlikely that a civilization could grow to colonize the galaxy if it didn't posess technology to practically eliminate scarcity. Thus, any civilizations sufficiently advanced enough for galactic colonization is also probably sufficiently advanced enough to be under no particular need to destroy species on any planet that already has a biosphere.

They would possess the ability to harvest energy and storage it in whatever amounts they needed, and it would be unlikely that they need worlds with pre-existing biospheres to survive. That's "Trek"-style colonization, where you find a world ready made to support your species resource needs and colonize it.

In reality, such advanced civilizations would probably harvest their materials from whatever asteroid/comet belts or rocky planets they encounter, plus siphoning materials off gas giants, and from the near orbit of the star itself.

 

[KimB]

Chalnoth, we only need to kill other animals because resources are scarce. It is unlikely that a civilization could grow to colonize the galaxy if it didn't posess technology to practically eliminate scarcity. Thus, any civilizations sufficiently advanced enough for galactic colonization is also probably sufficiently advanced enough to be under no particular need to destroy species on any planet that already has a biosphere.

I'm not talking at all about alien species directly killing animals in the planets they colonize. But colonization needs space, space that can only be taken from the habitats of the native life forms. And since any colony, once founded, is likely to spread (since that was the purpose of colonization in the first place), it probably wouldn't be very long before nearly the entire planet was colonized. Though if their culture is anything like that of the US, they're likely to set aside preserves, and pay attention to the populations of various species, and attempt to prevent as many from extinction as possible (or maybe they just won't care).

They would possess the ability to harvest energy and storage it in whatever amounts they needed, and it would be unlikely that they need worlds with pre-existing biospheres to survive. That's "Trek"-style colonization, where you find a world ready made to support your species resource needs and colonize it.

Possibly. But it's much, much easier to survive in a pre-existing biosphere than not, so I contend that civilizations are only likely to resort to long-term life in artificial biospheres after all "nearby" pre-existing biospheres are colonized.

 

[zidane1strife]

Possibly. But it's much, much easier to survive in a pre-existing biosphere than not, so I contend that civilizations are only likely to resort to long-term life in artificial biospheres after all "nearby" pre-existing biospheres are colonized.

Chalnoth, you're simply underestimating the miracles that can be accomplished with dominion over matter at the molecular scale Even the power of the atom that man's harnessed is insignificant agaisnt it, the combined machine/human power of this entire world at present is insignificant against it. Any sort of structure can be built with ease, space-stations, satellites, solar-energy collectors, artificial planets, whatevah. You can also dismantle existing structures(even celestial bodies) and create unimaginable things.

If there's a way to craft an 'Exit', this is a must have indeed. We can harness large amounts of resources, eventually galaxy mass/energy exceding, and build whatever we desire.

 

[KimB]

Built? Yes. But not with ease. Put into economic terms, I believe that it'll be more expensive in the long run to get humanity off of this planet by building permanent artificial biospheres that it will to make use of other habitable biospheres.

If we ever do build permanent colonies on Mars or the Moon, for example, I think it's rather likely that they'll only survive through trade with Earth (metals for food, water, perhaps other things).

But movement to another habitable planet is pretty much trivially self-sufficient, once you overcome the cost burden of reaching the planet.

P.S. One thing you must recognize is that the knowledge of how to fully-manipulate matter at the molecular scale isn't any sort of "magic bullet." There's still entropy to overcome: building large ordered structures is always going to be expensive, just due to the low entropy of such structures. Yes, better knowledge of how to deal with matter at such small scales will help with the efficiency, but it won't make it cheap.

 

[zidane1strife]

Built? Yes. But not with ease. Put into economic terms, I believe that it'll be more expensive in the long run to get humanity off of this planet by building permanent artificial biospheres that it will to make use of other habitable biospheres.

If we ever do build permanent colonies on Mars or the Moon, for example, I think it's rather likely that they'll only survive through trade with Earth (metals for food, water, perhaps other things).

But movement to another habitable planet is pretty much trivially self-sufficient, once you overcome the cost burden of reaching the planet.

P.S. One thing you must recognize is that the knowledge of how to fully-manipulate matter at the molecular scale isn't any sort of "magic bullet." There's still entropy to overcome: building large ordered structures is always going to be expensive, just due to the low entropy of such structures. Yes, better knowledge of how to deal with matter at such small scales will help with the efficiency, but it won't make it cheap.

Chalnoth, chalnoth, expensive? Sure in terms of energy and matter resources, but these things are highly automated, no manual labour is required, they'll assimilate existing structures(planets, moons, asteroids, what have you), and gather additional energy through the various means available pretty much by themselves.

As for entropy, heheh, there are certain cheats around that baby, negentropy is powerful stuff, animals which exhibit negligible senescence are an example of this. I'm studying their structures, and I've recently given a hacked-out hypothesis on the basis of negentropy increasing structures(life itself).

You must understand, this flesh is inadequate for my goals, I seek to understand more of the nature of this world, but with this body... I'm afraid time'll run out and I may become amnesiac again.

 

[KimB]

One word: TINSTAAFL (okay, acronym)

 

[DemoCoder]

Chalnoth, you're thinking too much like a human, and not like a post human. We're not talking about getting humanity off the biosphere. We've talking about getting post-humanity off the biosphere. Not a civilization just a few hundred years more advanced than our own, but possible thousands, maybe millions. Many in the nanotechnology community don't even think biological humanity will last another 200-300 years.

Any civilization advanced enough to master nanotechnology is likely to not to exist in biological form much longer. And manufacturing anything is a matter of time, and post-biological beings won't be in any rush.


As an example of using your imagination, Frank Tipler performed a calculation to see how many human being level intelligences could be encoded in a 100gram space probe by encoding 1-bit per atom (already doable today), using well known and mostly accepted upper bounds on the maximum information storage of the human brain. The result was 10,000 human minds could fit in 100grams.

Why shoot for such a small ship/probe? Because it is feasible for interstellar travel near .9c even using relatively mundane propulsion technology. (no antimatter engines needed)

Post-biological civilizations won't need "habitat", they won't need to terraform planets, or build generation ships, and artificial biospheres. All they'll need is a post-biological substrate.

Given that (by your own argument that started this thread) Earth-like planets would be exceedingly rare throughout the galaxy, it is no loss to an advanced civilization to skip our solar system's resources, since 99.999999999999% of star systems are probably biosphere free.

 

[NANOTEC]

It's all we got.

That doesn't necessarily make it "good enough" to arriving at the true origin of life.

You speak like a politician, the words that come out of your mouth are equivocal. You spoke that ID and directed panspermia are possibilities. Most people would interpret that to mean you are suggesting it was started by another life form, since you already eliminated evolution from your list of correct theories. Stop weaseling around and stand up for what you believe, or else admit you are wrong.

No go back and find a statement where I said evolution was simply wrong and that ID was right. In fact I'm against this or that type of artificial constraints which you to be so highly in favor of. Only my most recent post did I state that I support the panspermia idea. Throughout all of my posts especially the ones earlier in the thread, I posed questions, not claims. The only claim I made was with respect to the likelihood of other intelligen life in our galaxy.

Oh, how clever. Too bad it's a side step of the question. You don't believe life arose from "random natural events" but can't define what "non-random natural events" would mean vis-a-vis life and the fossil record.

It's not a sidestep, it's an answer to the question. They're all nonrandom. They're predictable like the weather. If you were looking for the reason why I think life on earth didn't arise from random events, then the reason would be the complexity and the nonrandom serquencing of the codes in DNA. I don't believe they sequenced themselves.

The fact that we exist does not necessarily imply anything life in the rest of the universe, anymore than the fact that I flipped a penny and it came up heads implies that the next flip will be tails.

Flip the coin a few more times.

For that implication to work (we exist -> imply life likely elsewhere), you'd have to believe that the conditions of the universe are right to permit spontaneous evolution of life, *OR* you'd have to argue a faith based reason about God's/ID intention to create X number of planets with lfie. But please, entertain us with your psychoanalyzing of God/ID's "intent"

No, it's not this so it's has to be that. It could easily have been something else entirely. I don't believe life was entirely random from the beginning. Some aspects sure, but not the formation of DNA. That doesn't appear to be random according to some scientists. I believe the DNA got here someway and that it was engineered/designed.

The only difference between any set of scientific theories is whether that have supporting evidence, and whether there is a lack of contradictory evidence. Contrasy to "saying nothing", it says EVERYTHiNG.

And that is where it fails. evidence requires observation through tools/methods. A hypothesis can be nearly true without any evidence at all because we may never be able to observe it with the tools/methods we have. That is not different from hypothesizing that life didn't arise from random events. Just because you can't test it doesn't mean it's false. There may be things beyond our detection/understanding, doesn't mean they cease to existi because of it.

Look, you're an intellectual coward. You are unwilling to give any likelihood figures, and unwilling to speculate on the distribution of life, at the same time you make bold statements about how "200 billion stars" somehow makes it a certainty. You can't make statements like "certainty" unless you are able to calculate the odds.

If the number of planets makes no difference, then the number of stars makes no difference. You just won't admit you were wrong and erroneously tried to handwave large numbers around.

I didn't say the number makes no difference. I'm sayig it's more than enough for me to come to the conclusion that we're likely not the only intelligent life forms in our galaxy. If you already believe life arose from a random set of events then you're bound by its associated probability. Since I believe life wasn't born from random events, the probability that life on other planets also exist increases.

First of all, cross speciation has been demonstrated. Secondly, by induction. Your statement is like saying "Quantum Mechanics cannot be tested to show how all of the individual atoms in an automobile can precisely cause it to drive down the road." Science works via reductionism and induction, not via "holistic" theories.

According to that line of reasoning the greatest minds in the world should stop hypothesizing about things that can't be observed/tested.

No, you have overwhelming demonstrated in this thread that you don't understand how science works, other than what you seem to have been taught in grade school. You also don't understand the theory of evolution either.

Well then it should be trivial for you the self proclaimed "know it all" to enlighten us as to where my error in evolutionary understanding is.

ID/God can never be ruled out, so it is impossible in PRINCIPAL to satisfy you with certainty. You can always fall back on your "God did it" possibility. Just as I can fall back on "we're all living in some guy's MMORPG simulation of the universe"

And there will never be any evidence that can ever be presented to distinguish the two. It's just your belief vs others.

So don't go telling people you are a "science guy". You're a faith guy, deal with it.

If that's the case then maybe those scientists with PhDs that accept/support ID or panspermia should just stop what they're doing and go home because some guy on the internet said so.

 

[Neeyik]

DemoCoder and NANOTEC - can you take this to PM now please?