Hello good dopers,
A question,
What are the current scientific theorems/theories about off-world intelligence?
To badly quote Monty Python, ‘Assuming there’s any here on Earth’.
Please no discussion of Og.
Peter
Interesting…
Both belief in off-world intelligence and belief in God are both based on the “well, there just HAS to be” argument. That is faith; since there is no scientific evidence of either.
As we have no data on extraterrestrial intelligence (except for the Wow! signal, which nobody but a few wildly optimistic SETI enthusiasts believe is any kind of conclusive evidence of an alien life) there really aren’t any theories. We can make some speculative inferences about the possibility of life developing independently elsewhere in the universe based upon observation of incidence or organic molecules (amino acids) which serve as precursors for at least terrestrial life, but since we only have the single data set to reason from we can’t really say too much about the potential to develop multicellular life, much less the complexity required for actual intelligence. We can say that various forms of conceptual intelligence have been developed independently along several different families of animals (mammals, aves, cephalopods) and so when life gets to some threshold of complexity it appears to be somewhat likely to develop, but again, it is reasoning from a single data set.
I would personally like to believe that intelligence can and does develop “frequently”; even if that frequency is on, say, 1 out of every 1000 habitable environments, it still means that there are likely thousands of intelligent species in the Milky Way galaxy alone. However, there is no reason to believe that species will evolve intelligence at the same time or at the same rate, and without some kind of technomagical superluminal transportation or communication they are probably much to far away from each other to even observe one another’s existence, much less communicate or meet.
Stranger
Seriously?
Edited title to make subject clearer.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
If you think that, then you don’t understand the argument at all.
A major difference is that we have one known example of life, and we have good reason from observation to think that conditions conducive for such life may occur elsewhere. Extrapolation from known facts is not unscientific, and not a matter of faith.
In contrast, there is no factual evidence for God or gods anywhere.
Yes, the “we observe life here, so there just HAS to be life elsewhere, and if life exists elsewhere, then somewhere it must be what we would consider Intelligent” argument.
Faith, that is all you have. Not that I disagree with you, but I will freely admit there really is no evidence, just faith.
And you think I am the one who doesn’t understand.
The basic building blocks of life were created in the lab under conditions thought to exist when life arose on Earth.
Not just faith, science.
There’s the Drake Equation.
Moderating
In any case, if you want to debate matters of faith, it would be best to do so in Great Debates. Let’s drop the tangent here.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
The Drake equation, while an excellent summary of the issue, really doesn’t help much because no one knows the values of many of the terms. It’s like the area equation: area = width * height. It’s true (for rectangles and some other shapes) but it doesn’t tell us what the actual area is, if we don’t already know the width and height. Still, the Drake equation breaks the question down into sub-questions which may be easier to answer.
We know that the probability for life arising on a suitable world is greater than zero, since we’re here. How much greater than zero, we don’t know, since the Anthropic Principle prevents us from deducing much from our own case. But it’s definitely some amount greater than zero.
Meanwhile, the simplest models for the Universe have it as both infinite and roughly homogeneous. If that’s so, then there must be an infinite number of planets suitable for life in the Universe. And if there are an infinite number of planets, and each has a nonzero chance for life evolving, then it follows that there are an infinite number of planets somewhere out there that harbor life.
Now, it’s possible that the simplest models about the Universe are wrong, and that it isn’t infinite. And it’s possible, even if the Universe is infinite, that life is so unlikely that our nearest neighbors are too far away to even in principle make contact with them. But the argument isn’t just “Well, it’s just gotta be so”.
The original 1961 Drake equation had seven terms and was therefore predicated on the assumption that making seven wild guesses would give you a better result than making one wild guess.
OK, that’s just snark. Drake was smarter than that, and so were the scientists who used the equation; certainly smarter than most of the people who discuss it.
Before Sputnik, extraterrestrial life, intelligent or otherwise, was mostly the province of science fiction writers. They weren’t stupid either. The concept is a writers’ dream because it allows for nearly infinite story possibilities. They knew the difference between fiction and reality, but my take on them is that once you spend much of your life thinking about the vastness of the universe it gets much harder to believe that humans are unique. What are the odds?
Only a handful of working scientists took any serious interest in the subject. Carl Sagan, whose first book was INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE (Being a Translation, Extension, and Revision of I. S. Shklovskii’s Universe, Life, Mind), wrote about the opposition he faced in trying to make it a subject worth discussion. One of the methods that the handful of serious scientists used was to try to bring some rigor to an otherwise ridiculously open field. They studied the formation of life, the conditions that it needed or could be found in, and any signals or traces that they might give off - deliberately or inadvertently - that could be detected from a distance. Mostly, though, they tried to work through the ridicule to find a true scientific approach that would be more active than simply waiting for contact. And they found many ingenious ways of doing so on the cheap, since they couldn’t get any sizable grant money.
It hasn’t turned up any positive evidence. Even so, there’s been huge amounts of serious thought on the general subject of what life is and what it’s limits are, if any. That’s a real science and is 1000X deeper than it was in 1961, partly because Drake and the others stimulated thought and effort on it.
The search for extraterrestrial life is a remarkable example of how thoroughly opposite science and religion are. The former sets parameters, looks for examples, creates methods, and accumulates knowledge on ancillary subjects every day. The latter does… nothing. Calling science faith is a failure of language and understanding.
I think you can make an argument that the two beliefs exist in a converse relationship. Your faith in one will diminish your faith in the other.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that you don’t believe in God. Life exists here on Earth but by your belief God did not create it. This means you believe life arose by natural processes. With the universe being as large as it it, you virtually have to accept that whatever conditions existed on Earth to begin life by natural processes must also have existed in many other places to cause life to form there as well.
The converse argument is that with the universe being so large, you cannot assume any natural situation is unique. The only way life would be unique to Earth would be if it were caused by supernatural process like God.
So a belief that there is no God leads to a belief that there is life on other planets and a belief that there is no life on other planets leads to a belief that there is a God.
The relationship is not an exact converse because there is nothing logically inconsistent about believing in both extraterrestrial life and God - that’s just the belief that whatever supernatural process created life on Earth chose to create life on other planets as well.
eta: I hadn’t seen Colibri’s instruction to drop this tangent when I wrote this post. Sorry.
~~Walt Kelly
Ok, but let’s try to avoid further science vs religion discussion in this thread. Let’s stick to the scientific approach to extraterrestrial life. As the OP says, “Please no discussion of Og.”
Those who wish to discuss the question are invited to start another thread in GD.
Ah, yes. The ‘playing the odds’ hypothesis.
As illustrated so aptly by noted songwriter Steve Goodman.
“The law of averages says anything will happen that can
But the last times the Cubs won the National League pennant
Was the year we dropped the bomb on Japan”
When the Drake equation was written, we had no idea of how many planets there were in the galaxy, and none of how common planets were. Now we have found many, so that term is a lot more precise than it was 50 years ago. We don’t know what percentage of these planets are habitable yet.
There are terms we’ll never know, like how long civilizations last on average.
Not a very good comparison. There’s only one Cubs team, and they haven’t been around for billions of years. Do you really want to claim that a billion, billion Cubs teams over billions of years would never win the National League pennant?
Yes. 