It’s not guaranteed unless you have *infinitely *many tries and it is not *impossible *for you to sink the hoop.
I’ve no idea what you are trying to say. But gathering as much and as many types of data as possible is a long standing standard scientific task.
You don’t understand probability, if you can make a statement like that.
You can think all you want. You can write science fiction all you want. But if you say intelligent life is inevitable, you need a bit more. To be sure, the statement “intelligent life is extremely rare” is just as unsupported. Maybe you roll double sixes on your first turn at a game of Risk, but you had better not have your strategy depend on doing this.
And I disagree with your last statement. Ideas with no data, if acted upon, takes us off into all sorts of blind alleys. I’ve found on the other hand that data inspires ideas, perhaps because we humans see patterns in everything.
But it is the claim you made, because those questions are themselves born out of data collection, or prior knowledge itself built on data collection. Before man can wonder why and wherefrom it rains, he must first witness that sometimes water drops from the sky. What is that, if not data ? Before he can classify various climate types, he must first collect weather data all over the place and realize that not every province of the realm gets as much rain. And so on, and so forth.
I won’t deny that sometimes, hell, often we do setup experiments specifically meant to validate or invalidate a given theory. But where did that theory come from, if not existing data ?
It’s still not guaranteed, assuming you’re talking about a linear sequence of shots. The probability tends to 0 that he will miss every shot as the number of shots approaches infinity - this doesn’t mean that it ever is 0.
Also, data is not limited to what our own preexisting knowledge & preconceptions will let us think of.
Never stared at a blank screen when you had a paper due, have you? 
This is true, correct, assuming a linear sequence of shots and finite time (at infinity, it is exactly 0). Outside of the universe, the mechanisms of logic and time are not entirely clear. E.g. it’s possible that in a timeless environment, all possible universal permutations ARE spawned into existence.
My point though, in this entire thing, is simply that having the right conditions doesn’t guarantee an outcome. It just becomes more and more probable the better the conditions are.
It’s assumed that it is not impossible. I can assume life is not impossible in this Universe. We wouldn’t be debating how inevitable or not it is, if it were impossible.
So pit probability against me. Try this bit of data collection. Get yourself a basketball, find a a hoop, put yourself at a reasonsable throwing distance, and throw the ball at the hoop. If it takes you forever to sink it, I won’t expect to hear back from you ever and you also win the debate.
Again, you have to read the argument being put forth here. If I stand at a reasonable distance and continue throwing balls at it, it’s very likely I’ll make a shot because the conditions are great for it. But it’s not an inevitable, guaranteed, 100% thing. Even if you’re talking about something that is near-100%, that’s still not 100%. I could still miss. Inevitable means 100%. 100% means it is literally impossible for me to miss.
No I didn’t make anything like that claim. I never said ideas without data are more important than data. I never claimed that ideas in and of themselves can lead to discoveries about the structure and laws of the Universe. If I claimed anything it’s that data without ideas is just a useless pile of data. Something has to motivate the collection of data. Lots of theorists spent lots of time thinking about what all this data means and what all this data suggests about stuff we are unclear about. Then some other researchers propose: if we do this experiment in this way, and if we are right in our assumptions, then if we get this kind of result it will be data in support of Theory A but will debunk Theory B, C and D, but if we get this other result, it will support Theory D, of if we get no result, we goofed up somewhere.
There is that process and then there is the writing up of all the experiments and what they mean. And then follows the debating about why those results do not actually confirm what they claim they confirm because the researchers failed to take this or that into account. I think that is a reasonable model of how research and data collection happens.
Ok I give up. You must be a mathematician and I must be an engineer. So then you would have a strong tendency to agree that Stars are not inevitable. You woudl also agree that it was also not inevitable that matter won over anti-matter by one in a billiion, it was just extremely likely that it would. Yes? You would then also tend to agree that it was not inevitable that Gravity would work it’s long and arduous task to pull in all that remaining matter into glumps of stuff, etc, it was just highly likely to happen. Yes?
I think what you’re having trouble understanding, is that we don’t know how likely life is to occur.
It might literally be unlikely for it to have occurred twice in this universe. It might be so common that there are hundreds or thousands of civilizations operating at the same time in a typical galaxy.
But we don’t know the chance yet. So claiming that it’s a given for life to exist is assuming information that we don’t have.
Star formation would happen as long as there are clouds of hydrogen. So since our universe had hydrogen, star formation is a given (assuming a clumpy distribution, I guess). If stars exist, some will explode. The explosions will release heavy elements. So planet formation in our current universe is a given.
But we have no idea how likely it is for those planets to be habitable and to end up producing life. It might be that a hugely unlikely confluence of events was required to get us here.
I’m saying it’s not a helpful distinction to make in this case. What point are you trying to make by implying sentient life is inevitable?
We haven’t discovered life elsewhere yet, but we can speculate and defend, with good reasons, that life is probably everywhere (relatively speaking) – simply because the universe is so huge and there are so many different ways to arrange cosmic systems. This idea is further supported by the fact that we see planets even nearby that have a fair number of life-prerequisites fulfilled. So the probability of another system out there having everything in place for life, like ours, is highly likely. We just don’t know it for a fact yet.
I think this is like one of those “I looked back and when my life was at its low points, I saw only one set of footprints in the sand” things.
Is that the one that finishes, “…and that’s when I discovered that God had been riding my back the entire time.”?
What other sources of information would you trust to tell you that? About a religion or a individual representing that religion? If your presumption is already that religion=lies, you’ll see it all through the filter of your bias.
The point is still the same one I made in the original reply way back: that consciousness is a property of this Universe as much as any other phsyical property is. Hence my concern that, let’s say, Planets occuring isn’t any less or more remarkable (inevitable?) than consciousness occuring.
I suppose the deeper belief is that this Universe is disposed to create consciousness. Not a theory, but a plausible belief.
Your statement is a nonsequitor - just responding to questions with questions. I will attempt to clarify, as best I understand your earlier statements:
Your earlier claim is that one’s relationship with God is intensely personal and not something that be explained.
My question was how could we tell the difference, then, between someone who had an intensely personal relationship with God and someone who only said they had an intensely personal relationship with God, i.e. the difference between a believer and a faker.
Your response was that this was evidenced on how the claimant behaved in private - a believer would behave a certain way, while a faker would behave in a different way.
My second question is, if the behaviour was private, how (by definition) would we know what the claimant’s behaviour was.
Your response was “newspapers and TV”, which I assume means that reporters would ferret out the claimant’s private behaviour and make it public.
My next question was to ask if newspapers and TV are then necessary to the process, i.e. the only way to know of a claimant is a believer or faker is to have their private behaviour exposed. I had in mind a follow-up question about how one could spot a faker before newspapers and TV existed, but no matter.
Your most recent response seems to suggest the test is irrelevant because I’m already biased against religion, which I’m sure is true but it makes all earlier discussion moot.
Anyway, my gist is that there’s no religion a human can think comes to him through divine revelation that an imaginative fiction writer can’t match. Is Christianity more “true” then Scientology? Mormonism? Pastafarianism? How can you tell? What test can you design (or conceive of) that would get one result for Christianity and a different result for other (presumably non-true) faiths?