Old Soul,
who is g.f.? if he is a form of algae, i want to make his aquaintance. way cooler than meeting humans!
okay, i have read your posts about Jello and the Universe. and i have some comments and questions.
I had not considered this benefit. I suppose I have to adjust my view of this formula. There. Done. Now it reads, "Mostly Harmless." LOL
i know this is not what the discussion is about, but i would quite like to breifly know what you think the probability of the existenced of a god(s) are? if you think the probability of intelligent life "out there" is so low (as to compare it to finding jello in your walls, [you stole my "possibility argument you b*stard! {yes, these are brackets within brackets}] ), then i am curious to know what you think about god. for me, the closest and most probable thing i can imagine god to be is some alien scientist, of course.
I have come to believe, through the laws of probability, that I am very likely to find Lime Jello gelatin between the walls of my home.
I obviously doubt I will find very much Lime Jello between the walls of my home, but there remains the possiblity.
so, which is it? LOL,
probability:
- a measure of how likely it is that some event will occur; "what is the probability of rain?"; "we have a good chance of winning"
- the quality of being probable
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
possibility:
- a future prospect or potential; "this room has great possibilities"
- capability of existing or happening or being true; "there is a possibility that his sense of smell has been impaired"
- hypothesis: a tentative theory about the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena; "a scientific hypothesis that survives experimental testing becomes a scientific theory"; "he proposed a fresh theory of alkalis that later was accepted in chemical practices"
- a possible alternative; "bankruptcy is always a possibility"
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
so, you doubt the possibility, and embrace the probability?
at any rate, i find the comparrison rather twee. i could also come up with house wall comparisons. like the possibility or probability that i will find some asbestos in my walls since my house is a certain age. or mold. i can't say with certainty, but i can say with some probability that it is more likely that i will. houses are houses. if it's been documented in some houses, then it is likely to occur in others too. same with earth and planets, but i will address this shortly. btw, i hope your new house is coming along well.
However, if I attempted to prove my belief to be true, it could be costly in terms of resources diverted to the pursuit. These funds could be better directed toward things like a much needed new roof, adding on an addition to the home, replacing worn fixtures, etc. In my opinion, the existence of a possibility of Lime Jello between the walls does not justify spending a single dime or the required time and energy in terms of human production looking for it. If I found it, what then? How did I profit from finding it?
however, if it was mold, even a very rare species of fungi, i would hope that you would do something about it, resource wise.
I just wish we would not invent pseudo-scientific bases for doing exploration.
pseudo-scientific? please explain. the last time i checked, cosmology and astro-physics were not pseudo-sciences. you think that the math that was used to arrive at the probability of intelligent life was flawed, perhaps missing some variables? but this is not pseudo-science if the case. and if the case, you should notify the physicists that came up with the maths (appeal to authority, i know).
Just don't try and pretend that it is anything more than an exercise in wishful thinking that might pay off in the extremely remote chance that (1) there is life on another/other planet(s), (2) this life exists in some form we could identify as life, (3) the life is intelligent, (4) the lifeform's technology has advanced at least to the point where they can get our signal, (5) the life can understand its significance as indicative of intelligence, (6) the life can get funding from its government to start a SETI program to respond to us, (7) the life can figure out a way to make us know they received the message and are responding, (8) and that we receive the message they send.
i'm totally hip to what you are explaining here, and i get it. but i think you have left a few things out.
if we find life on our planet, then it is safe to assume, or wishfully think, that there is life on other planets as well.
# 4 is not required to play out the way you have described. # 6 is not required either. #7 is not required either.
why? because you make the assumtion that they are waiting for us, and that they have to be running their own seti program. (and that they have to exist right now, in parallel with us.)
if they are intelligent enough to make radio waves, then they do not have to be intelligent enough to send them into space. they could accidentally send radio signals into space, which we come across.
but i agree. the distinction between intelligent life, and less than intelligent life is a large gap, which probably plays as a significant variable in your probability matrix. on earth, the difference between our type of intelligence and the type of intelligence held by chimps or dolphins, is vast, i admit. the evolutionary forces in our environment that forced us to favour abstract intelligence over physical strength are very very unique. we had to be what we had to be at that time, for it to work. and out margin of survival was quite slight there for a while (see neanderthals and erectus).
on other planets, there could have already been very intelligent life forms, but perhaps they died via some sort of natural disaster like an asteroid. or perhaps they killed themselves off fighting over natural resources. trying to get from that type0 civilization to a type1. you know, where we find ourselves right now.
For all of man's existence, there has only been about a 100 year window in which we could have received a signal indicating life. We would not only have to reach them, we would have reach them at the right time in their technological advancement. Suppose we are being signalled right now by a means we haven't even developed the technology to detect, we would never even know. How do we know there aren't encoded messages in the rays of light from distant stars? I'm not saying I think that there are, but how would we ever interpret them? But for all we know, that could be a standard means of communication for another lifeform.
ah, but you already have stated, quite well, the situation we are up against in programs like SETI.
at any rate, a civilization could have sent out signals millions of years ago, that just happen to reach us now. they do not even have to have been within our light cone.
but yes, we could be missing signals. then again, we will probably add new technologies to the arsenal as time progresses. as far as we can tell, the likelyhood of getting a signal in 300 years, is as good as getting one now.
I see the odds of this succeeding as incredibly low, well below the realm of practically possible. I would expect rational people to avoid spending large amounts of time and heavy resources on the pursuit.
why? you, of all people should be happy! this is as close as we can come using scientific methodology in searching for god(s).
there is one large hypothesis: if there is/has been intelligent life in the universe, then they may be using/have used the same wave lengths as us.
it's hardly wishful thinking. based on what we know of the universe, it would be arrogantly irresponsible to NOT search for life, even if we do it inefficiently.
If I injected the gelatin into ONE wall, then claimed that there was also gelatin somewhere else within the walls I would have produced the needed allegory to match Drake's Equation perfectly. In the gelatin allegory, if I knew it was inside at least one wall, then every tad bit of space down to the size of a Jello atom (inside joke, "wood atoms" lol) between the sheetrock making up the internal walls of my home could correspond to the number of stars, the number of wall segments could correspond to the planets (we empirically know it is in one wall, because we put it there). It is still just as unlikely that there is gelatin in another place within my walls as it was before I injected it. I have a value of one for all variable in the equation except for the weighty estimation of the total space within the walls where one Lime Jello atom (Hah! I kill me!) might be found.
you leave out the obvious variable, that your jello atom (or molecule as Caedes brought out), is possibly intelligent, and trying to get in contact with you. now get off your sofa, and try inventing a listening device so that you can tell if it is trying to say hi or not! LOL.
The very fact that it would not have been possible to make long distance contact with us some 110 years ago should obviously decrease the likelihood considerably.
i disagree. considering the size of the universe, and the fact that we do not recognize anything that we have recived yet as intelligent, then we cannot say that the likelyhood is any lower than you having a molecule in your wall somewhere, that could be used to create some lime jello.
Then, as we find planets capable of supporting life (ours being 1), the odds of finding another should decrease progressively.
i disagree. the odds should increase progressively. i find you give too much credit to us, as a species.
let me put it this way. if life could arise on our little ball of rock and metal, then the odds are that life has arisen on others, and will arise yet on others. why?
because the universe is conducive to life. if it wasn't, it wouldn't be a universe as we define it.
and yes, i do see the paradox. the universe is conducive to life, and yet is indifferent to the survival of that life. if the universe were any smaller, i would probably be siding with you on this. the very size of it, tips the probability scale, however.
yes. we have no evidence for other life out in the universe. we also have no evidence for the existence of god. but since god has been purposefully defined out of the realm of scientific method by people who are threatened by it, then all we can do is search of extraterrestrial life. in my opinion, it's the same as searching for god. if we find anything, it will be the closest thing to a god that we have come across.
i don't know if you are a deist and xian or a pantheist (please no mumbling about labels, i've heard it all). but the sheer size of the universe, the type of universe it is, does more to damage the possibility of there being a designer/blueprint god than the theory of evolution does. and in this respect, i have always been surprised that astrophysics and cosmology are not more concentrated on by apologists than evolution is.
the universe computes, and therefore so do we. it's more of a program, making god, if he existed, more of a programmer.
and from this paradigm, it is more likely than not, that life does exist out there somewhere.
is my view unparsimonious?
in a way yes, it is. if there is other life out there, even if it was less intelligent than us, i would feel slightly better about my life and existence. like religious people and god, i'll admit.
and yet, in another way, it is not unparsimonious (remember, we are dealing with probability in parsimony). before the hubble space telescope, and other high powered telescopes, i would say that the view that there is likely other life out there, intelligent life, was unparsimonious. but since then, and now, our view of the universe has and is changing drastically. this view of the universe, and it's imensity, changes the probability.
i am going to appeal to emotion, and post a hubble pic. tell me if in all of this, you do not think there is life, and even intelligent life. in the sentiments of sagan, think: billions and billions.
