Post by redonihunter in WHAT WILL YOU DO, IF EARTH WAS BEING ATTACKED BY ALIENS?

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You are mixing two different things. It was claimed that we are alone or that it is probable that we are alone. Alone in this context means, we are the only intelligent species. At all.

I argued against that, because the univserse is big. And even if you guess very pessimistic, the numbers are against that proposition. We know that life can happen, we know that intelligence can happen. If it can happen, it will happen.

But the universe being big also means two other things. It could be that the next life bearing planet is far away. And that we would be unable to see it.

The only thing the fermi thingy shows, is, that there is not an expanding colonizing tech civ near to us in time and space to have colonized us. It is neither a contradiction nor a paradoxon.

But as I previously wrote, even if you would lower the chance for an intelligent species down to 1% per galaxy, you would still have millions of those species. And none might be in the nearest 50 or so galaxies, including our own. For all we know it even the colonizing thing could be happening in Andromada but not (yet) in the Milky Way .

In my opinion the biggest chance lowering thing is, that we are among the first, due to there not being enough heavy matter for rock planets to form.

So you can easily shift the goal post to, we might be the first intelligent species capable of leaving their planet.

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FearCode1 year ago (1 edit)

The only thing the fermi thingy shows, is, that there is not an expanding colonizing tech civ near to us in time and space to have colonized us. It is neither a contradiction nor a paradoxon.

The name is Fermi Paradox, so yes, there's indeed a paradox, and no it does not talk about expanding colonizing tech civ., it's way more flexible than that, it talks about any evidence of any (human comparable) intelligent life at any given past time, and yet we haven't found any, which contracts to your math, because you said 1% per galaxy, earth is only 0.00000000001% of the milky way so where are all the other 0.99999...% of intelligent life in our galaxy? We haven't found, thus the paradox.

I never said we're probably alone, I said we don't know if we are alone or not, thus things we know for sure are more scary, like us destroying our own planet.

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redonihunter1 year ago

Is this a translation issue?

There was the claim that we might be alone. I ramped up the pessimistic approach by claiming for the sake of argument a low chance of having 1 intelligent species per 100 galaxies. That is the 1%. And even with that, there are over 100 Billion galaxies (in the visible-to-us part of the universe...). That is 100 with 9 zeroes trailing. I could cut off 6 more zeroes and there would still be 1000 intelligent species with that pessimistic approach of 1 species per 100 000 000 galaxies. I am not talking about our Milky Way right now.

And given that we have 300 Million planets in our galaxy that could potentially have such life, it do be a overly pessimistic approach.

Is there anyhting in that that you do not understand or dispute? This has absolutely nothing to do with the fermi paradox. The universe is big.

And on a trivial level, yes, of course, we do not have proof. But if you were to gamble with a demon, that we are the only ones in the universe, would you bet a dollar or not. You might change your mind, if the bet was about the galaxy, or for a bubble with 1000 light years around earth. The chance for another intelligent species approaches 1, the bigger you make the bubble, and as I like to say, the universe is big. So big that any intuition fails.

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The fermi paradox is precisly about colonizing expanding life. Only if you assume that this would be "normal" (or at least a percentage of species would do that) and life is abundant you can go back in time and ask, what would have happend a billion years ago, when such a species would have emerged in our galaxy. They could have colonized the better part of the galaxy in that time till now.

While you can use this to "prove" that it has not happened (duh), you can not infer from it, why it has not. And that includes the explanation that we are alone in the universe. You can't prove from nothing. This would be the same faulty logic as UFO believers use. They do not know what that thing glowing in the sky was, so it must have been aliens. You can't infer from non-knowledge*. But you can speculate, of course.

My faforite speculation is, that in our bubble of reach we are simply the first. Someone has to be.

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* Technically, non-knowledge is not the same as having found nothing were you would be able to find something. Like, you searched all your pockets and did not find your phone, so you do can conlcude, that it is not in your pockets. But you can't conclude for another person that they do not have a phone, just because you could not search their pockets. We barely see the person, let alone, if they have pockets or how big they are or if a bulge in there would be a phone or something else. Or in other words, while we can as of now detect some exoplanets, there would have to be extreme scenarios to be able to tell, if there is life on those. From the other side of the telescopes, maybe someon sees our star and say, wow, nice sun, heavy elements and all, pity all we can detect are several gas giants, lets point our precious telescope to more promising candidates.

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FearCode1 year ago

There was the claim that we might be alone

If you're translating the text then, yes it may be a translation issue, my replies are small, you can easily check that I never said we're probably alone or not. I actually didn't make any bold claim, all I said was we don't know anything about the existence of intelligent alien life yet, and all we know so far is that we are our own danger.

On the other hand you are the one making bold claims without proof, you literally said that there is intelligent alien life out there without proving it, so far all I've been answering you is: you're wrong: ECREE, thus we don't know about that. ECREE is the famous quote "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Probability alone doesn't prove anything, that's the Fermi problem in general, and you're falling for it.

You also literally said in one post above "1% per galaxy" which is very different than 1 every 100 galaxies, but I forgive you on that because you may have chosen the wrong words on that post.

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redonihunter1 year ago

It would be a bold claim if the expected value for the number of intelligent species bearing planets in the universe would be 1.

But since the universe is so big, I do not think it is bold to have an expected value much higher. Of course I can't tell how many zeros that number should have - for the universe. And it might still be possible that the number turns out to be 1 per galaxy, especially if you require it to mean technological and explorative.

I think the expected value for singular cell organism bearing celestial bodies for our galaxy is in the millions. Even in our solar system it is slightly above 1. (We can't disprove as of now, that below the surface on mars there might be some stuff still going on and of course, several moons have liquid water)

And to have some speculation, maybe our planet actually was pre-colonized by those fermi-civs. They could have sent some genetic material to ensure an oxygen atmosphere would be present when they finally decide to visit.

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FearCode1 year ago

It would be a bold claim if the expected value for the number of intelligent species bearing planets in the universe would be 1.

You're still failing to understand the difference between certainty and probability. Yet you can't prove intelligent life outside of earth exists, you only keep repeating how likely that probably is, probability alone does not prove anything, try taking a medication that works in 95% but there's 5% chance of death, probability in that case doesn't sound so appealing right? That's because probability alone is not always correct, that's why scientist don't just bring probability to prove their points.

Saying something like "I believe there's intelligent life out there" it's plausible, but one can't say "I know for certain it exists", simply because you can't prove it.

And there's no such things "disproving life exists in mars" or anywhere else, that's a fallacy, in philosophy that's called "shifting the burden of proof". It's the same as if I told you that you can't prove there no flying invisible unicorns (odorless and silent), and you can't prove that, but that doesn't mean they exist.

That's why I used the word "certainty" in my original post, not "probability".

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redonihunter1 year ago

Probability is never "correct" for an individual case. You proably never win big time in the lottery. But the one who did win, well, he did win. But his odds were still the same as yours. I am not trying to argue that someone specific is winning the lottery at life, only that it will have a payout, since the number of players is biggerly big than the probability is smallish small.

And if I had a disease with 20% death rate and a mediation with 5% death rate and 95% success rate, I would research how exactly those numbers are deduced to maybe guess my individiual risk better.

That people vastly misunderstand anything statistical and about probabililty was exposed over the last few years in abundance.

Should you not know that example , how many randomly selected people do you need for the chance of two of them sharing the same birthday being 50%? It is known as the birthday paradox.

To finish this, it seems the actual scientists working on that type of research do not believe we are a unique phenomenon. And life as found near volcanos under water and all the other extremophiles radically changed their minds about life possibilities.

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FearCode1 year ago

Like in another topic you like to deviate the original topic to talk semantics just to prove your point, when semantics is not the point here.

Even though, technically speaking probability alone (unless 100%) is never correct by itself, you still need factual confirmation, I understand your point and I agree it's possible intelligent alien life exists.

However still, possible, not certain. And why that matters for this case? Because there's a huge difference between worry about intelligent aliens invading the planet, when there are humans right now destroying the planet. One could live in a bunker worrying about alien invasion or instead try to make a difference about things we know exist for sure.

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redonihunter1 year ago

It started with this

while we don't even know if intelligent extraterrestrial life really exists

To wich I replied that it is the wrong question.

Oh, and extraterrestial intelligent life does exist. The real question is, if we ever make contact or see proof.

So you accused me of having no proof, only faith .

You say " ...extraterrestial intelligent life does exist" and then say "The real question is, if we ever ... see proof." How can you say something exist but you have no proof (apart from faith)?

To wich I defended my position by stating the numbers, that are anyhting but faith. It would be faith to believe we are alone, when looking at the size of the universe. That we currently cannot prove is a trivial matter. It is only about which position is the prudent one. I remember long ago, it seemed that the scientific position was, that planets are a rare occasion. New data changed that position. Planets are in abundance. And so is capabilty life in extreme conditions. And so is organic matter. We can observe dust clouds with amino acids in such quantities that we can see them over light years. Organic chemistry is happening everywhere we look close enough. I stay with my opinion. The prudent position with the available pointers is, that life is in abundance in the universe and thus intelligence is not likely to happen but bound to happen.

Of course I freely admit that it is splitting a hair, when talking about extraterrestial life in this context it only matters for those aliens that could or would make contact. If that happens any time soon (even in geological time frame) is questionable. And for the record, the very first statement already was semantics (shifting et to being seen by us, instead of existing at all), so do not complain a dozen postings later that I am talking semantics. I was talking semantics from the beginning ;-b

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