The link is great, MS! I've only read the forward but can already see that the author is one man who is absolutely convinced that he is right and everybody else is wrong. I forgot to count how many times he used the words "arrogant" or "religious zealout" in reference to the reader, as his way of luring the reader into the site to explore his proof. The insult the reader approach. Unique. I wonder if the Nobel Committee has seen it, yet? However, I am interpreting your link to come directly from you. As the words you would say, so it's time to call a truce. As much as I was thoroughly enjoying the conversation, it's now gone sour. But to do a post mortem: The thread went offtrack because I responded to V's conjecture:
IF there are other intelligent species in other parts of the universe who are aggressive and war-like, I doubt we'd fare well against them if we were too much like the Bonobos.
The conjecture supposes that we as humans would not fare well against an invading intelligent species from some other part of the universe. I took it as a serious conjecture. Perhaps I should not have. The conversation went to the probability of life existing elsewhere in the galaxy (which is a tiny, tiny fraction of the universe) to narrow the scope a bit, then it went to distances between planets with intelligent life, then to relativity and how it restricts speed to c, then to lack of existing evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, then to the probability of being visited by extraterrestrials in the next 100 years. We didn't even get to talk about the probability of the existence of a highly advanced civilisation existing anywhere in the universe including our galaxy, or any verifyable evidence that aliens have ever visited Earth. There's no precedent. Accept this if you can. On the basis of just that, it's very unlikely that you or I will ever meet an extraterrestrial. You guys disagree with this proposition, so you introduce wormholes and space time distortion and other things not excluded by relativity but none of which has a single mathematical proof. Relativity also doesn't exclude fairies in the garden. It just doesn't address the stuff. Physics, not philosophy, is the ultimate level of human language describing what we really understand. Nothing else in human terms describes the real world as precisely as does physics and it is largely because of physics that we live in the age we do. Physicists exercise conjecture constantly, and they talk openly about it. That's how they come up with their expanded perceptions of reality. But it is only when they provide a proof, a new theory, that our understanding can be translated into language and set a new benchmark for the next challenge. Right now the benchmark is relativity. The rest is still up in the air.
I need to ask you guys a couple of questions. Please don't take offense if I'm wrong. I don't worry at all that extraterrestrials will one day visit us but perhaps you do? Do you also not believe in evolution through natural selection? For the record, I do. We as a species have come to this particular advanced stage of our intelligence that we are just now talking about the possibility of interstellar travel by aliens. We'll, we've been obsessing about it since the 50's, but that's still recent vs a billion years. No proof yet exists but we're now smart enough as a species to even attempt to develop one and if we did, it would be a remarkable coincidence if aliens just now decided to show up. Maybe Jesus will, too.
My wife is a Jehovah's Witness. That's why I'm come to this board (and I bet you thought it was to debate shit that doesn't matter). She suffers from dillusion, at least that's what I believe. She can't provide proofs for what she believes and she also can't process things that I put forward as proof that the Society to which she has belonged for 33 years is not what it represents itself to be and that what she believes but can't prove may be false. Cognitive dissonance.
No hard feelings, guys. You guys are smart and a blast to talk to, and it was a good conversation while it lasted. I'm movin' on.
