Why we're the only intelligent life in our galaxy

[KimB]

I would say that the main difference in my argument with Chalnoth would be that he thinks that colonization is inevitable consequence of further development of intelligent life, in which case I disagree with him, and to me it is not inevitable. Furthermore a civilization that has a few thousand years more development is immensly more advanced than the other one who hasn't got it, let alone millions, and the propensity to "spread" is certainly not the strongest trait, as destruction or annhillation of life or everything else is much easier to execute for an advanced civilization no matter how small spread wise it might be if it has advanced knowledge in comparison. But as I said when a civilization goes a lot past to the point of knowledge we have achieved it will either self-destruct or change into an "integrated society" where "might is right" will not be in its interest anymore, because the "mighty" would be able and would have to destroy everyone else to keep his "mighty" status, as I outlined in one of my arguments in the posts before.

But you don't need anything close to "might is right" in order to have a civilization that has a desire to colonize. All that you do need is a civilization that wants to survive. Colonization is the only way to ensure the survival of the species.

 

[Ty]

If no then can team A logically conclude that unknown X does not exist?

No one is trying to prove the non-existence of extra-terrestrial life. It can't be done.

 

[NANOTEC]

No one is trying to prove the non-existence of extra-terrestrial life. It can't be done.

Did you start reading from page 1 all the way to this page? If you did and you still don't get the point of my post then simply ask ok pal? Don't jump into the discussion and assume you understand what people have been talking about for 13 pages. Go back and read the claim from page 1 alright? Thanks...

 

[Druga Runda]

first, glad you liked my post DiGuru and Nano

and the second, the argument from BZB & Chalnoth is interesting.

Basically what you propose is that colonization or spread is a necessary consequence of advanced civilization development.

The first part I agree, advanced civilization will become starfaring, this is perfectly acceptable to me. The only difference is that I am not so highly convinced that it is a necessity for them to settle all habitable planets in order to ensure their continued existance.

In that context Chalnoth is very precise

All that you do need is a civilization that wants to survive. Colonization is the only way to ensure the survival of the species.

That is certainly a valid idea. The only way to "challenge" it from my perspective is to claim that with advanced technology and adequate social structure the civlization would find acceptable the effort to create habitable and enjoyable environments on places which have no chance to develop further life, and live the unique places to go on at their own pace.

Even we today try to conserve place for different species of animals, on this really space tight earth which we are overpopulating slowly. I would expect no less from an advanced civilization to which their technology should provide ample space on other planets and star systems which would otherwise be hostile to "naturally developed" life. I would assume that those other, hostile systems would be much much more numerous, and the unique places like this earth much rarer thus more valuable to be left preserved to develp and study on it's own.

Thus I support the idea of colonization, but not necessarily colonization of life supporting planets, and claiming that sufficiently advanced technology should make terraforming and "planet change" trivial. Comparison is like ancient greeks vs us with regards to flying.

 

[KimB]

Thus I support the idea of colonization, but not necessarily colonization of life supporting planets, and claiming that sufficiently advanced technology should make terraforming and "planet change" trivial. Comparison is like ancient greeks vs us with regards to flying.

Sure, but colonization of already-habitable planets is going to be easiest. Terraforming would take a lot of time and resources, and I don't think that any race will have moral concerns about disrupting the potential evolution of an intelligent species sometime in the next few million of years (or few hundred million years, or billion, depending on where the lifeforms are at in their evolution).

I mean, I think there would be moral concerns to be raised if there was a species clearly on the way to developing an intelligent society.

But if you had a choice between planet A and planet B, with planet A being readily-colonizable, but planet B requiring a closed biosphere and hundreds or thousands of years of terraforming, complete with huge amounts of resources, which one are you going to colonize first?

The only way you'd go for the planet that's not easily capable of supporting life is if those that are capable of supporting life are many times more rare than those that can be terraformed to support life. Personally, I'd rather think that life-supporting planets are fairly common, but I really don't have any evidence to support that.

 

[NANOTEC]

My argument wasn't discussing space travel, just how the cultures of a planet would interact with one another prior to it.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here. Interact with one another? What's this one another? If you're talking about how cultures interact with one another on the same planet like ours well what does that have to do with anything? Yes if you have multiple cultures then you wil likely have some that desire to spread throughout the galaxy. That has nothing to do with whether or not a colonizing culture will dominate. Yes if we were to be contacted for whatever reason it will likely be the colonizing type. Nobody was debating that.

And your argument is an absurd what if in this scenario, because such an interaction would be, by definition, between a large number of very diverse cultures. You can't have just two on a planet, and so the probabilities become extreme. It's like statistical mechanics: the random movement of many atoms leads to completely predictable behavior.

It's not an absurd example. The fact is colonization does NOT guarantee domination by the colonizing species. Your random atom example isn't even relevent. You can predict domination by the colonizing species? How? Random movement of atoms?

And finally, it's the civilization that likes to colonize that is more likely to be immune to a given disease, as it will have by definition interacted with more civilizations.

Again you're falling back to the same we are this so they must be this too argument. You only know how the human immune system works. You don't know how immune systems of other life on other planets work. You make too many assumptions to make your argument seem more valid than it actually is.

At most I could accept the possibility of one or two such civilizations. I think our experience on Earth seems to indicate that most civilizations will want to colonize (space exploration is a multinational, multicultural effort), so if we took many planets with intelligent life at random, I would expect the vast majority to want to colonize their local area.

Well there's still a problem. Let's say other life exist and some of them are the colonizing type. We still have not thoroughly established whether or not they would want to make contact with us. If you want to argue that they would want our planet because of such and such well then you need to state what such and such is. This seems to be a circular argument without actually coming up with convincing evidence.

So what I'm say is that if you have more than one intelligent society existing before us in this galaxy, the probability that at least one of them will not have started colonization becomes so vanishingly small that it seems obscenely unlikely. And so this argument requires that intelligent life either be rare, or that the right conditions for it to arise have only recently come to be.

Again it goes back to the previous issue of why specifically they would want to contact us? To say hi? To assimilate us? What?

 

[Ty]

Did you start reading from page 1 all the way to this page? If you did and you still don't get the point of my post then simply ask ok pal? Don't jump into the discussion and assume you understand what people have been talking about for 13 pages. Go back and read the claim from page 1 alright? Thanks...

You're right. Your ability to contribute positively to this thread ended with nutball's critique of your argument on page 1.

 

[NANOTEC]

You're right. Your ability to contribute positively to this thread ended with nutball's critique of your argument on page 1.

Yes it seems you do have a comprehension problem.

 

[Ty]

The final word

How serendipitous.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1933717

Hopes — or fears — that the Earth has been visited by alien life forms have been dismissed in an official report by British defense specialists.

The Ministry of Defense confirmed on Sunday a secret study completed in December 2000 had found no evidence that "flying saucers" or unidentified flying objects were anything other than natural phenomena.

And yes, the title was in sarcasm.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I
Well there's still a problem. Let's say other life exist and some of them are the colonizing type. We still have not thoroughly established whether or not they would want to make contact with us. If you want to argue that they would want our planet because of such and such well then you need to state what such and such is. This seems to be a circular argument without actually coming up with convincing evidence.

Again it goes back to the previous issue of why specifically they would want to contact us? To say hi? To assimilate us? What?

"Let's say" some of them want to come say hi.

See that's the problem when you start handwaving with "let's say", or "chances are". It becomes just as valid for the reply to your argument to be "let's say they just do", because it's not based on any kind of evidence at all. It's just shooting the breeze.

I'm no expert, but really, some of the replies in this thread show a lack of understanding of the basics of the scientific method, probability, mathematics and even philosophy. You're not the first people to come up with these ideas. They've been debated and pulled apart for a long time. They've been discounted by better minds than most of us for good reasons. Let's try and stand on shoulders of those giants, rather than starting all over at the bottom, eh?

Are we just going around in circles now? Has this thread run it's course?

 

[KimB]

It's not an absurd example. The fact is colonization does NOT guarantee domination by the colonizing species. Your random atom example isn't even relevent. You can prediction domination by the colonizing species? How?

Domination by the culture that seeks to spread itself doesn't need to be guaranteed for each and every clash between cultures. It just needs to be a little bit more likely. If it is, then it is inevitable that there will be at least one major culture on any given planet with intelligent life that seeks colonization.

Again you're falling back to the same we are this so they must be this too argument. You only know how the human immune system works. You don't know how immune systems of other life on other planets work. You make too many assumptions to make your argument seem more valid than it actually is.

No, this argument has nothing to do with how the human immune system works. It has nothing to do with the any human biology whatsoever. It has only to do with the behavior of a civilization that seeks to spread itself vs. a civilization that does not. Put simply, the civilization that seeks to spread itself will naturally be exposed to more disease than the one that does not, as it will naturally interact with more cultures, and just due to simple evolution will therefore develop the capacity to resist more disease.

This doesn't guarantee that the civilization that dies out will be the civilization that doesn't seek to spread itself, but it means that it is more likely, and as I stated earlier, that's all that's needed.

Well there's still a problem. Let's say other life exist and some of them are the colonizing type. We still have not thoroughly established whether or not they would want to make contact with us. If you want to argue that they would want our planet because of such and such well then you need to state what such and such is. This seems to be a circular argument without actually coming up with convincing evidence.

1. Life exists here, therefore Earth is habitable.
2. According to what we know about chemistry, life is most likely to arise with a carbon/water basis.
3. Therefore, our planet would be an extremely useful planet for colonization for the most likely type of intelligent civilization (lots of water, carbon-based biomass).
4. Since we are here to talk about this, our planet has not been colonized by another species.
5. Since we have not been colonized by another species, carbon/water-based intelligent life must be rare in the galaxy.
6. If carbon/water-based intelligent life is rare, how much more rare would other sorts of life be, if they exist at all?

 

[NANOTEC]

"Let's say" some of them want to come say hi.

See that's the problem when you start handwaving with "let's say", or "chances are". It becomes just as valid for the reply to your argument to be "let's say they just do", because it's not based on any kind of evidence at all. It's just shooting the breeze.

And that can be said of the original clam "Chances are we're the only intelligent life in our galaxy.".

I'm no expert, but really, some of the replies in this thread show a lack of understanding of the basics of the scientific method, probability, mathematics and even philosophy. You're not the first people to come up with these ideas. They've been debated and pulled apart for a long time. They've been discounted by better minds than most of us for good reasons. Let's try and stand on shoulders of those giants, rather than starting all over at the bottom, eh?

Chalnoth made a claim, we are just debating this claim. Nobody here is claiming to be experts.

Are we just going around in circles now? Has this thread run it's course?

The argument was fairly circular from the beginning.

 

[Frank]

Colonization is the only way to ensure the survival of the species.

So, why don't we do it? We can, if we wanted to. Not to a second Earth, but off this rock in any case. And we have to start somewhere.

But we don't, because nobody believes it's needed, and it's very expensive. Priorities. And, if there is a certain danger, I'm sure that just about anyone would want the money spend on preventing it. Not "thrown away in space".

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

And that can be said of the original clam "Chances are we're the only intelligent life in our galaxy.".

That's a gross misrepresentation of Chalnoth's original post, which was basically a variation of Fermi's Paradox. Either you didn't understand what he wrote and the underlying Fermi's Paradox, or you're just being deliberately obtuse to bring the discussion down to the handwaving level where your "let's say" line of argument looks more reasonable.

Really Nanotec, you're not going to come up with something convincing where everyone else who has looked at Fermi's Paradox has not. If you do, I'm expecting your encore to be coming up with the Grand Theory Of Everything, and making pigs fly out of my butt.

 

[NANOTEC]

Domination by the culture that seeks to spread itself doesn't need to be guaranteed for each and every clash between cultures. It just needs to be a little bit more likely. If it is, then it is inevitable that there will be at least one major culture on any given planet with intelligent life that seeks colonization.

Yes IF it is. Is it?

Put simply, the civilization that seeks to spread itself will naturally be exposed to more disease than the one that does not, as it will naturally interact with more cultures, and just due to simple evolution will therefore develop the capacity to resist more disease.

Without knowing how other lifeforms from othe planets deal with disease it's pointless to say they'll be MORE immune because they'll be exposed to MORE disease. That logic only applies to life that is similar to ours and have immune systems similar to ours. The concept of how WE evolved to deal with disease cannot be arbitrarily transferred to other unkown life from other planets.

This doesn't guarantee that the civilization that dies out will be the civilization that doesn't seek to spread itself, but it means that it is more likely, and as I stated earlier, that's all that's needed.

But you still haven't shown how domination is more likely unless you claim better immunity to disease will be the slight adantage that is needed which goes back to the immunity issue which you still haven't shown applies to other life on other planets.

1. Life exists here, therefore Earth is habitable.

Yes by organisms on our planet.

2. According to what we know about chemistry, life is most likely to arise with a carbon/water basis.

Yes according to what we know, however, the consensus is that we likely know much less than what we don't know especially about other types of life on other planets.

3. Therefore, our planet would be an extremely useful planet for colonization for the most likely type of intelligent civilization (lots of water, carbon-based biomass).

Yes for life that is similar to our own, but we have no idea if other life is similar to own own.

4. Since we are here to talk about this, our planet has not been colonized by another species.

Another species like us, yes.

5. Since we have not been colonized by another species, carbon/water-based intelligent life must be rare in the galaxy.

Not necessarily. If that is the claim then we must make the assumption that all other species woulld have already achieved very advanced space travel which we simply don't know.

6. If carbon/water-based intelligent life is rare, how much more rare would other sorts of life be, if they exist at all?

We haven't yet fully addressed #5.

 

[KimB]

So, why don't we do it? We can, if we wanted to. Not to a second Earth, but off this rock in any case. And we have to start somewhere.

We don't yet have the technology. But I do hope that within 50 years we will have permanent or semi-permanent settlements on the Moon and Mars, and have scoped out a number of candidates for possible future exploration outside our solar system.

But we don't, because nobody believes it's needed, and it's very expensive. Priorities. And, if there is a certain danger, I'm sure that just about anyone would want the money spend on preventing it. Not "thrown away in space".

Sure, but some catastrophies could not ever be prevented. One of these might be the transition of our sun to a red giant stage. A nearby supernova or gamma ray burst would also do the trick. None of these events are going to happen any time soon, of course, but if we don't kill ourselves off by other means, one or another will come along eventually to kill us. And given the challenge in moving away from this solar system, the sooner we start the better.

 

[NANOTEC]

That's a gross misrepresentation of Chalnoth's original post, which was basically a variation of Fermi's Paradox. Either you didn't understand what he wrote and the underlying Fermi's Paradox, or you're just being deliberately obtuse to bring the discussion down to the handwaving level where your "let's say" line of argument looks more reasonable.

Really Nanotec, you're not going to come up with something convincing where everyone else who has looked at Fermi's Paradox has not. If you do, I'm expecting your encore to be coming up with the Grand Theory Of Everything, and making pigs fly out of my butt.

Again examples were already given why the lack of evidence doesn't necessarily mean the lack of existence. If you cannot understand that concept then there's no point in you complaining about the other side of the argument.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Again examples were already given why the lack of evidence doesn't necessarily mean the lack of existence. If you cannot understand that concept then there's no point in you complaining about the other side of the argument.

Lack of evidence doesn't prove anything, yet you're using it to try and bolster your arguments. This is where you fail to understand what is the difference between "proof" and "lack of proof". You seem to think the two things have the same value and weight.

Suppose I say you are a murderer. I don't have any evidence for it, but that doesn't mean you arn't a killer. See where the idea of proof and evidence plays an important role here? See where a lack of evidence can't be used to make positive statements about things we don't actually know about?

 

[NANOTEC]

Lack of evidence doesn't prove anything, yet you're using it to try and bolster your arguments. This is where you fail to understand what is the difference between "proof" and "lack of proof". You seem to think the two things have the same value and weight.

Suppose I say you are a murderer. I don't have any evidence for it, but that doesn't mean you arn't a killer. See where the idea of proof and evidence plays an important role here? See where a lack of evidence can't be used to make positive statements about things we don't actually know about?

What are you talking about? Chalnoth is saying since there is a lack of evidence of other life other life doesn't exist. What don't you understand?

As to your murder example-->Guilty until proven innocent or innocent until proven guilty? Take your pick makes no difference in the overall discussion. Chalnoth hasn't proven other life doesn't exist and I haven't proven that it does. What's the difference?

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

What are you talking about? Chalnoth is saying since there is a lack of evidence of other life other life doesn't exist. What don't you understand?

As to your murder example-->Guilty until proven innocent or innocent until proven guilty? Take your pick makes no difference in the overall discussion. Chalnoth hasn't proven other life doesn't exist and I haven't proven that it does. What's the difference?

Chalnoth can never prove that complex, intelligent life doesn't exist elsewhere. It's impossible to prove a negative. He could personally search every planet on this side of the galaxy, and you could turn around and handwave again, saying "there might be life over the other side of the galaxy. Or in another galaxy. Or in an alternate universe". Until Chalnoth searches every planet existing in the universe (ie do the impossible) he can't claim life doesn't exist.

You on the other hand, have the onus to prove that other life is out there. Where is your proof? Where is the evidence? Your handwaving and dodgy statistics don't prove anything, as we've already acertained.

I'm really surprised that you have entered this discussion without understanding the basic tenant that no one can prove a negative. It's exactly this same line of argument that people use to try and "logically" explain supernatural beings with the "might be true" argument and no proof.