The Fermi Paradox and probability theory.

[peter grimes]

Well to get to Mars it takes close to two years and that s our neighbour and alien life is supposed to be on distant planets. Even then the amount of energy needed to get off this planet is large. http://creation.com/did-life-come-from-outer-space#energy and http://creation.com/g-forces-space-travel-problem both do a better job at explaining why your wrong.

I read your second link, not the first. There are some excellent examples of begging questions here. For starters, the assumption of a speed equivalent to 0.3c. It's strange to me that a blog post about the physiological possibility of interstellar travel would assume such an incredible speed. That's nuts.

But, as a quick counter, your link assumes human tolerances for the accelerations required. That's bizarre, since the discussion here emphatically and specifically involves non-human non-terran life, which may very well EVOLVE in a much stronger gravitational well. In other words, assumptions about what humans can withstand don't necessarily bear.

I like the conclusion, though:

Many believe that life evolved on other planets and that it might be millions of years older than humans. Thus they also believe that aliens would have had the time to develop the incredible technologies, as depicted in much Sci-Fi. However, no amount of advanced technology could actually defy or ‘turn off’ the laws of physics that govern our universe. This would be necessary even to travel at a reasonable fraction of the speed of light, let alone faster. Despite lip service to the problems in series like Star Trek, such as “inertial dampers”, these remain firmly as science fiction. The problems in basic physics are insurmountable.

such strawman.

PS: I also appreciate the proofreading that they did, which failed to catch a closing italic. Added a nice bit of emPHAsis

 

[BvBPL]

This affirmation implies a lot of things as certainty that are absolutely not certain.

So it's par for the course for any discussion of this ET nonsense.

 

[Akka]

So it's par for the course for any discussion of this ET nonsense.

You can't make a difference between hypothesis and nonsense ?

 

[El_Machinae]

That's a pretty good proof of why there isn't any intelligent life out there. If there was, we'd see distortion from Dyson spheres.

Well, that's assuming that we could notice such a thing. I'm not sure we would. Or, at least, not yet. It's technically possible, but it takes some combination of resources + time.

That said, it's not proof regarding intelligent life, just regarding life that made it passed some potential Filter we have not yet passed, namely, the ability to bootstrap from industrial technology to local space industry. Neanderthals wouldn't be able to do it, despite their intelligence, and I don't think homo sapiens could do it without sufficient levels of fossil energy to work with.

 

[Kyriakos]

When the subject is whether there are other beings in space that are of a level of intelligence similar or notably higher than our own, you cannot use probability theory for answering cause you end up with a list of unknown factors and nothing gets replaced by anything linking (past the point of the original, and very speculative/general formula you devised) the variables which are both distinct to each other and of unknown identity.
Of course you can create progressions which will never (or almost never) reach a point, if you just want to do that. Some already exist naturally, ie they will never reach a specific point before "infinity", which is not part of the progression which can be defined.
So it looks likely that we won't be using current probability theory to learn something about whether or not such aliens exist :\

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

http://creation.com/did-life-come-from-outer-space#energy and http://creation.com/g-forces-space-travel-problem both do a better job at explaining why your wrong.

That was just awful.

I wish I could get you cold turkey on creation.com. Such a dishonest deceiving website.

Just starting to read that garbage made me cringe

The notion that life somehow originated on another planet and then came to Earth via outer space holds a wistful obsession for many evolutionists. This is because:

They have been unable to explain the origin of life on Earth, and even the ”simplest” living cell is now known to be unimaginably complex.

As life has been found deeper and deeper in the fossil record,1 and so in older and older strata according to evolutionary dogma, many are now saying that there has not been enough time for life to have evolved on Earth; thus an older planet is needed.

No. This is because it's an option which cannot be discarded. Until it can't it needs to be considered.

And "many are now saying that there has not been enough time for life to have evolved on Earth" equals: look what we just pulled out of our arse.

The website is deceptive. You must realise this. Don't fall for their wicked ways. Get out while you still can. You're among friends. We'll support you.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Well...The christian god is usually argued to be from outside of this earth, so i am not sure if Creation.com dislikes the idea that life on earth was created from outside

 

[BvBPL]

You can't make a difference between hypothesis and nonsense ?

A statement can be both at the same time.

The premise in question is both.

It is not founded on probability as much as wishful thinking. It presumes that life should likely exist outside of the Earth. It further presumes that the travails faced by life on other worlds would somehow be universal to a degree. There is no support for either premise.

You could turn it around. You could say that, in light of the presumptive multitude of worlds capable of supporting life, because there is no jazz coming to us from outer space* that there is some sort of universal jazz filter that only humans have passed.

People will rejoin by saying there's no indication that an intelligent, extraterrestrial race will necessary develop in a line towards jazz. That's true, but it is just as true to say there's no indication that there's any extraterrestrial life. In fact, the evidentiary record demonstrates that, to our knowledge, an intelligent species must develop jazz.

*Sun Ra excepted, of course.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The question "what if we're God's dream?" is a fairly old one, but this is a new take on the idea. And, honestly, it raises interesting questions about odds.

And if the universe is merely a figment of god's infinite imagination, just think of the creatures we might meet in our travels about the universe.

The universe is too big and we are too small and slow for any realistic chance of finding intelligent life. Will they find us? I think not; we are too far into the boondocks and probably off the beaten path.

Possible, but not likely. But I do think we will find evidence of life in our solar system.

 

[onejayhawk]

And if the universe is merely a figment of god's infinite imagination, just think of the creatures we might meet in our travels about the universe.

The universe is too big and we are too small and slow for any realistic chance of finding intelligent life. Will they find us? I think not; we are too far into the boondocks and probably off the beaten path.

Possible, but not likely. But I do think we will find evidence of life in our solar system.

This is the fundamental misunderstanding. A big universe makes it MORE likely to find alien intelligence. We are also late in the stellar time frame, at least for this galaxy. Those early in the queue could have left a trail.

The possibility that this is all a fiction is interesting, but how could we tell?

J

 

[Birdjaguar]

This is the fundamental misunderstanding. A big universe makes it MORE likely to find alien intelligence. We are also late in the stellar time frame, at least for this galaxy. Those early in the queue could have left a trail.

The possibility that this is all a fiction is interesting, but how could we tell?

J

Well, I would say that a big full universe might make the odds of intelligent life higher, it also lowers the odds of such life actually finding others of similar intelligence. Are you assuming that FTL travel is possible? Or that we will find wormhole shortcuts to navigate large distances? How do the odds change if slower than light travel is all that is possible?

 

[Kyriakos]

I thought it was pretty amusing! The question "what if we're God's dream?" is a fairly old one, but this is a new take on the idea. And, honestly, it raises interesting questions about odds.

Personally i find it very very very unlikely that a "god" would have "dreams", cause i equally doubt that any being worthy of being termed a god (in relation to humans) would have a conscience that would be similar to our own anyway. Given that dreams are argued (correctly in my view) to be made of information formed from the person's mental realms that are mostly not part of his immediate consciousness, i don't see why a god would have dreams, since i see no reason why a god would have barriers in its own "mental world".

Unless, of course, that god is only a god in relation to the microcosm of the beings it is a god to (ie supposedly to us as well), but not a god in the context of its own existence. Which is another theory, but i am not particularly interested in it either- due to the potential it has to render the beings in the microcosm as pretty much without any importance, which i view as evidently false cause some humans (and maybe all) clearly have intricate mental worlds.

Worth to note that there is (as usual) also a hybrid of the above two theories, namely one where the god and its microcosm do not have set positions, so the microcosm can also be of larger importance, even to the god itself (and, why not, maybe even something from the microcosm can be the god to that god, who would be in its microcosm at such a state; this is a form of a cosmic wheel where all parts have different meaning when viewed from any other part)

 

[BirraImperial]

Well, I would say that a big full universe might make the odds of intelligent life higher, it also lowers the odds of such life actually finding others of similar intelligence. Are you assuming that FTL travel is possible? Or that we will find wormhole shortcuts to navigate large distances? How do the odds change if slower than light travel is all that is possible?

FTL Travel is probably impossible, given the laws of physics, therefore I agree that we might never find extraterrestrial life, unless we deal with the consequences of sub-light travel, such as aging and energy required.

 

[onejayhawk]

Well, I would say that a big full universe might make the odds of intelligent life higher, it also lowers the odds of such life actually finding others of similar intelligence. Are you assuming that FTL travel is possible? Or that we will find wormhole shortcuts to navigate large distances? How do the odds change if slower than light travel is all that is possible?

The odds of more intelligent life also increases the odds of one spreading to cover everything. On the scale of stellar lifespans, even sublight travel would cover the galaxy in the blink of an eye.

J

 

[Zelig]

Well to get to Mars it takes close to two years and that s our neighbour and alien life is supposed to be on distant planets. Even then the amount of energy needed to get off this planet is large. http://creation.com/did-life-come-from-outer-space#energy and http://creation.com/g-forces-space-travel-problem both do a better job at explaining why your wrong.

I'm doubtful a site with the name of creation.com does anything but a terrible job at explaining anything.

 

[Akka]

A statement can be both at the same time.

The premise in question is both.

It is not founded on probability as much as wishful thinking. It presumes that life should likely exist outside of the Earth. It further presumes that the travails faced by life on other worlds would somehow be universal to a degree. There is no support for either premise.

Well, I stand by my statement. It seems you compeltely missed the point of the Fermi paradox.
It's not pretending to be a theory, or a presumption. It's just, as I said, an hypothesis. It's an intellectual exercise. It doesn't claim that life exists out there, it just use it as a premise.

 

[Mise]

The paradox is an interesting thought experiment but I don't think it can inform anything consequential, as it leaps from one thing to another with very little in the way of evidence other than "they're not here yet, which means that this might be true".

Put another way, there are many, many possible reasons why we haven't seen alien life; the existence of a great filter of both that kind and extent is just one of them.

 

[Samson]

That's a pretty good proof of why there isn't any intelligent life out there. If there was, we'd see distortion from Dyson spheres.

Only if Dyson spheres turn out to be a good way of getting energy. It could be that some sort of total conversion system, possibly using black holes, could make the construction of Dyson spheres pointless.

 

[El_Machinae]

Well, only if you think of those conversion technologies.

 

[Mise]

I think BvBPL's point is that you can say literally anything and it would be "proof" that alien life doesn't exist, if we follow the logic in the OP's article. E.g. if aliens are so advanced then they'd have blown up a sun by now probably - why haven't we seen evidence of that? If aliens exist and they enjoyed chocolate as much as we did then they surely would have invaded our planet and taken all our chocolate -- but they haven't. The existence of chocolate on this planet is therefore evidence that there are no aliens anywhere. If aliens exist then they probably invented spheres, which means they would probably have really liked football. Given that football has become so commercialised already, it stands to reason that an even more advanced alien civilisation would have commercialised it to the point where entire planets would be branded in the football colours of the patron team of that planet. Why have we seen no evidence of football-branded planets? Surely this must be taken as evidence that aliens don't exist.

etc