Alien cover up

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Consider if there were 50 total planets.

No real reason to do so, but I'll play along.

Consider earth is one of this 50 planets.
So we have 49 planets remaining.

50-1 = 49. Yes, I think I grasp it so far.

Each planet will have a 50-50 chance of having intelligent life in it.

Why? There would only be a 50-50 chance if all the planets were identical. The odds of intelligent life would be far greater on a mirror-Earth than on a planet whose surface is molten iridium.

So 50-50 chance for each planet of 49 planets leaves you with a 50-50 chance of life in these 49 remaining planets overall.

Actually, no. By way of analogy, consider a fair coin flip. In a single flip, you've got a 50-50 chance of the coin coming up either heads or tails. In 49 flips, you have a chance (albeit a small one) of getting 49 heads in a row.

But if you consider earth, which has life in it, then the odd are no longer 50-50 as we have at least 1 planet with life. Which would mean that the probability of aliens in the 49 remaining planets are now higher.

Erm...you aren't allowed to change the size of your statistical universe without good reason.

But wait, some people from earth does some space travelling and find out that 3 of the planets have no life in them.
Then these 3 planets no longer have a 50-50 chance of having life in them, they have 0 chance of having life in them.
That leaves us with what? 50 planets with 1 planet we are sure there is life and 3 planets we are sure there is no life.
So that means the probability is now staked against the existence of aliens, one which increases as we find more planets with no life in them.

Another analogy: I visit the Sahara desert at noon. I drop a sponge, walk 10 meters and drop another sponge. I repeat this process three more times. I check the sponges an hour later and find that all of them are dry. From this, I conclude that there are no such things as oceans.

Face it, there are no aliens.

That may indeed be the case, but you haven't given any real reasons why that should be so.

We are alone. There's no point in waiting.. Quite sad actually.

I will agree to the extent that we are effectively alone (see my post earlier in this thread).

Boru