Why we might be alone in the Universe

[polymath257]

But again, make the distinction between life at the bacterial level (which I agree is most likely quite common) and life at the technological level. At this point we have no chance of detecting non-technological life beyond our solar system.

But, if there was a technology at the level of manipulating stars, there is a decent chance we could detect it. There was even a false signal recently thinking there might be construction of a Dyson sphere around a nearby star.

Detecting those 4 needles becomes a lot easier if they are luminous. The question is, if there are truly advanced technologies out there, why are they dark to us? And if not, why not?

Again, even life at our level would be likely too. But again, the universe is so big, it is still that needle/haystack for them and us.

Distance. While there could even be more advance life then ours, because of distance, it would most likely be just as stuck locally where it is, like we are, even if it had a slightly longer range.  I will say this though, if I were intelligent alien life, and spotted us, with the way we behave to each other now, I wouldn't try to contact us even if I could. We are a very violent species.

I really do think you are over complicating this. It only takes water and amino acids for evolution to occur. As individual atoms, those atoms are plentiful in the universe. But no, I still do not buy any Area 51 or Roswell crap. 

In theory if we could go to every rocky planet in the universe, as big as it is, we should expect to find life at our intellectual level. But again, distance and time and energy are going to make it almost impossible for life to communicate with each other over those distances.

Yes, it only takes a few common compounds to get life started (as far as we understand). But what I am saying is that even once we have life, that doens't imply the existence of complex cells, let alone intelligent life.

And I definitely don't agree that we should expect life at our level wherever we go. As an example, if you look at the Earth over the last 3.8 billion years for which it has had life, there has been *agriculture* for only the last 10,000 years or so (well, except for ants) and the use of radio waves for only the last 100.

If we take the Earth as an example, it would be *very* unlikely to find a technological species over the time it has had life. Even as a percentage of the time Earth has had multicellular life, humans have been around a very small fraction of that time.

What I would *expect* in going to a planet similar to Earth orbiting a star similar to the sun and at the right distance, is to see *bacterial* life primarily with a chance of complex cells. Much less likely is some form of land 'animal' and even less likely is something technological.

[vulcanlogician]

Except he didn’t address it.  What he did was to use an bullshit analogy with additional flourish - a very tight drop dead deadline - absent from the hypothesis it attempts to mimic to insinuate that the support cited for the original hypothesis suffers from extreme sample bias, when in fact the 60 second drop dead deadline has no analogy in the theory of abiogenesis.   The notion that the average lock picking process takes days or many time longer than the prisoner has does not exactly correspond to any well supported theory of what is going on during abiogenesis.  

In fact the observation that life arose on earth in less than 10% of the time it had available to arise - far skewed to the quick side of 50% one would expect to be average of the random sample constrained by the sample Windows - suggest the sample bias or the size of the sample window is weak explanation for the observation of quick abiogenesis.

So he tries to pass off as an analogy that which is no analogy, in order discredit a red herring.  And he did it in a manner very much reminiscent of a confidence trickster.

Let’s examine his bullshit analogy further by extending it.  Let’s say the prisoner picked the lock in not 60 seconds but 6 seconds.   Someone then tells him via YouTube that he would have dropped dead in 60 seconds, ie before now, had he not picked the lock, so his sample is skewed, but he sees zero evidence for that to be the case.   Should he conclude based on the available evidence of his picking of the lock in 6 seconds is likely a freakish occurrence, skewed by observer biases, and not an indication of how easily can the lock be picked?

@polymath257 expressed similar concerns about the "prisoner" thought experiment. To me (at least at first blush) the thought experiment seems to adequately show the possibility that fast abiogenesis on earth could be a fluke. What am I missing?

Both of you suggest that the window of time is somehow artificial. As I see it, it is not. Let's say that with our star there is a "window" of, say 8 billion years after the earth cooled for life to arise. After all, isn't our sun going to heat up enough to evaporate the oceans? And let's also posit that (for all we know) the chance of amino acids arranging in a fashion that they begin self replication is only likely to occur once every 20 billion years (r something).

To me, all the thought experiment is trying to say is: maybe we got lucky. Until we get more data, this is a possibility worth considering.

[polymath257]

Except he didn’t address it.  What he did was to use an bullshit analogy with additional flourish - a very tight drop dead deadline - absent from the hypothesis it attempts to mimic to insinuate that the support cited for the original hypothesis suffers from extreme sample bias, when in fact the 60 second drop dead deadline has no analogy in the theory of abiogenesis.   The notion that the average lock picking process takes days or many time longer than the prisoner has does not exactly correspond to any well supported theory of what is going on during abiogenesis.  

In fact the observation that life arose on earth in less than 10% of the time it had available to arise - far skewed to the quick side of 50% one would expect to be average of the random sample constrained by the sample Windows - suggest the sample bias or the size of the sample window is weak explanation for the observation of quick abiogenesis.

So he tries to pass off as an analogy that which is no analogy, in order discredit a red herring.  And he did it in a manner very much reminiscent of a confidence trickster.

Let’s examine his bullshit analogy further by extending it.  Let’s say the prisoner picked the lock in not 60 seconds but 6 seconds.   Someone then tells him via YouTube that he would have dropped dead in 60 seconds, ie before now, had he not picked the lock, so his sample is skewed, but he sees zero evidence for that to be the case.   Should he conclude based on the available evidence of his picking of the lock in 6 seconds is likely a freakish occurrence, skewed by observer biases, and not an indication of how easily can the lock be picked?

@polymath257 expressed similar concerns about the "prisoner" thought experiment. To me (at least at first blush) the thought experiment seems to adequately show the possibility that fast abiogenesis on earth could be a fluke. What am I missing?

Both of you suggest that the window of time is somehow artificial. As I see it, it is not. Let's say that with our star there is a "window" of, say 8 billion years after the earth cooled for life to arise. After all, isn't our sun going to heat up enough to evaporate the oceans? And let's also posit that (for all we know) the chance of amino acids arranging in a fashion that they begin self replication is only likely to occur once every 20 billion years (r something).

To me, all the thought experiment is trying to say is: maybe we got lucky. Until we get more data, this is a possibility worth considering.

Ahh, but in this case, the expected time for development of life would be around the 4 billion year mark. The *actual* time on Earth was around the 700 million year mark with the Earth only being cool enough at the 500 million year mark. So, of about 8 billion years, we see life very early on.

To keep the analogy with the video, there would have to be a 'cut off' time period of around 500 million years. And *that* is what I see no evidence to support.

To continue the analogy in the video: if there is a cut off after 6 minutes, we would expect everyone that succeeds in getting out to do so within the first 6 minutes. But if, instead, the cut off was 6 hours (and picking the lock takes, on average, 600 hours), we would expect a distribution within that 6 hour time period. It would be very surprising to have someone that survived picking the lock within 6 minutes.

In the case of the Earth, there seems to be no reason to expect a barrier to the formation of life through the first several billion years. But we actually see life form almost immediately after it becomes possible. So the analogy fails.

[Brian37]

Again, even life at our level would be likely too. But again, the universe is so big, it is still that needle/haystack for them and us.

Distance. While there could even be more advance life then ours, because of distance, it would most likely be just as stuck locally where it is, like we are, even if it had a slightly longer range.  I will say this though, if I were intelligent alien life, and spotted us, with the way we behave to each other now, I wouldn't try to contact us even if I could. We are a very violent species.

I really do think you are over complicating this. It only takes water and amino acids for evolution to occur. As individual atoms, those atoms are plentiful in the universe. But no, I still do not buy any Area 51 or Roswell crap. 

In theory if we could go to every rocky planet in the universe, as big as it is, we should expect to find life at our intellectual level. But again, distance and time and energy are going to make it almost impossible for life to communicate with each other over those distances.

Yes, it only takes a few common compounds to get life started (as far as we understand). But what I am saying is that even once we have life, that doens't imply the existence of complex cells, let alone intelligent life.

And I definitely don't agree that we should expect life at our level wherever we go. As an example, if you look at the Earth over the last 3.8 billion years for which it has had life, there has been *agriculture* for only the last 10,000 years or so (well, except for ants) and the use of radio waves for only the last 100.

If we take the Earth as an example, it would be *very* unlikely to find a technological species over the time it has had life. Even as a percentage of the time Earth has had multicellular life, humans have been around a very small fraction of that time.

What I would *expect* in going to a planet similar to Earth orbiting a star similar to the sun and at the right distance, is to see *bacterial* life primarily with a chance of complex cells. Much less likely is some form of land 'animal' and even less likely is something technological.

Why should we not expect life that thinks at our level? Of course we have not found it, and likely we wont. But again, the universe is FUCKING HUGE.

You are far too focused on our modern science and saying, "Why haven't we yet". 

If you agree it is possible for microbial life to exist elsewhere, why couldn't the same compounds lead to a comparative evolution we see here?

Again, the universe is 13.8 billion years old with trillions of galaxies, and billions of stars each, which means trillions of planets.

DISTANCE for our life, and anything else that is out there is going to make it hard if not impossible to find. 

I don't know what other example I can give you.

Think of a single grain of sand on any beach, and know that there are more stars in the universe than sand just on our planet.

We are only alone in the context that we are remote. But to say that no other life at our level or more advanced does not exist, is absurd to me. 

Again, I'd bet, if I could live the entire future of the universe until it suffers heat death, and that we could visit every rocky planet in the universe, it would not surprise me one bit, if other life with our level of language existed. I simply would say, it is stuck where it is at, just like we are stuck where we are at.

[Anomalocaris]

Except he didn’t address it.  What he did was to use an bullshit analogy with additional flourish - a very tight drop dead deadline - absent from the hypothesis it attempts to mimic to insinuate that the support cited for the original hypothesis suffers from extreme sample bias, when in fact the 60 second drop dead deadline has no analogy in the theory of abiogenesis.   The notion that the average lock picking process takes days or many time longer than the prisoner has does not exactly correspond to any well supported theory of what is going on during abiogenesis.  

In fact the observation that life arose on earth in less than 10% of the time it had available to arise - far skewed to the quick side of 50% one would expect to be average of the random sample constrained by the sample Windows - suggest the sample bias or the size of the sample window is weak explanation for the observation of quick abiogenesis.

So he tries to pass off as an analogy that which is no analogy, in order discredit a red herring.  And he did it in a manner very much reminiscent of a confidence trickster.

Let’s examine his bullshit analogy further by extending it.  Let’s say the prisoner picked the lock in not 60 seconds but 6 seconds.   Someone then tells him via YouTube that he would have dropped dead in 60 seconds, ie before now, had he not picked the lock, so his sample is skewed, but he sees zero evidence for that to be the case.   Should he conclude based on the available evidence of his picking of the lock in 6 seconds is likely a freakish occurrence, skewed by observer biases, and not an indication of how easily can the lock be picked?

@polymath257 expressed similar concerns about the "prisoner" thought experiment. To me (at least at first blush) the thought experiment seems to adequately show the possibility that fast abiogenesis on earth could be a fluke. What am I missing?

Both of you suggest that the window of time is somehow artificial. As I see it, it is not. Let's say that with our star there is a "window" of, say 8 billion years after the earth cooled for life to arise. After all, isn't our sun going to heat up enough to evaporate the oceans? And let's also posit that (for all we know) the chance of amino acids arranging in a fashion that they begin self replication is only likely to occur once every 20 billion years (r something).

To me, all the thought experiment is trying to say is: maybe we got lucky. Until we get more data, this is a possibility worth considering.

Any worthiness for consideration it might seem to possess must take a hefty discount because it had to resort to a fraudulent analogy to acquire that vague appearance of worthiness for consideration.

Anything is possible.   Science is not done by assuming everything that might be possible are all equally possible and worth considering.  Rather it is done by using evidence to separate the probable from all that is merely possible. Those who pushes the possible as being equal to the probable are either ignorant or hucksters.   Those who do so by using apparently crafted fraudulent analogies, like this guy, are more likely hucksters.

[Brian37]

@polymath257 expressed similar concerns about the "prisoner" thought experiment. To me (at least at first blush) the thought experiment seems to adequately show the possibility that fast abiogenesis on earth could be a fluke. What am I missing?

Both of you suggest that the window of time is somehow artificial. As I see it, it is not. Let's say that with our star there is a "window" of, say 8 billion years after the earth cooled for life to arise. After all, isn't our sun going to heat up enough to evaporate the oceans? And let's also posit that (for all we know) the chance of amino acids arranging in a fashion that they begin self replication is only likely to occur once every 20 billion years (r something).

To me, all the thought experiment is trying to say is: maybe we got lucky. Until we get more data, this is a possibility worth considering.

Anything is possible.   Science is not done by assuming everything that might be possible are all equally possible and worth considering.  Rather it is done by using evidence to separate the probable from all that is merely possible. Those who pushes the possible as being equal to the probable are either ignorant or hucksters.   Those who do so by using apparently crafted fraudulent analogies, like this guy, are more likely hucksters.

Again, the odds of humans being the only life that thinks at our level being the only intelligent life in our universe is unlikely knowing that there are stars that produce the same atoms that make up our solar system.

Again, though, that is not saying we will find life like ours, especially not when we are so focused on fighting each other and global corporate greed. It is just to say the universe is big.

We should "In theory" expect to see intelligent life like us, if we could visit every planet in the universe of similar composition. 

I don't think we will though, because of the size of the universe and the odds of stumbling on intelligent communication. I do think though, we will within a century prove that microbial life can exist in harsh environments within our solar system.

[vulcanlogician]

Any worthiness for consideration it might seem to possess must take a hefty discount because it had to resort to a fraudulent analogy to acquire that vague appearance of worthiness for consideration.

Anything is possible.   Science is not done by assuming everything that might be possible are all equally possible and worth considering.  Rather it is done by using evidence to separate the probable from all that is merely possible. Those who pushes the possible as being equal to the probable are either ignorant or hucksters.   Those who do so by using apparently crafted fraudulent analogies, like this guy, are more likely hucksters.

I think "huckster" might be a bit too strong. I would see his thought experiment more as something intended to reveal areas of our own ignorance rather than positing probabilities for abiogenesis. In that sense, as inaccurate as his analogy might have been, I don't think it was fraudulent... at least not in its intention.

The guy in the video is Dr. David Kipping, an assistant professor of astronomy at Columbia university. Abiogenesis is a bit removed from his field of expertise. I think his goal in presenting the video was to show "the other side of the argument"... ie. it was a pessimistic exploration of the possibility of extraterrestrial life that intended to produce a counterpoint to all the fervent optimism going around. By itself, perhaps it's a piss poor case. But as a reply to optimistic estimates of extraterrestrial life, maybe it's a worthwhile exploration of the possibility that life on earth may be unique.

[Jehanne]

It's no evidence for anything.

The signal did not create itself; where did it come?

[vulcanlogician]

It's no evidence for anything.

The signal did not create itself; where did it come?

There are a number of alternate theories on that. A military spy satellite would certainly be capable of creating such a signal and also would not have been documented/traceable as the source. Another theory is that a distant comet could have passed into the detector's field of view. 

Though unlikely, it is possible for a comet to create the signal picked up by the detector.

[AFTT47]

Anything is possible.   Science is not done by assuming everything that might be possible are all equally possible and worth considering.  Rather it is done by using evidence to separate the probable from all that is merely possible. Those who pushes the possible as being equal to the probable are either ignorant or hucksters.   Those who do so by using apparently crafted fraudulent analogies, like this guy, are more likely hucksters.

Again, the odds of humans being the only life that thinks at our level being the only intelligent life in our universe is unlikely knowing that there are stars that produce the same atoms that make up our solar system.

Again, though, that is not saying we will find life like ours, especially not when we are so focused on fighting each other and global corporate greed. It is just to say the universe is big.

We should "In theory" expect to see intelligent life like us, if we could visit every planet in the universe of similar composition. 

I don't think we will though, because of the size of the universe and the odds of stumbling on intelligent communication. I do think though, we will within a century prove that microbial life can exist in harsh environments within our solar system.

You continue to ignore the fact that we don't know the mechanism by which non-living matter becomes living. It has proven to be a very tough nut to crack. Until we have a working theory in hand which demonstrates the complete step-by-step sequence showing how inanimate matter becomes animate matter, the intellectually honest answer is that we don't know how it happened and that we therefor cannot predict the likelihood of it happening elsewhere. A sample size of 1 is useless from a scientific perspective.

I'm a recent convert on this. I have previously been a member of the school of thought that there HAS to be other intelligent life in the universe based on its spatial and temporal depth. I've come to acknowledge though that this is an intuitional argument and that human intuition is not a reliable gauge of reality.

Here are the facts:

1. The evolution of simple life to complex life is undeniable. This is fact.

2. We do not know how life started in the first place. We have worked hard on this problem for a long time but still can't crack it. Until we do, we have no tool with which we can employ to predict the likelihood of non-life becoming life.

3. We do not know how likely it is that complex but non-intelligent life will evolve to intelligent life. We do know that non-intelligent species like the dinosaurs can be very successful without it and that there are very high evolutionary penalties for big brains.

4. There are no physical principals which would prevent a technological civilization from expanding across an entire galaxy. FTL travel is NOT a requirement! Assuming no new physics, we won't see the galactic empires as depicted in popular science-fiction but expansion across interstellar distances is definitely on the table.

I can see one of two answers to the so-called Fermi Paradox:

1. Intelligent life is very rare and we are indeed the first technological civilization in our region. This option seemed absurd to me until recently. I now accept it as a plausible argument.

2. Any intelligent species will eventually reach the point where it will direct its own evolution. It will use technology to advance its own intelligence to the point where one of us would seem like bugs by comparison. This vastly superior intelligence will not find it advantageous to expand materialistically.

3. Related to #2, new physics will reveal better avenues of expansions we don't currently understand. I realize this is pure speculation but that doesn't take it off the table. I am amazed at the arrogance of those who have the hubris to think we know it all. We have only recently run into the dark matter and dark energy thing. And we haven't even begun to realistically tackle the question of what comprises the fabric of space-time.