Is ESP More Probable Than Advanced Alien Life?

[John Jones]

Advanced alien life has not been shown to exist. It may or may not exist.

Yet advanced life has been shown to exist in this universe, and ESP has not been shown to exist anywhere.
You've shifted the goal posts and equivocated between threads lately. Would you like to address the highlighted?

 

[John Jones]

You're assuming our knowledge of how the universe works is complete. [...]

You appear to be claiming that all ideas are equally valid.

 

[Craig B]

Advanced alien life has not been shown to exist. It may or may not exist.

As has been pointed out, life as such is known to exist. If one example of something exists it is surely more probable that another example also exists, than that even one example exists of something never reliably observed and not required by any currently accepted theory.

 

[Delvo]

My point was that not knowing a casual mechanism is not necessarily a knock on something.

It isn't against things are known to actually exist. It is against things that are not.

I understand that ESP has never been observed. But then, neither has alien life.

Advanced alien life has not been shown to exist. It may or may not exist.

Show the fundamental distinction between known advanced life and its alien counterparts, which prevents the two from being analogous.

The only distinction I know of is location, which is insufficient. For location to work as the basis of your argument, the thing you're trying to equate to advanced (alien) life, ESP, would need to be known to exist somewhere, leaving only the question of whether it exists somewhere else, not whether it exists somewhere at all.

 

[Daylightstar]

Fudbucker,

So, Fudbucker, what is according to you the benefit of believing that anything like fairies, ESP, black holes crossing the solar system and little green elves etc are possible?

 

[Daylightstar]

That wasn't a safe, it was Dr. Schrodinger's pet carrier.

The money was safe in there because of Schrodinger's cat. The thing is wild.

 

[Daylightstar]

Fudbucker, the answer to this thead's title:
"Is ESP More Probable Than Advanced Alien Life?"
..... is clearly: no.

Do you have a personal interest in ESP?

 

[Fudbucker]

Yet advanced life has been shown to exist in this universe, and ESP has not been shown to exist anywhere.
You've shifted the goal posts and equivocated between threads lately. Would you like to address the highlighted?

I've already addressed it. Earth life doesn't confirm alien life. It just secures the possibility that alien life exists, but alien life is possible by virtue of it not being logically impossible. Same with ESP.

Now, you may be claiming that we know life is physically possible, but we don't know ESP is physically possible. That's a good point (covered by Red Baron), and here's my counter to it:

Yes, it's possible that ESP is physically impossible (in other words, it's a possibility that ESP doesn't exist in the universe). If the same is true about alien life, then the possibility of both are on equal ground again.

So, is it possible that alien life doesn't exist in this universe (i.e., is physically impossible)? Yes, for two reasons:

1. It's possible the habitable zone for planets is so narrow that only Earth fits all the necessary conditions for life to even have a chance. If that's the case, then it would be physically impossible for alien life to exist.

2. It's possible that abiogenesis is so unlikely that the number of planets in the universe in habitable zones isn't enough to make abiogenesis likely enough to believe it happened anywhere but here.

So while ESP may be physically impossible, alien life may also be physically impossible. We simply don't know. If we discover just one planet with life on it, the whole argument changes, but until then, the size of the habitable zone required for life to be possible and the likelihood of abiogenesis occurring on another planet are unknown.

 

[Fudbucker]

You appear to be claiming that all ideas are equally valid.

Not at all. Obviously, "the Earth goes around the sun" has a higher probability of being true than "ESP exists".

I'm arguing that the impossibility of solving the Drake equation puts the existence of alien life in the same epistemic spot as ESP. Both are possible and both may be physically impossible.

 

[This is The End]

...
Is ESP possible? Yes. The default position is that a thing is possible until it's been proven impossible. A tea cup floating around Jupiter is possible (though very very unlikely).
...

That's not the null hypothesis, that's the 'I want to believe' hypothesis.

As Daylightstar points out, that is not exactly how it works.

You cannot just say "it is possible that a heard of T-Rex still live in the jungle in Brazil" and then use it as the basis that it is possible...

However, there's a huge assumption going on there- that people who have ESP will sign up to be tested for it. For whatever reason, such people might not want to be tested.

That's what they all say.

 

[This is The End]

There are more spatially seperated localities for life to begin in ideal conditions on earth than stars in the universe

No.

 

[Fudbucker]

As has been pointed out, life as such is known to exist. If one example of something exists it is surely more probable that another example also exists,

First of all, it's not clear that that's even true. We have an example of a universe existing (the one we're in). That does not make it probable that another universe exists. This may be the only one.

I would also argue that what you're saying is an inference based on observations of things for which we have huge sample sizes (trees, stars, galaxies, etc.). Life is in a different category. Our sample size of planet-based life is only one. That's not enough to draw a conclusion from. It's more analogous to the universe situation, for which we only have a sample size of one, which doesn't allow us to claim that it's probable that another universe exists.

than that even one example exists of something never reliably observed and not required by any currently accepted theory.

Again, I come back to 1990 and dark energy and dark matter. We still haven't observed either, and they radically changed "accepted theory".

Also, we haven't observed alien life, and it's certainly "not required by any currently accepted theory". It's entirely possible alien life doesn't exist.

 

[Pixel42]

Once again: we are only now beginning to acquire the ability to detect alien life, but we've had the ability to detect ESP for decades. If ESP existed we would certainly have objective evidence for it by now. We won't be able to say the same thing about alien life for many years.

 

[Fudbucker]

It isn't against things are known to actually exist. It is against things that are not.

Show the fundamental distinction between known advanced life and its alien counterparts, which prevents the two from being analogous.

The only distinction I know of is location, which is insufficient. For location to work as the basis of your argument, the thing you're trying to equate to advanced (alien) life, ESP, would need to be known to exist somewhere, leaving only the question of whether it exists somewhere else, not whether it exists somewhere at all.

There are two fundamental distinctions between advanced life here and alien life:

One is indeed location. For alien life to be possible, it has to be shown that our location in the universe is not unique. That hasn't been shown, it's simply been assumed by everybody. It's not an evidence-based assumption.

The other is the odds of life arising from organic compounds. It may be quite low, it may be quite high. It may have only happened here or on a billion worlds or 23. Like our location, we can't assume what the odds of abiogenesis are on another planet.

 

[Daylightstar]

Fudbucker, let me reword my earlier, unanswered question:
What is the benefit of accepting the probability for ESP and advanced alien life (other than humans on Earth) being equal?

 

[Daylightstar]

... we can't assume what the odds of abiogenesis are on another planet.

But you're willing to be more certain about the odds for ESP.

 

[John Jones]

Not at all. Obviously, "the Earth goes around the sun" has a higher probability of being true than "ESP exists".

I'm arguing that the impossibility of solving the Drake equation puts the existence of alien life in the same epistemic spot as ESP. Both are possible and both may be physically impossible.

You're not doing an effective job of it. Your OP talks about probabilities, and now you are reduced to equivocating between probabilities and impossibilities.

Maybe you would like to start-over in another thread? Life exists in this universe. ESP has not been shown to exist. Deal with it.

 

[Fudbucker]

Fudbucker,

So, Fudbucker, what is according to you the benefit of believing that anything like fairies, ESP, black holes crossing the solar system and little green elves etc are possible?

I don't know what you mean by "benefit". What I said is simply a truism in epistemology: all inductive claims (that are logically consistent) are possible. Claims about fairies and invisible dragons existing or not are inductive claims based on what we've observed.

There's no "benefit". It's a starting point to discussing whether something's possible or not. As I said early on, proving impossibility is very very hard. You basically have to show a logical contradiction.

 

[Daylightstar]

I don't know what you mean by "benefit". What I said is simply a truism in epistemology: all inductive claims (that are logically consistent) are possible. Claims about fairies and invisible dragons existing or not are inductive claims based on what we've observed.

There's no "benefit". It's a starting point to discussing whether something's possible or not. As I said early on, proving impossibility is very very hard. You basically have to show a logical contradiction.

^{Hilite by Daylightstar}
How does it help to advance such a discussion?

 

[Fudbucker]

As Daylightstar points out, that is not exactly how it works.

You cannot just say "it is possible that a heard of T-Rex still live in the jungle in Brazil" and then use it as the basis that it is possible...

It IS possible there's a heard of T-Rex's in Brazil. It's a logically coherent inductive claim. All such claims are possible. I wouldn't give good odds on it, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.