Which we do not know because…, we don’t know how many planets have life on them, or even how many planets there are.
As for the rest of your post, I have no idea what point you are trying to make. You have admitted that your analogy failed. You have, I think, conceded that my analogy was perfectly apt. I think you should leave it there
I agree. And I’ve never seen the point of the Anthropic Principle.
As I’ve pointed out earlier, I think the more relevant principle is, the Mediocrity Principle.
And note that this principle makes no claim as to whether life is common. It simply begins with the assumption that Earth is not exceptional.
Well if that was your point, you failed to make it.
Let’s say this is true, how does it change the fact that there is or is not a scientific
basis from which we can produce an answer? Would the answer be more scientific if it was less scary, or more?
No, we don’t. Once again, false dichotomy. We can declare that we have insufficient evidence and not “go” with anything until we get more evidence, no?
Most of the 6.5 billion people on this planet could not give a toss whether there is life elsewhere. Even if they did care, there is essentially nothing we can do about it either way. So far from everyone wanting to know what to do, most people don’t care, and those that do can’t do anything anyway.
True.
No. Absolutely not. Science can only tell us what is. It can never, ever, ever tell us what should be.
Nonsense
Firstly, you are contending that “science” should make up facts that don;t exist for fear of religion. That is abhorrent to me.
Secondly, science refuses to tread in a great many areas, including issues of what we ought to do. If religion fills the void then that is as it should be, because science can never be applied to such fields
And the rest of your post is similarly puzzling and filled with incorrect assertions. I won’t bother to respond to it all, but the provable flaws in every sentence up to here should give you some indication of how bad it is.
You didn’t.
If you didn’t understand it then tell me so and I will cheerfully post the relevant quote, so that everybody can see that you are unable to follow the argument.
If you did understand it then this is a deliberate strawman and everyone can see that you are not posting in good faith.
Asking me to clarify doesn’t in any way tell me which of these options you are invoking.
Did you not understand what was posted, and need me to re-post it? OR did you understand and construct a deliberate strawman.
I don’t understand your argument.
What you’ve said implies that the scientific community should conspire to lie to the public about its state of knowledge concerning extraterrestrial life?
Is that really what you want to imply?
No, I’m saying that when asked for answer that cannot be conclusively given, we should say so, but not be afraid to speculate either when pressed to guess. The speculation, the hypothesizing is what drives the whole process. If you refuse to even hazard a guess, why should anyone place confidence, trust or money in your research? The worst thing you could be was incorrect, but in finding yourself so you obviously discovered new information. That is a step forward. You can state: “Our previous speculation turned out to be incorrect. It turns out upon new discoveries that the blah blah blah… We NOW believe that x, y, z…”
Answered above. Don’t be ridiculous. Not everything is a binary statement.
There is nothing wrong with stating: “We can’t be certain because of a number of factors, but I believe the available evidence supports or refutes the existence of extraterrestrial life”.
But you see… I… Ugh… This is pointless. OP is trolling the board so hard. His post rate, preponderance for large text and argument evasion makes it clear that he is currently manic and not open to rational debate. I bet you 10 bucks he responds asking me where he evaded.
It can drive things in a useful direction if it’s a testable hypothesis based on verifiable evidence. Without evidence, it has no value at all, and is thus something any scientist worthy of the name should refuse to indulge in.
Someone who uses his stature as a scientist to pass off ignorant speculation as science is undermining the position of honest scientists.
Provided there’s some evidence available.
Bit disappointing really. All this back and forth about aliens, principles, lottery tickets and god knows what, and it turns out to be just another “science should never make any claims because they can’t be 100% sure” sequel.
Funny - I took it as “science should never make claims not based on evidence.” Any details of which we’re even 10% sure would be useful here.
Science does not make a claim that life definitely exists elsewhere, only that it’s unlikely - given the size of the universe and the ubiquity of the conditions and bulding blocks that led to abiogenesis on earth - that earth has somehow been uniquely special and magic in its ability to produce replicating molecules.
We are sure of lots of things about the nature of life; The problem as posed by the OP is that we are inherently biased because it is our own planet we are using for an example. I’m not certain that argument holds water when talking about something on the scale of planetary biology though. As I noted to Blake, until we either develop the tech to get out there and look, or it comes to us, we won’t be able to categorically prove or disprove it. All we can do is look at the life we have here and make inferences about the odds for or against.
You want a simple calculation? In our known sample size, we have one planet in our solar system that has definite life. So that gives us 1 in 9. To make things simpler let’s stack the deck against and say 1 in ten.
We KNOW that to be factual. Now if we look at other stars we see that lots of them have earrth like planets or moons in the goldilocks zone as well. Many of them have more than ten bodies, some less. Even if we assume that only 1 in ten is suitable, and then assume that only one in hundred of those has actual earth like conditions, and then assume 1/100 of THOSE has condition after condition, When you place that against the staggering amounts of stars in our own galaxy, let alone the universe, you can only come to the conclusion that it is more likely that there is life of some type, than not. You simply roll the dice way too many times for it not to come up in the right combination occasionally.
it isn’t really a wild assed guess, if the lottery is like one in 26 million, and I’ve got thousands of trillions of rolls, I’m going to win, over and over. True, we don’t know the entirety of the spread, but the more we learn, the more it looks like the odds are not so great. The resiliency of life, and commonness of many of the precursors to it seem to indicate that it would occur on earth over and again until the conditions became prohibitive to the chemical reactions.
What? The entire ocean does not get sterilized “every few million years”. (which I’m reading as more than 3, less than 20) If this were the case, mass extinctions would be much more common. Cite!
Really, Blake, I’m in general agreement with your basic point on this issue (that we really can’t say what the chances are, and it’s unscientific to extrapolate from a sample of one, is how I’m reading it), but I think you’re getting a little careless in your zeal.
…and immediately get contaminated again. This tells you nothing about boundary periods for life formation, it’s a total* non sequitur*. It also contains the assumption abiogenesis happened in the oceans, which is not necessarily so.
Ah, no.
MY question started the other thread. I was referring to scientists belief that “life” - rather than NOT-life, is likely to exist elsewhere. Any kind of life. Including not-so-bright bacteria, insects, etc.
If you and Saganist are off on a tangent, enjoy yourselves.
I don’t think of humans as precious and special so much - but I certainly think of the whole of life on this planet absolutely is, and we take it far too much for granted. I think it’s arrogant to assume that because a planet like this exists that there must be loads of them. Earth is pretty spectacular both in its life and in its landscapes and I think that as a species we DO think of every single human life as special to the detriment of everything else.
Yet it seems to be widely accepted that it happened just once on Earth, which can be taken as evidence that it’s highly unlikely even here.
Blake’s point about intelligent life relates to the anthropic principle.