Hi Bill,

Ah - but isn't the Fermi Paradox also wishful thinking? Wishful of comic book style SciFi aliens who are actually a lot like us, only much more advanced. So Fermi rightly asked: "Where are they?" The answer may seem too simple: It's a big galaxy. They're not here yet. And maybe their intelligence is not like our intelligence.

Even if there was just one civilization that somehow managed, or was physically well suited to inter-stellar space travel over enormous distances. Why aren't they here? Because they aren't. Not yet. (Maybe we are destined to become them!)

I guess the idea that if they're too far away for us to ever contact they might as well not exist is too "Zen" for my pragmatic mind. My weirdly wired brain thinks of the answer to: If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? It makes a sound no one hears. :wink:

How this thinking translates into believing we are all labratory experiments I don't know. But I do think that The chances of there being no other life in the universe (Microbal or otherwise) is Far less then the chance there is. The universe is a big place filled with things we cannot even yet comprehend. To make a decision based on the small sample we have access to and say because there is nothing else here there must not be anything anywhere seems to be assuming a lot about the universe. Life as we know it may not exist elsewhere but Life can come in many forms some of which we would not recognize. Hell for all we know there are organisms living off the energy in nebulas(yea I know to star treky) But lets get real to assume there is no other life in the universe is just that an assumption not based on fact but on personal opinion and yes I know the other side of the argument is making the same kind of assumptions but the numbers favour the chances of life emerging elswhere.

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Just because something is improbable Doesnt mean its impossible.

I can agree with Fermi's paradox on one level. However it has one giant flaw.

It assumes that any and all intelligent life will have the same agenda, the same thought processes, the same technological ideas, creations, advances.

Robots might be a unique creation of the human mind, especially the self replicating one. There's a ton of reasons why alien civilizations would NOT colonize the galaxy, either because they could not or did not want to.

Anyone watch Farscape? The species that Pilot is is unable to leave their planet without the help of the bio-mech ships(Moya). What if there are species like this who are just incapable of leaving their planet? Insect-type species? Maybe intelligent life really is unique. Any kind of life out there will be astounding whether or not it is smart.

Let's allow Earth to evolve another 0.001% and discuss it then.

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board!

Because "we" think its arrogant to think "we" are special. Everything we know about our solar system which we can compare to others tells us we are not.

I can't stand the neighbors next door to my house, why would I care about neighbors from space. With my luck they'd be rap fans and buy a house next to me.

Dr Drake was just on NPR! Turns out Mr. Paul Allen is ordering up The Allen Telescope Array just for the purpose of searching more thoroughly for ETs. And here everyone seems to think the Drake Equation was pessimistic about finding intelligent life out there. Dr D was most optimistic about it.

He explained that currently they are only allocated a small number of days on the Arecibo telescope per year for their SETI program. So he is very enthusiastic about having a telescope dedicated to SETI year round. Of course, who wouldn't be...a telescope donated by a billionaire just for your pet research project. WOW!!

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MAY never, Bill. MAY never. As soon as you said "Will never" you strayed into Woo-Woo-Land. Not only are such assertions shortsighted but they fail to speak to the past when all that we know today was once undectable and impossible.

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Speaking of WOW!

Now if we could detect a few more "WOW!" signals....hmmm... :wink:

Speaking of "WOW":

Search for incredible coincidence at home



SIC@HOME scientific experiment that harnesses the power of tens of thousands of Internet connected computers in the Search for an Incredicble Coincidence. You can participate by running a free program that analyzes data from a radio or other receiver equipment connected to your computer. There's a small but captivating possibility that your computer will detect an incredible conincidence that will prove that the universe is truly infinite!

You should reread the origional posting on this thread and show the ambition to actually click on the links.

start a political thread on CompleteTranslations.com, my web site.

If you are talking about microbal life, you missed my origional point. That is not what I was getting at.

The line of thought:

Is what draws people to many cults because they NEED to believe in this sort of hope that we are not alone.

Great! Let's travel across the cosmos because we might find some dolphin-like creatures -- intelligent beings that cannot leave the planet. Wait a minute! We have intelligent dolphin-like creatures HERE! They are called DOLPHINS !!

You contradict yourself here.

What are you saying, precisely? Are you saying that they are not there or are you saying that they are there but they have not reached us yet?

If you are saying that they are there but have not reached us yet that makes no sense because that is exactly what Fermi's Paradox is all about. It is about the fact that they have had more than enough time to get here.

If you are saying that they are there but they are too stupid to do anything about it, then they are not very intelligent, are they?

No, it makes no sound. It makes no sound for all practical purposes.

:wink:

Depends on how you define sound. If you define it as the compression waves alone then it will, if you define it as the interpretation of those waves by a device, either mechnical or biological then no. (unless there is a tape recorder of animal nearby.)

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:roll: I am reduced to baby sitting egg heads with no reading comprehension skills. It makes no sound for all practical purposes. If we hear it or if it is recorded, then, for all practical purposes it does make a sound. If not, then for all practical purposes it does not.

I'm saying that the Fermi question is framed according to our 1940s concept of aliens, not life itself, which we still know less about than a closed system (of 1940s Sci-Fi aliens.).

To conclude that the reason aliens have not visited us is because they don't exist in the entire universe, is the same as saying they do exist and have not yet visited us. There is no proof. We could say however that 1940s comic book SciFi aliens probably don't exist, because they aren't here.

Dr. Jerry Bonnell, an astrophysicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center has described the hypothetical effects a gamma ray burst if it were to happen (only) 3000 lightyears from us. Such a burst would wipe out most of the life on our planet. This might occur every 100 million years for a given part of the Milky Way, thus lining up with Earth's mass extinctions.

It has been proposed that GRBs periodically irradiate the galaxy over long periods of time thus no life makes it to the inter-stellar travel level. This hypothetical idea lacks elegance for me. If one went with the high side of the Drake equation, there would still be aliens over history who would know of GRBs and avoid them, and thus also develop long-distance travel. So we're left with the same conclusion. We don't know yet.

Another way to look at it is that we know dinosaurs existed because we have their bones and fossils, but no one has seen a real live dinosaur. By way of analogy, you're concluding therefore that "for all practical purposes" dinosaurs never existed because they're not here today.

I'm saying with aliens we have no fossils, nothing. So we cannot conclude that they don't exist. (However, a radio signal could be thought of as an alien fossil, if we ever intercept one.)

Perhaps, for one reason or another, we are the most advanced species in the galaxy. Not saying I believe this, or advocate it as a theory, but it is something that should be thrown into the mix, in my opinion. Perhaps we are at the current galactic apex of technological development, a hundred, a thousand years ahead of the curve.

To me such a belief is more sound than saying there are no other intelligent species out there at all.

And I am of course limiting the point of view to the Milky Way alone...

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If you don't like being corrected, don't make absolute statements like "No it makes no sound" before your 'practical' clarification. :wink:

If you want to comment on something someone wrote, read the entire text and do not take something out of context.

"not life itself"? How fascinating will it be to find an extraterrestrial microbe (insert yawning emoticon here). I thought it went without saying that we have been talking about ETI and not just ETL.

You are forcing two things together. Like taking a piece from one jigsaw puzzle and forcing into a crossword puzzle.

There is no physical evidence of extraterrestrial life. So why bring up dinosaurs which have left physical evidence?

The real physical evidence regarding ETI actually suggests that they do not exist. So this back door, round about non-logic of yours does not work.

But, speaking of dinosaurs, I feel a little like that paleontologist who discovered that the T-Rex was a scavenger and not a predator. When he went around and gave speeches at grade schools, he was booed. Sometimes the truth is not what we want to hear.

I see we're just talking past each other. I think of any kind of life in the universe and ETI, neither of which we've found at this time, to be interconnected. The discovery of an alien microbe would prove that life can spring up elsewhere, and yes, it would be absolutely fascinating to find a microbe that evolved independently of Earth. It simply boils down to this: You say there are no ETI, and I say we don't know either way, and that Fermi's question was framed in the spirit of science fiction aliens rather than biology. As Michael Chrichton said: "You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree."

I’m glad you’ve found the truth. It is nice to feel important. (It's spelled "paleontologist" "scavenger" and "predator.") Actually, the only thing that's worth booing is your boorishness. Frankly I'm not personally bothered if it turns out we're alone in the universe. I'm just saying we don't know if we are right now.

It would be interesting to carry on a civil written conversation about this topic but you sir are only interested in attacking without stretching your mind a bit in attempting to understand a different viewpoint. I do understand what you originally said, and am neither in disagreement nor agreement with it, as there are other ways of looking at this question in my view. Unfortunately you're just playing games of sarcasm now, and don't grasp that pleasant attribute among gentlemen of agreeing to disagree. - So I'm going to make like the (as yet) unknown ETI: There’s no reason to communicate with you right now. Have a nice day.

As a lurker on this particular thread, I believe one of Bill Thompson's second language's is English, so perhaps correcting him on his spelling is not polite. :wink: I could be wrong, though. It is just an uncanny ability I have for observation. 8-[

I appreciate it. I was going to run stuff through spell checker.

I will make the changes.

Yeah, my first language is C++

But this isn't what this thread of conversation is really about. This topic is about ETI.

And, thanks for your spelling corrections. I have edited for spelling.



I didn't think I was being sarcastic (actually I thought I was being pretty funny... ever hear of the ol' saying "the world is comic to those who think and tragic to those who feel"?). Nor did I think I was having a closed mind. I would have been one of the biggest supporters of the existance of ET before I had dug into the subject a little more. Belief is easy. Knowledge is hard.

Your comment makes me think you are the proverbial kettle calling the pot black. I have an open mind. But do you know the difference between fact and suposition? Do you know how to recognize poor arguments? Saying that I am wrong or my argument does not have merit or weight because -- in your view --I am being sarcastic is a poor argument.

Fuzzy thinking? Actually I'm not saying your argument has no weight. Some of the ideas you've presented are well thought out. I'm saying because the central points I've tried to raise are lost in a counter-attack attitude of snide remarks, misunderstanding and large shouting type face, there's no reason to discuss further. That's all I'm getting in return. Others might want to add new ideas though. I've made my contribution to this thread. :wink:

Well, EXCUUUUUUSE ME!!

Excuse me for being human. Even I make mistakes. This mistake might go against my discovery of The Meaning of Life.

But, at the same time, you have made the following mistake:

Do you know how to recognize poor arguments?

Anyway, the more I look into this topic the more I think I am right. I just pulled up a NASA fun facts page: http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/istp/outrea...thmiscons.html

It says:

To me this adds more to the notion that, at least for now, we are alone (uh, for all practial purposes).