have they found anything?

[JoeTheJuggler]

Joe, did you miss the bit where amb said "I reject that idea completely"?

Not at all. He set up a false dichotomy.

He says, if there were many intelligences in the universe it would indeed mean that there is a designer or whatever. (He did not reject that part.) He rejects that there is a designer. Therefore, he argues, there aren't many intelligences in the universe.

It's flawed reasoning based on the part I quoted, where amb says Davies would be correct if there were many intelligences in the universe.

As I countered, even if there were many intelligences in the universe, it would NOT argue in favor of a creator or designer at all.

Similarly, lack of belief in a designer (even proof of the non-existence of a designer) does not support the position that we are unique in the galaxy or that intelligence is relatively rare in the universe.

ETA: The idea that amb "rejects completely" is that the universe is tuned for life. One can hold the position that life is relatively common in the universe without accepting any notion of a tuner or designer.

ETA: Amb is using the same backward approach as the Creationists, while rejecting the existence of a Creator. In fact, life adapts to conditions and not the other way around.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I repeat for the hundreth time. If homo sapiens were to suddenly become extinct, there will never be a species like us again on this planet.

Of course, this depends on what you mean by "like us". If you consider biology as a whole (especially with regard to the question of exobiology), one could argue that many of the organisms on Earth are "like us". If you're talking strictly about intelligence, again, there are other intelligent species that exist (or at least have existed) on Earth.

I agree with you the probability of finding a population of homo sapiens that evolved independently on some extrasolar planet is as close to zero as matters, but that's not the only alternative to saying humans are unique in the galaxy.

 

[amb]

Joe, you can't have it both ways. Either we are unique in the cosmos or we are not.
Life adapts to the prevailing conditions. So unless conditions are exactly as they are on Earth, a homo sapiens like creature cannot exist anywhere else. What are the chances that there are uncountable planets in the cosmos exactly like the Earth?
Even here we have places where life is untenable like the Sahara desert where the only creatures that can exist are scorpions and other crawling life forms. Very little chance there to develop any kind of intelligence higher than an ant.
That's the point I'm trying to make.
Even the Earth's life friendly conditions which have over it's history produced millions of life forms, and more than once, have only ever produced one species intelligent enough to place a satellite in orbit.
Because the Earth is teeming with animal life lower than man, there may possibly be other planets in the cosmos that have evolved life forms such as animals, perhaps even as high as a monkey's intelligence. But the huge fluke that caused homo sapiens brain to evolve consciousness and machine making skills, mathematics, geometry, science, and to reason are in my humble opinion extremely rare in the cosmos.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Joe, you can't have it both ways. Either we are unique in the cosmos or we are not.

What are you talking about now? I've never been arguing for "having it both ways". You're the one asserting that you know certainly that humans are unique in the galaxy.

So unless conditions are exactly as they are on Earth, a homo sapiens like creature cannot exist anywhere else. What are the chances that there are uncountable planets in the cosmos exactly like the Earth?

No one involved in SETI or anything like (nor I myself) has argued that we will find homo sapiens on another planet. So what exactly do you mean by "homo sapiens like"? You're trying to say it's something identical to homo sapiens. Again, that's a straw man position that no one in his right mind is arguing for.

So. . you want to back off of saying that "homo sapiens like" means "identical to homo sapiens" and address the actual topic which is ETI--that is extra terrestrial intelligence. That does NOT mean identical to homo sapiens.

Even here we have places where life is untenable like the Sahara desert where the only creatures that can exist are scorpions and other crawling life forms. Very little chance there to develop any kind of intelligence higher than an ant.

You want to bet on that? Your understanding of biology and evolution is seriously flawed.

Even the Earth's life friendly conditions which have over it's [sic] history produced millions of life forms, and more than once,

What organism has evolved more than once?

have only ever produced one species intelligent enough to place a satellite in orbit.
Because the Earth is teeming with animal life lower than man, there may possibly be other planets in the cosmos that have evolved life forms such as animals, perhaps even as high as a monkey's intelligence. But the huge fluke that caused homo sapiens brain to evolve consciousness and machine making skills, mathematics, geometry, science, and to reason are in my humble opinion extremely rare in the cosmos.

I've addressed all this. According to you "friendly conditions" drives evolution. I've pointed out that there's plenty of evidence that just the opposite is true. Punctuated equilibrium argues that once you have a good fit to a stable environment, you see little change. It's when the environments changes that you see more rapid changes in forms.

In fact, the Rare Earth argument wants to have it both ways. They sometimes say that "friendly conditions" are necessary, but other times admit that traumatic events sometimes drive evolution.

Further the Rare Earth argument assumes that the Earth is the epitome of "friendly conditions" and that therefore every last characteristic of the Earth is an absolute prerequisite to complex life.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

A little bit on the Fauna of the Sahara:

Fauna

Animals have also created some strategies to preserve water and avoid hot weather: thick skin and underground life for scorpions and insects, recuperation of water steam in pulmonary air by condensing it in nostrils, production of drained faeces and concentrated urine for some birds, loss of sudoriferous glands, clear colored skin to reflect the sun, search for water and food at night, accumulation of water in internal pockets, large ears to regulate calorific waste ( fennecs, sand cats), short hairs for better thermolysis, increase of internal temperature to avoid perspiration…

The emblematic animals of the desert are addaxes, gazelles, doncas and fennecs.

Camels are the main animal of the desert. Without them, humans could not have lived in the Sahara. They have a great capacity to resist heat and thirst. Even above 50°, they can stay without drinking water for many days. Camels can carry about 250 kg of commodities between two distant places.

Note that evolution of the characters mentioned here would not have happened in a "friendly" environment.

You think all the animals mentioned here are less intelligent than an ant?

 

[amb]

OK! But could the Sahara in your opinion ever host an intelligent creature such as man?
What about the Antarctica? Think a homo s could ever evolve in such conditions?
Didn't we evolve in African savannas where the temperature was just right?

I understand you position in holding to the itelligence of many animals to prove that it could and probably has done so on a few planets in the cosmos as well. But the animals intellince is to assure their survival, that's all. An animal like an ape or whatever, will never evolve the intelligence to build a civilization as homo sapiens has. An animal will even in a billion years never build a rocket that can actually leave it's home planet.
We are a fluke that may never happen again. All the more reason to look after our environment and assure our survival on Earth, and perhaps one day to colonise other worlds.

 

[LarianLeQuella]

OK! But could the Sahara in your opinion ever host an intelligent creature such as man?

First of all, get off that bloody homocentric view. Drop the "such as man" thing at the end, because I would argue that we are only marginally intelligent. But given the right conditions, an intelligence could evolve on a resource poor environment FOR US, but it may be rich for THEM. The real answer is, we don't know, but it's not against the laws of the universe as far as I can tell.

What about the Antarctica? Think a homo s could ever evolve in such conditions?

Why are you stuck on homo! What about ursa? You are thinking too much as if we are the end all, be all of intelligence in evolution. Nature may have come to our end by accident; but if nature were anthropomorphic, it would be regretting ever allowing such a self centered organism as us to evolve!

Again, with the right opportunities, an intelligent organism could evolve in such a climate as well. We just don't know at this point.

Didn't we evolve in African savannas where the temperature was just right?

IRRELEVANT! We evolved there, true, and the temperature was just right FOR US. That doesn't mean that because the temperature was just right, that we evolved into an intelligent species.
You keep using that backwards logic over and over again AMB, and that's what (at least in my case) I keep arguing against. That and the fact that currently we only have ONE datapoint, which is not even enough to make a line to vaugely extrapolate with.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

OK! But could the Sahara in your opinion ever host an intelligent creature such as man?
What about the Antarctica?

I'm not sure what you mean by "host" but I'm certain humans are living in the Sahara right this moment. There are probably some in the Antarctic too.

Think a homo s could ever evolve in such conditions?

I believe the consensus is that humans evolved in tropical savannas. So no, humans did not evolve in Antarctic conditions. So?

Do you know for certain that Arctic conditions are more prevalent in the rest of the galaxy than tropical savannas? Do you know that complex organisms can only evolve in tropical savannas (in fact, if that's what you think, you're definitely wrong)?

Didn't we evolve in African savannas where the temperature was just right?

Yes, but you're still thinking backwards (the same way the Creationists/I.D./Fine Tuning people do). Of course we evolved where conditions were just right for us to evolve. It's because we evolved to adapt to the environment, not the other way around.

But the animals intellince [sic] is to assure their survival, that's all. An animal like an ape or whatever, will never evolve the intelligence to build a civilization as homo sapiens has. An animal will even in a billion years never build a rocket that can actually leave it's [sic] home planet.

Your understanding of biology and evolution is seriously flawed. Saying that an organism "evolves to" do anything is a wrong way of thinking of it. Evolution doesn't have any goals or aims or pre-determined outcomes. Natural selection merely guarantees that individual variants more suited to the environment will reproduce more successfully than variants less suited, and therefore the offspring of the "fitter" individuals will be greater in number than those less fit (i.e. "fit" to the environment at the time).

And don't even get me started on issues like epigenetics or sexual selection. (Both of which belie your idea that characters not essential to survival will not arise.)

You are asserting knowledge that you don't have (and that is certainly wrong, since humans are animals that evolved that can build rockets).

We are a fluke that may never happen again.

But intelligence is not. (You are still arguing against a straw man position that the search for ETI expects to find homo sapiens "out there". That's not a position any reasonable person supports.)

Intelligence is a characteristic that has arisen in many species and has proven to have great value in adapting to many different environments. In fact, taking the example from the Earth, we have had the greatest radiation of all organisms other than archaebacteria (and perhaps some groups of insects), and this is almost certainly due to intelligence (or at least to intelligence as a trait adaptive to complex organisms living in complex social structures).

Remember, the search for ETI is the search for ETI, not the search for homo sapiens.

Your arguments still smack of religious arguments, where Mankind is different in kind (rather than merely degree) from other animals--the result of some special divine agency where we were created in the image of a deity and therefore absolutely unique (rather than merely being the organism at present with the highest degree of a certain trait).

If humans went extinct today, another species would immediately be the most intelligent species on the planet. (That is, intelligence as a trait will not have disappeared from the face of the Earth.) Evolutionary biology suggests that since the niche humans occupy has been so rich, that if it were vacated, another species might in fact fill that niche.

But there is no pre-set ecology, so know one knows whether or not another organism would reach our level of technology. You claim knowledge that it would not, but you have nothing to support your case (other than irrelevant and trivial observations that homo sapiens is unique in being homo sapiens and that no other organism is likely to evolve to become homo sapiens).

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Have you got around to reading the Darling book yet, Amb?

There's a lot of evidence that it's trauma that fuels the engine of evolution rather than "friendly conditions".

I notice you're no longer mentioning the Rare Earth stuff. Do you acknowledge that all these conditions (a large moon, a Mars-like planet, a Jupiter-like planet, etc.) are requirements for complex life?

It could be that on less "friendly" planets, complex life evolves much faster. It could also be that Earth isn't among the most life friendly planets (that maybe it's below the mean in "friendliness"). The fact is, we don't know.

As I've mentioned, the arguments made in Rare Earth are mostly speculation, and I could at least as legitimately speculate the exact opposite wrt to many of the so-called prerequisites to complex life.

ETA: For example, it could be that the high rate of collisions in the early days of our Solar System are atypical. It could be that the asteroid belt is a very unusual feature that seriously retards the development of complex life.

 

[amb]

I think this whole thread is pure speculation. I agree with Paul Davies when he says that although SETI is worth the effort, it would be a miracle if it produced positive results.
If there is other intelligent life forms out there, don't count on it been in the numbers Drake quoted. Darwinian evolution requires a huge time span. I doubt there may be some planets where it could possibly arise faster than what it did here even without an asteroid belt which is a planet that failed to form.

 

[LarianLeQuella]

I think this whole thread is pure speculation. I agree with Paul Davies when he says that although SETI is worth the effort, it would be a miracle if it produced positive results.

I agree with you wholeheartedly there. No argument at all.

If there is other intelligent life forms out there, don't count on it been in the numbers Drake quoted. Darwinian evolution requires a huge time span. I doubt there may be some planets where it could possibly arise faster than what it did here even without an asteroid belt which is a planet that failed to form.

This is where you get off into unsupported speculation and misstatements.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I agree with you wholeheartedly there. No argument at all.

I agree, but less than wholeheartedly.

I would not use the word "miracle" which introduces the idea of the temporary suspension of natural laws as by divine intervention rather than merely something improbable. I'd use a term like "unlikely" or liken it to finding a needle in a really really really big haystack (a comparison I'm pretty sure I've made on this thread before).

Given enough chances, highly improbable events happen with some frequency. Given that there are nearly 7 billion people, something that happens to people once in a million days, happens roughly 700 times every day (or am I off by an order of magnitude?). So is a 1 in a million event "miraculous"? Is its occurrence "rare"? (See my on-going point that there's rare and then there's rare.)

 

[LarianLeQuella]

Sorry, I use the word miracle in a much different manner. But then I do DoD acquisitions programs, and part of nearly every development program involves at least seven conscutive miracles, and the invention of unobtanium. So I should probably edit his quote to say "extremely unlikely" and then I agree wholeheartedly.

 

[amb]

Extremely unlikely it is. For once I agree. Finding another Earthlike planet is like looking for a needle on the planet Jupiter.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Extremely unlikely it is. For once I agree. Finding another Earthlike planet is like looking for a needle on the planet Jupiter.

So I see you now agree with my first post on this thread from way back when.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=4279474#post4279474

Have you abandoned your claim that we are the only intelligence in the galaxy and likely only one of a dozen in the entire universe?

Again, there's rare and then there's rare.

 

[amb]

The more we discover with such instruments as the Hubble telescope, and the more planets are discovered, some astrobiologists are realising that Earth is indeed very rare.
Depending on what you mean by intelligence, I think that intelligence such as ours or higher
is extremely rare in the universe. Lower intelligence such as an ape or a dolphin, much more likely.

 

[LarianLeQuella]

The more we discover with such instruments as the Hubble telescope, and the more planets are discovered, some astrobiologists are realising that Earth is indeed very rare.

And what exactly are you basing that assertion on? We have looked at about 300 stars. Out of 200 to 400 billion (http://seds.org/Messier/more/mw.html) in the Galaxy and associated near clusters. So after a sample size of 0.000000000015% you are ready to make that assertion? Especially considering that we don't even have the ABILITY to detect anything like an earth planet.

That's like saying, "I have visually examined this pond water, and declare it void of life." But if you used a microscope, instead of your naked eye, you would have seen it swarming with life (and maybe avoided a case of giardia)... The Hubble isn't really a planet finder telescope, so using that as your instrument of choice shows your inneptitude at the task at hand...

And why do you think that intelligence "akin" to ours is so rare? because a planet "akin" to ours is rare? Who says it has to have a planet like ours to start with? The data is incomplete at this point (as in we have only one datapoint, ours).

And here we go around the merry-go-round again with AMB...

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

The more we discover with such instruments as the Hubble telescope, and the more planets are discovered, some astrobiologists are realising that Earth is indeed very rare.

I disagree. So far, whenever we've had a technique to detect planets of given characteristics (mass, orbital geometry relative to its star and the Earth, etc.) we have found them in abundance. The Keppler mission is set to detect Earth-like planets in the habitable zone. According to your theory, Keppler won't find any (or many). Care to put a wager on it?

Depending on what you mean by intelligence, I think that intelligence such as ours or higher
is extremely rare in the universe. Lower intelligence such as an ape or a dolphin, much more likely.

Why do you think that? (I accept that you're an atheist, but you should recognize that such a statement smacks of religious ideas.)

Even just considering life on Earth, the difference in intelligence among chimpanzees, humans and dolphins is almost nothing. There's no biological magic that happened to make humans different in kind. And frankly, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence would consider finding chimpanzee-like or dolphin-like life on another planet to be extraterrestrial intelligence. It would be hugely exciting to make such a discover.

 

[amb]

Humans are vastly superior to any other animal on this planet. How can anyone postulate that the difference between chimpanzees, dolphins, etc is almost nothing?
Can any other animal on Earth have the hair on the back of the neck literally stand up at a Mozart symphony? Be in awe at an image of a galaxy from Hubble? Cry at a very sad part of an emotional movie or laugh at a comedy film.
No, we are unique on this planet as the only ones able to do all that and much more.
At the risk of repeating myself. If we were to die out tomorrow, there is no other species that can possibly take our place. Civilization would die.
The coincidence that produced us must of necessity be extremely rare.

 

[LarianLeQuella]

No, we are unique on this planet as the only ones able to do all that and much more.

Are you 100% sure about that? And were there not two or even three species co-eisting on this planet alone that had the capability at one time? Two just happened to go extinct leaving us. And again, we have ONE datapoint. To make authoritative statements like you do is rediculous.

And (to repeat Joe's question) how rare? Given that the Milky Way has up to 400 billion stars, would that still leave us alone in this galaxy? I think you are observing the universe using the wrong tools.