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Author Topic:   Life on other Planets?
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 41 of 160 (594528)
12-03-2010 8:04 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Bolder-dash
12-02-2010 11:32 PM


Hi, Dash.
I believe there is life elsewhere in the universe.
It's a big universe, which either means that there are inevitably many opportunities for life to emerge, leading to high probabilities that it has happened elsewhere, or that any Designer who is Intelligent would have thought up an efficient way to use all that space.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Bolder-dash, posted 12-02-2010 11:32 PM Bolder-dash has not replied

  
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


(1)
Message 105 of 160 (594692)
12-04-2010 3:29 PM
Reply to: Message 94 by Bolder-dash
12-04-2010 1:52 PM


Re: Huh????? Life on other Planets?
Hi, Dash.
Bolder-dash writes:
evolutionists overwhelmingly ... believe in the existence of something for which they have zero empirical evidence, while at the same time selectively proclaiming opposition to belief in things for which one does not have empirical evidence.
Are you familiar with the concept of establishing precedent?
If little Johnny doesn't get in trouble for taking a cookie, then little Timmy is going to think it's okay for him to take a cookie too.
If a court case uses a particular argument, and the argument is allowed by the court, future cases are also going to allow the same argument to be used in other cases.
As far as life is concerned, an observation that life exists here establishes the precedent that life at least can exist. When we add the evidence that much of the chemistry required for life has been found in places other than Earth, it makes the speculation that life exists plausible or reasonable.
As far as God is concerned, no precedent has been established, and no evidence has been given other than your assertion that order correlates with intelligence (which has been rebutted effectively by Crashfrog).
To me, the likelihood of life outside of Earth outweighs the alternative based on simple reason, no matter what the premises are:
If life emerges naturally when the required conditions are met, then I just observe how big the universe is and conclude that the likelihood that the required conditions are met somewhere else seems pretty high. Thus, I say, "I believe there is life elsewhere in the universe."
Or, if life is designed by a supernatural intelligent entity, then it seems strange for that entity to not use its space, unless, of course, it wanted us to grow and use all that space, in which case I'm pretty sure there were more effective ways to allow us to do it. Thus, I say, "I believe there is life elsewhere in the universe."
Believing things based on probabilities is not particularly scientific, but there are things for which I don't have the scientific credentials to address properly, nor the time for rigorous study on which to base scientific conclusions, and which I don't think are particularly important that I be right about, so I don't see much of a point in bothering to be scientific about it.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 94 by Bolder-dash, posted 12-04-2010 1:52 PM Bolder-dash has not replied

  
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 140 of 160 (603017)
02-02-2011 10:31 AM
Reply to: Message 138 by frako
02-02-2011 9:00 AM


Hi, Frako.
frako writes:
Well if we use ourselves as a model for what would likely happen you can look at what happened in America Africa or any other culture that met a very advanced culture. So it is probably more likely they would not be so friendly and we would probably end up on an intergalactic slave market.
Why do people always think it makes sense to compare advanced aliens to 19th century European imperialists?
Are most people today like 19th century European imperialists?
Do most advanced nations today attempt to conquer and enslave less advanced peoples?
Surely you don't think that an alien species advanced enough in their knowledge of the universe to master the principles of spaceflight would be so primitive in their mindset as to think like 19th century imperialists:
Take up the Alien's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
-alien Rudyard Kipling

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 138 by frako, posted 02-02-2011 9:00 AM frako has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 143 by ringo, posted 02-02-2011 10:59 AM Blue Jay has replied
 Message 149 by frako, posted 02-03-2011 6:34 AM Blue Jay has replied

  
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 141 of 160 (603020)
02-02-2011 10:51 AM
Reply to: Message 139 by hooah212002
02-02-2011 10:16 AM


Hi, Hooah.
Dogmafood writes:
hooah212002 writes:
Would you send the military to meet them or the ambassadors?
Neither. I'd send scientists.
What would the scientists do? Study the aliens?
Surely we have to believe that the aliens would be the more savvy of the two parties, just because they're the ones who figured out how to cross the stars to get here. Thus, we'd expect their efforts to study us to bear more fruit than our efforts to study them.
So, it would seem to make more sense to leave the "studying" to the aliens, and send people who know or can figure out how to respond to diplomatic or interpersonal communications instead.
Undoubtedly, we would want some kind of mixed team. Perhaps a biologist or two could provide insights, and somebody from the military should be on-site just in case; but the leader and primary movers of the team should surely be diplomats of some kind.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 139 by hooah212002, posted 02-02-2011 10:16 AM hooah212002 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 142 by hooah212002, posted 02-02-2011 10:58 AM Blue Jay has replied

  
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 144 of 160 (603055)
02-02-2011 2:11 PM
Reply to: Message 142 by hooah212002
02-02-2011 10:58 AM


Hi, Hooah.
hooah212002 writes:
No, that wasn't what I was implying. Scientists, IMO, would not have an "agenda", so to speak.
I see. I don't know how correct the conclusion is (I know a lot of scientists), but the reasoning makes sense: we're looking for a "neutral" party.
Also, I seem to have misread Dogmafood: I was responding as if it was a party of aliens landing here (which would answer your questions about whose military and whose diplomats by virtue of where the aliens touched down).
Us going to them changes things: in that case, we would obviously not want any one party or one department of society to dominate the mission, because we'd need contingency plans. Also, in this case, scientists make a whole lot more sense.
I'll try to read more carefully in the future.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 142 by hooah212002, posted 02-02-2011 10:58 AM hooah212002 has seen this message but not replied

  
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 146 of 160 (603059)
02-02-2011 2:31 PM
Reply to: Message 143 by ringo
02-02-2011 10:59 AM


Hi, Ringo.
Ringo writes:
Bluejay writes:
Why do people always think it makes sense to compare advanced aliens to 19th century European imperialists?
Because the 19th century wasn't very long ago in our evolutionary history.
But it was quite a while ago in our societal history. The mindset of people has changed a lot since then: slavers and racists and imperialists are no longer the drivers of society these days.
Why do we think they're going to be the drivers of alien societies that have presumably made more technological and societal progress than we have?

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 143 by ringo, posted 02-02-2011 10:59 AM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 147 by ringo, posted 02-02-2011 3:19 PM Blue Jay has not replied
 Message 148 by Taq, posted 02-02-2011 3:44 PM Blue Jay has replied

  
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 150 of 160 (603192)
02-03-2011 10:13 AM
Reply to: Message 148 by Taq
02-02-2011 3:44 PM


Hi, Taq.
Taq writes:
Our economies are still based on cheap labor and access to resources even if that means toppling the governments of other states.
I think this is an overstatement. Sure, nobody's got a clean nose anymore, but we're not simply sailing around the world and conquering any inconvenient nation that we can finance an invasion of, as we were in previous centuries.
We no longer have a mindset that certain groups of people are inferior savages that are meant for servitude and little else. Even if you don't believe that racism and slavery are gone, you have to admit that we've made a lot of progress in this area over the past two or three decades.
The "slavery" that remains is largely confined to taking advantage of people who voluntarily work cheap, or to countries that are not "advanced." And, where "advanced" nations profit from it, it's done within the laws of the local nation and isn't "enforced servitude" under the overlordship of the advanced nation.
Plus, human labor is unlikely to be cheap for the alien capitalists, given the distances involved in shipping, so we're not likely to have to endure repressive, capitalist overlords forcing us to work for half the wages aliens get to do the same work on their homeworld.
So, in our society, we don't see a lot of advanced nations forcefully shipping people away to serve as cheap labor or inserting themselves as overlords over foreign nations, and there isn't really a feasible way for aliens to exploit us for cheap labor. So, why, exactly, do we think this is what aliens with more advanced societies are going to do to us?
Sure, I understand that it makes sense to be prepared for the worst-case scenarios, but I think people tend to be far too pessimistic about this sort of thing.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 148 by Taq, posted 02-02-2011 3:44 PM Taq has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 152 by Coyote, posted 02-03-2011 10:55 AM Blue Jay has replied

  
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 151 of 160 (603197)
02-03-2011 10:42 AM
Reply to: Message 149 by frako
02-03-2011 6:34 AM


Hi, Frako.
frako writes:
Becauzse its roughly the only comparrison we got...
We could try comparing them to a more advanced society, because that would seem to be a more appropriate comparison, anyway.
-----
frako writes:
The native americans live in reservations while this was their continent...
They're just as free to move about the country as anybody else in the USA. I know a lot of Native Americans of several different tribes who don't live on reservations, and hold jobs that are just as good as anybody else's jobs.
Sure, it's not perfect, but there's been a lot of progress since the 19th century, and we should predict, based on this, that a society that has had more development than us would have made more progress than we have.
-----
frako writes:
...but if the subjects are less intelligent then humans say the intelligence of a cow they get to live in a space to small for them to turn they get feed nasty shit so they can get fat real fast and then they get killed and slaughtered. So what do you think a smarter race would do to us a race that would regard our intelligence the same way we regard the intelligence of a cow...
Knowledge and intelligence are not the same thing. Just because aliens know more than us and have a more advanced society than us, doesn't mean that their intelligence is inherently superior to ours in the way that ours is inherently superior to cows'.
Surely you don't think that an alien society that understands how the universe operates well enough to travel among the stars would be too stupid to recognize the difference.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 149 by frako, posted 02-03-2011 6:34 AM frako has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 153 by frako, posted 02-03-2011 2:29 PM Blue Jay has replied

  
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 155 of 160 (603380)
02-04-2011 10:31 AM
Reply to: Message 152 by Coyote
02-03-2011 10:55 AM


Re: Economy
Hi, Coyote.
Coyote writes:
It would seem logical that spacefaring societies would have access to better sources of energy than we now have.
I agree. I'm not really sure what you're getting at though.
Is this a reason not expect them to exploit us for labor?
Or, is this a reason to expect travel to be less of a problem?

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 152 by Coyote, posted 02-03-2011 10:55 AM Coyote has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 156 by Coyote, posted 02-04-2011 10:35 AM Blue Jay has replied

  
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 157 of 160 (603386)
02-04-2011 11:10 AM
Reply to: Message 153 by frako
02-03-2011 2:29 PM


Hi, Frako.
frako writes:
Bluejay writes:
We could try comparing them to a more advanced society, because that would seem to be a more appropriate comparison, anyway.
Ohh ok lets compare them to america, waging a ware every 20 years, exploiting imigrant labure ......
Then, let's go there. Note that the USA didn't start any of the wars we are accused of "waging" in the past century (with the possible exception of the current ones). In fact, we only got involved in any of them at the specific request of the parties involved (the Allies, Korea, South Vietnam, etc.), or when somebody brought us into it by attacking us directly (Pearl Harbor).
So, if you're going to compare advanced aliens to the USA, then all we have to fear from alien invaders is retaliation if we start a conflict.
And, "exploiting immigrant labor" means "paying them small amounts of money (but still more money than they would have made back home) when they voluntarily come to the USA to work."
So, if you're going to compare advanced aliens to the USA, then all you have to complain about is not getting paid as much as aliens (but still more than you would make here) when you immigrate to their lands.
If these are your real concerns with advanced alien "invaders," then I think your comparisons between them and 19th century imperialists is petty.
-----
frako writes:
Bluejay writes:
They're just as free to move about the country as anybody else in the USA. I know a lot of Native Americans of several different tribes who don't live on reservations, and hold jobs that are just as good as anybody else's jobs.
We would be just as free as them roaming the earth as long as we follow their rules.
Native Americans currently enjoy all the freedoms I enjoy as a white man living in the United States. I took no part in making the rules that both they and I have to live by, and neither did any white person that I know personally, so it's totally ridiculous for you to characterize "them" as having to follow "our" rules.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 153 by frako, posted 02-03-2011 2:29 PM frako has not replied

  
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2697 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 158 of 160 (603387)
02-04-2011 11:19 AM
Reply to: Message 156 by Coyote
02-04-2011 10:35 AM


Re: Economy
Hi, Coyote.
Coyote writes:
With access to that much energy, manual labor is much less necessary.
But this does remind me of an old story, titled "To Serve Man."
Ooh, that was a good one. Also a good point: maybe advanced aliens would be, not capitalists or imperialists, but predators looking to eat us.
My inclination is to think that human-level or higher intelligence is more likely to derive from adaptable omnivores than from hypercarnivores, simply because intelligence increases flexibility more than functionality; but I suppose I have no way of being particularly confident of that conclusion.
In any event, I still support the idea that, as long as we're discussing alien invasions, we should be prepared for a worst-case scenario (i.e. invaders who want to rain down total destruction on us). I just don't understand why so many people are so quick to speculate that aliens are most likely going to be like this.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 156 by Coyote, posted 02-04-2011 10:35 AM Coyote has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 159 by hooah212002, posted 02-04-2011 12:24 PM Blue Jay has seen this message but not replied

  
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