Is ESP More Probable Than Advanced Alien Life?

Fudbucker said:
Since we don't know the parameters of the habitable zone, this can't be asserted. We've seen planets that are in similar positions that Earth is in, but that's all.

Remember, if just a dozen factors have be within a 1% tolerance for life to be possible, the chances of life existing in this galaxy (other than here) would be extremely remote. We don't know if there are five factors at work or 50. We don't know if the parameters can vary by 50% or .5%.

Doesn't matter, you're still dealing with a sample size of one. If you win a lottery on the first try or the 10th try, you still won't be able to determine what the odds of winning are. It's also possible there's a narrow window for abiogenesis to occur at all. Abiogenesis is not very well understood, and it's impossible to assign odds to it, at the present time.
Click to expand...

You appear to be equivocating LAWKI with "life", to the detriment of your argument.

You also appear to have missed the thread about Sean Carroll's excellent talk about the closure of the Standard Model.
Here's the Skepticon video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrs-Azp0i3k
...and a few articles:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/c...ay-life-are-completely-understood/#.VJyIiF4Ag
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/c...-really-are-completely-understood/#.VJyIWl4Ag
 
Latest issue of Scientific American may be of interest on this - noting, of course that I just quickly popped in on this and may well have been ninjaed - even multiply.........
 
zengirl said:
find books on psychic spies, remote viewing, ---the Monroe Institute trained military ppl in remote viewing and obe's , too------- to learn more on those programs. I have had many psychic dreams of events that happened always 2-3 months in the future. I have known a package will be delivered on a day, who is on the phone, that a relative is about to call me---and they did, I tell annoying people to leave and they do , I think sexy thoughts and men flock around me....
Click to expand...

You may be having a bit of a problem with the technical term, "substantiation".

Please feel encouraged to provide evidence (practical, objective, empirical evidence) for, or facts in support of, your claims...

Something more than simply continuing to make assertions.
 
zengirl said:
Jones your cleverness frightens me....it doesn't matter if it is KGB ...no one can explain it still....
Click to expand...

It's not cleverness. It's education and wisdom that comes with age. I've been where you are. I used to believe all kinds of superstitious nonsense. There is no truth to this woo-woo new age stuff you've been spouting.

The fact that no one can explain this youtube palaver you offered proves nothing except that youtube exists.
 
Fudbucker said:
This came up in another thread, so rather than derail it, I'll start a new thread. I'm going to argue that the existence of both is equally probable.

First, what is the probability of advanced alien life existing (by advanced I mean the same tech level as we are (or higher))? I would argue that, at best, it is simply unknown, for three reasons:

1. The probability of abiogenesis occurring anywhere other than Earth is unknown.
2. The "narrowness" of the "goldilocks zone" is unknown.
What I mean by (2) is we don't know how many things have to fall into place just right for life to be even possible. Perhaps the ratio of the size of the moon to the planet has to be within a few hundreths of a decimal. Perhaps the planet has to be tilted just right, and the position and size of the closest gas giant can only vary by a small amount. In other words, there could be a dozen things that can't vary by more than 1%, and .01 to the 12th power is pretty close to the number of planets in the universe.
3. The probability of intelligent life arising on planets that have primitive life is unknown.

Without these three probabilities, the Drake equation can't be used, and the Drake equation is necessary for figuring out the probability of alien life.

There is also some disconfirming evidence that advanced alien life exists:
1. SETI's continued silence
2. The lack of large-scale stellar or galaxy based projects.
3. The lack of self-replicating probes

While I don't think that this is strong disconfirming evidence, it does exist.

So, the best we can say about advanced alien life is that it's possible.

-------------

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).

There has been some evidence of ESP abilities, but not much. Some laboratory results have been kind of interesting (the PEAR project has it's adherents), and there are, of course, anecdotal accounts, but I would assign as much value to this evidence as I would assign as much value to SETI's-continued-silence as evidence aliens don't exist: it's hardly evidence at all.

Is there disconfirming evidence of ESP? On the face of it, a whole lot of it. Every test has come up short. 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. Since the disconfirming evidence (lack of laboratory results) relies on an assumption that can't be assigned a probability, we can't assume that lack of results in controlled tests is disconfirming evidence. It disconfirms the hypothesis that "people who have been tested have ESP", but it doesn't disconfirm the hypothesis that "people who avoid being tested have ESP". The possibility of such people existing is unknown, and if they avoid being tested, all the tests in the world won't disprove their existence.

It's like arguing that the lack of galaxy-size engineering projects is evidence that aliens don't exist. It's only evidence if we assume that aliens would engage in such projects. It's entirely possible they don't.

Now, what would the causal mechanism for ESP be? This, of course, is unknown. However, unknown doesn't mean impossible (or even unlikely). It's unknown whether other universes exist. It's unknown how abiogenesis occurred. It's unknown if white-holes exist, if other dimensions exist, or if the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is correct.

Does ESP violate any laws of physics or biology? Again, this is unknown and also presupposes our knowledge of biology and physics is complete enough to rule it out. When 95% of what makes up the universe is a mystery, and we can't even agree on how consciousness arises, our science still has a long way to go. Faster-than-light travel would seemingly contradict some firmly established laws of physics, but that hasn't stopped NASA from funding warp-drive projects.

-------------

TLDR version: At present time, there are simply too many unknowns to assign a probability to the existence of either ESP abilities OR advanced alien life. The existence of one is as equally likely as the existence of the other.

Also, the disconfirming evidence for either is too weak to count for much. The lack of a signal from SETI (or observations of self-replicating probes) is only disconfirming evidence if we assume advanced aliens would be beaming us a message, or would build such probes (or allow them to be revealed to us if they did build them).

Likewise, the lack of evidence from controlled testing of ESP abilities assumes people with such abilities would agree to be tested.

While there is a tremendous amount of anecdotal evidence for ESP, there is also a tremendous amount of anecdotal evidence for Big Foot, alien abductions, visitations by the Virgin Mary, etc. I don't think the side that argues that advanced alien life exists (or is probable) is going to cite reports of alien abductions, so it wouldn't be fair to me to appeal to reports of ESP phenomena*


*Although I would argue that if ESP phenomena were never reported, this would disconfirm the existence of ESP to a large degree, but that's not the case.
Click to expand...

Or, perhaps that IF anyone(s) actually had ESP they would know the problems that would come and be able to fail the tests in unnoticeable ways that would be statistically uninteresting.
 
The supposed evidence for ESP is extremely poor. Probably the best was at PEAR at Princeton, but there were many, many flaws. I corresponded with them once, when I was doing a lot of work with George Marsaglia on random numbers. I had come up with some excellent protocols. They were, in my view, not serious.

As for possibilities for ESP, it depends on what you mean. All the biological requirements for something like biological radio have evolved. That would have seemed like ESP to humans for most of their history. It doesn't seem to have come together, though.

Such things as precognition seem out of the question. Brains evolved as thermodynamically-irreversible computing engines in order to predict the future as well as possible given the limitations. A creature could be smarter and do it better. Also, a reversible computing engine might do an even better job. Eventually it would be gummed up by thermodynamics and chaos and the difficulty of getting information about the present state that is accurate enough.

However, there's an inherent problem with ESP as a category. This is a human problem, not an empirical one about biology or physics. As soon as something is shown to exist, it wouldn't be called extra-sensory. It would just be sensory.

If there be advanced aliens, they might have senses that we don't understand. Direct perceptions of varying magnetic fields, for example. But we have instruments to detect a lot of the invisible world, so they wouldn't seem mysterious to us. One of my favorite toys when I was 8 or so was a little amplifier I built with an earphone and a telephone pickup coil (do they have these any more?) It could detect magnetic fluctuations in the audio range. You could hear amazing stuff walking around the room.
 
Aridas said:
To arbitrarily jump in...



Obviously.



Your argument is deeply flawed here. The largest flaw, though is that your question is about relative probabilities, not whether they're possible at all. Focusing on whether something is possible at all or not is only a relevant argument if you can demonstrate that one or both options is logically impossible.
Click to expand...

It is about relative probabilities.

Yes, then no. Yes, it is possible that advanced alien life doesn't exist. No, it is not physically impossible, as demonstrated by our existence.
Click to expand...

No, our existence doesn't make alien life physically possible. It only makes Earth-based life physically possible. If this is the only planet in the universe where the conditions are right for life, then alien life is physically impossible- there would be no place for it to occur, other than here.

"Habitable zone?" It looks like you're stretching the normal usage of that phrase well past the breaking point, honestly. Habitable zone is generally used for something quite different than the context suggests that you mean. If the conditions necessary for advanced life to occur have only occurred once, then yes, this would be the case. Given lack of relevant information and indications that many of the most basic requirements for life are likely reasonably common, this holds very little weight when dealing with questions of probability.
Click to expand...

You're simply asserting that. I can do likewise.

Is a Jupiter sized planet a necessary condition for life? Is an axial tilt? If so, how much? A large moon, relative to the size of the planet? If so, how large? How far away can the planet be from the star? Neither of us knows. The rare Earth hypothesis may or may not be true. It's impossible to disprove, until we actually discover alien life.

But "planetary habitability" would probably be a better term.

And... you're being inconsistent here. This doesn't make it physically impossible, like you were trying to work with before. Just unlikely. Again, though, lack of relevant information removes most of the weight that this could carry when it comes to questions of relative probability.
Click to expand...

If we discover abiogenesis is so unlikely that the odds of it happening anywhere but here are a trillion to one, for all intents and purposes, alien life will be physically impossible. But you're right, it would still be theoretically possible, but no one would believe in it, which was the point I was making.

Overall, given that we exist, we are not currently aware of any overwhelming and solid reason why others couldn't exist, and there are many, many chances for them to do, have done, or will do, that has a higher probability than something that has not been confirmed to exist and that we do have solid, though not overwhelming, evidence against.
Click to expand...

There are no solid reasons why alien life should exist, either. We would have to know what the necessary conditions for life are. That is unknown. We know the conditions here are sufficient, but we don't know which ones are necessary. If there are many necessary conditions, then the odds drop accordingly. Like you said, there's no reason to think there are a lot of necessary conditions, but there's also no reason to think there are only a few. Without knowing what the necessary conditions are, the odds are impossible to determine.

The number of planets in the universe only helps if we're able to figure out what the odds of life arising on other planets is. Those odds are unknown. They could be 1 in 50 or 1 in a number higher than the number of planets in the known universe.

ETA: Your post was well thought out, and much appreciated.
 
Last edited:
nonsense---that which 'skeptics' don't believe is possible...skeptic---someone who denies anything they have no understanding or experience in....anything written by a skeptic is never balanced or unbiased...
 
Last edited:
zengirl said:
I think sexy thoughts and men flock around me....
Click to expand...

This has got to be the weakest so-called example of ESP I have ever seen.

Zengirl, You could do anything but swing bloody chainsaws, and some men would probably flock around you. It's what men do.

Enjoy it while it lasts, but don't count on it lasting.
 
Daylightstar said:
Fudbucker said:
I agree with this, but that's not the claim I'm making. I'm not saying that either ESP or alien life exists. I'm saying they possibly exist, which is a much, much different claim.

There is a difference between "X exists" and "X possibly exists". The former requires evidence. The latter does not.

To put it another way, the theist claims god exists. The agnostic simply claims god is possible. The burden of proof is on the theist.

I have been consistently agnostic about both ESP and alien life.
Click to expand...

Your claimed claim does not help in any way whatsoever.
Click to expand...

I hope it helps because there is very much a difference between claiming something exists and claiming something possibly exists.

You're not disputing this, are you?
 
It is just one of many----I dreamt of Michael Jackson dying 3 months before he did---saw the news report in my dream, I dreamt of a major hurricane when it wasn't even a tropical storm yet--3 months early, I often meet people in dreams months before I meet them....we have the exact talk that we had in the dream...I knew a woman and her husband also had precognitive dreams that happened 2-3 months in the future ...
 
zengirl said:
nonsense---that which 'skeptics' don't believe is possible...skeptic---someone who denies anything they have no understanding or experience in....anything written by a skeptic is never balanced or unbiased...
Click to expand...


If this is the best you have to offer (and it appears to be), I predict an unhappy future for you at ISF.

I'm curious - what led you here?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom