"Name dropping," is it?
Well, it's been called everything from "data mining" to "cherrypicking" to "linkathon" to...

Uh, V-GER, would it matter to you if I was asked to give those names?

You "skeptics," I tell ya...

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Almost exactly the assumptions we use in OA, as it happens. Absolutely no guarantee that we are right, of course.

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense . OA Flickr set

I think these are parameters that are sympathetic to the lithopanspermic scenario, and respectful of the OP. I'd personally like to believe the probability of abiogenesis producing life in a system is closer to say 1 in 10, that the chance of a seeding event is more like 1 in a million, and expect that the emergence of a communicative intelligence much rarer, still most assumptions will make incidences of life independent and widely separate, eti much more so.

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plenty of woo, at the hotel hoagaland...

Yes, it is.


What I mean is that the persons whose names you mentioned do not know whether we're alone or not anymore than the next guy.

You believers, I tell ya...

A DIM I think the problem always comes down to the basic argument of belief/guess against fact.

Now I suspect that possibly 400 stars in every 500 has at least one planet capable of sustaining some form of life.

I also believe that on not all planets capable of sustaining life that life has actually developed. I reason that having the conditions to sustain life in some marginal habitats is more common than having the conditions in which life can get started. If there are only a few locations on a planet where the conditions are suitable for life to get started then the number of opportunities for the necessary chemical events to take place to get life started will be few also. In that case it might never happen during the lifetime of that system's star or it will take a lot longer than it did here on earth. so maybe on only 300 planets in 500 star systems does life actually get started.

Where life does get started in the majority of cases it may remain microbial. Microbial life is very successful and because of its high mutation rate is very good at adapting to changing conditions. Being multicellular is not always the greatest way for life to spread and multiply. my Guess is that on only 100 planets on every star system there is multicellular life.

The emergence of a technology using species is not an inevitable consequence of multicellular life. Intelligence has a biological price to pay. To put it simply memory and processing power place a resource burden on an organism for which if there is no immediate evolutionary payback will normally result in extinction. Evolution cannot have foresight it cannot be a long term investor and anticipate that knowing how to build power plants might be useful for an organism. if a mutation does not produce an immediate evolutionary dividend then it will die out. A lot of factors had to come together here on earth which produced a species with the right body-form potential, subject to just the right environmental changes at the right time whilst avoiding a major planet wide extinction event. On other planets which have been supporting multicellular life much longer than earth those particular factor may not have combined so that no smart tool using species has yet emerged. Therefore I would not be surprised if only one planet in every 500 star systems produces a tool using species and some of those may still be sitting round camp fires bashing rocks together.

Now all of the above is just my speculation of what might be the case - it seems reasonable enough to me though I am sure others will disagree but I will never stand up and say that HAS to be the situation.

Unlike 30 years ago we do at least now have proof that other stars do possess planets.

We are fairly confident that there are planets which contain water and which exist at close to the right temperature for life.

Beyond that we do not know about life, other than we have one example of where life occurred and that is here. In other words we have our sample or ONE and nothing more.

We do not yet have proof positive of the existence of any life (not simply some organic precusor chemicals) other than that which originates on this planet. As yet none of the meteorites that have been collected or any other samples have yielded evidence that is not heavily disputed. Therefore until there is agreement that a particular sample of something from somewhere, shows evidence of something that either is or once was clearly a living organism, that it can only have originated from somewhere other than this planet and therefore not be the result of some human contamination, then we must accept the cold reality that the Jury is Still Out when it comes to life anywhere else but here.

It is true to say that absence of proof is not proof of absence - but then again neither can we claim existence elsewhere on the basis that if we are here then there must be others somewhere. That is simply flawed reasoning.

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Note 1. All requests for planetary demolition must now be submitted in quadruplicate on form UX-565/B4 and be counter-signed by the assistant administrative officer for interstellar traffic calming - department QG-7. Subject to approval by the chief planning officer and the infrastructure development coordination sub-committee.

No, it isn't.
VanRijn asked specifically for them in post #35.

Did I say they were?
No, I simply remarked on my opinions of ETi being nothing so different than some scientists'.

But not surprisingly, you're understanding this discussion differently, V-GER.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

I agree but I've made it clear, innumerable times, that what I write here about Life in space or ETi certainly represents no more than opinion.

Scientifically informed opinion, but opinion nonetheless.

And yet, it seems to me, the optimism and confidence in my words are interpreted as somehow sounding "factual."

It strikes me as utterly ridiculous that some innocent reader might come along and read what I've posted here on BAUT and then think that ETi is proven; moreover that there are those who feel it necessaary to police and argue against my opinions.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

You post non-mainstream opinions to a science board and you complain when posters argue against them??

One of the reasons this board exists is to argue against non-mainstream opinions.

So, yes...it is "necessary".

3rdvogon, here is a good example of another facet of the "problem:"

You see?

My opinions are nothing more than what has been voiced by mainstream scientists like those mentioned previously, yet RAF asserts here they aren't mainstream.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

All of your opinions, or just the ones you've posted recently?

Your statement is in need of a qualifier.

RAF, I understand how you may be confused, again, but don't read into my posts more than what I've stated, and or refer back to the OP when you're uncertain, and we can avoid any silly back and forths.

We're talking about Life in the universe and ETi.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Quit with the condesending crap and perhaps we won't have this "back and forth".

So in answer to my question...when you state...

...you are speaking of your opinions as expressed in this thread ONLY.

OK...I'll accept that as an answer.

...but you still need to qualify your statement by saying that so as not to appear disingenuous.

They've been voiced by those individuals, as opinions and examples, not as proven facts or even supported theories. Who said something doesn't make it more or less valid, it matters whether what they said is backed up by evidence. To say that something is more likely to be correct just because it's Sagan or even Einstein who said it, is an "Appeal to Authority". Physicists didn't just accept General Relativity because of who proposed it, they tested it themselves.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Unless A.Dim is actually saying that he has reduced his set of relevant opinions down to those that have been voiced by these luminaries... I guess this means a few odd ones have been dispensed with... isn't this a scientific mind in action?

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plenty of woo, at the hotel hoagaland...

So you're telling me that you needed clarification which regards the topic being my opinions on ETi when in the OP I stated as much?

You're something else, friend!

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Sure, but the issue here is that my opinions are nothing more than what others themselves have stated on the topic. That mine are not so ATM as some might suggest. A little more insight into astrobiology and what some of the scientists involved are saying and writing might alleviate the perpetual "misunderstandings" RAF always expresses.

Be that as it may, I think nothing is "proven" with this topic, nor do I think some "authority" represents the final word.
I certainly don't seek validation of my opinions from anyone.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

A.DIM...It makes me cringe when you post that you are somehow a proponent of mainstream science. You might be playing that "part" on this thread, but most here know better.

Of course you realize, RAF, regardless of which "part" you might be playing, that that is an entirely emotional response, one likely rooted in disbelief, but whatever... you "know better," huh?

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill