Brian, Bill Dungsroman skooled j00!
Mark, could you please change Koontz’s designation to Magister Mundi Bill Dungsroman’s Lapdog? I believe that is his new place in the pecking order.
Bravo, Bill, for taking the time to de-Koontz the topic.
I give Bill a B+ for Koontz bashing, but I’m afraid that the grand champion and titleholder is still Dr Crypt, who possesses a flowing prose, and an unmatched talent for exploring the furthest reaches of the English language to find new ways to beat Koontz’ arguments into a sticky pulp.
I think, without a question life has evolved elsewhere in the Universe.
However, What’s to say that life will evolve to be intelligent? It was only a happy accident of nature that what we would classify as intelligent life evolved on this planet. There’s no direction to evolution. Whatever sticks, sticks.
You’d have to imagine that there are as many variations on life out in the Universe as there are stars. And with those kind of odds - who’s to say that intelligent life would ever evolve, anywhere?
And then there’s the even bigger question - if intelligent life did evolve, how would we recognize it? It’d be very unlikely that they would relate to the Universe the same way we do.
The concept of an infinite universe is something I’ve never been able to wrap my mind around (no pun intended.) I know the physics, the theories, I’m a scientist by training and trade, and all that an infinite universe tells me is how absolutely arrogant we are as humans. We think that because we can explain a lot of things on earth that we are so intelligent that anything we can’t understand must not be true. It’s like ants discovering that their hill is made of sand and then realizing it’s surrounded by grass, and thinking they know all there is to know.
We did some calculations twice when I was in Grad school on the odds of intelligent life existing on earth. Once was in a biotech class, the other an astrophysics class. In the astrophysics class the number was something like 1 in the number of atoms in the universe; in the biotech class it was even less, due to taking into account other factors. In fact, the odds of randomly creating a single DNA strand, taking into account entropy and all of the random steps that would have to happen previously and not go back, were significantly less. So, by those calculations we don’t even exist here.
But the odds were still better than winning the Super Lottery.
Oh - and as a pretty fundamental Christian, I can’t see any conflict at all with anything and life in various forms existing elsewhere. Again, seems like a pretty arrogant view to think we’d get God all to ourself. ;)
It might be an arrogant view but it is one backed up by the Bible.
I’d welcome the discovery of alien sentient life if for nothing else that it would trigger a cataclysmic upheaval of religious doctrine. Of course, I’d give humanity a no more than half a century before we’d be comfortable with new or modified religions and go about business as usual again, since for some reason people who experience a massive crisis of faith always tend to latch on to a new faith with the same fervor as they did their old one. Firmly believing that this time they got it right.
I’m with you on this one, but I want the “who cares?” option on the poll.
Let’s say there’s no life out there, I’m guessing we won’t be able to prove that one in my lifetime. But if there is life out there, big whoop. I mean who’s really surprised by that? This place (the universe) is huge, of course there’s life out there! So then what? We can’t “talk” to them because our fastest means of communication takes forever and a day on that scale, and we sure as hell can’t visit them. Unless they’re like those Contact aliens.
So maybe we get like one round trip message to these guys before I’m dead, what are we gonna do, ask them what they think of Steam? Who cares? I’ll be playing Final Fantasy 62 by the time we get a response.
So there’s probably aliens that I will never see or talk to. Twin Snakes is out today and I can’t buy it because I just paid my rent. See? There are bigger issues, people.[/quote]
Mike, call me crazy, but I think you’re a bit jaded. If we could just verify that there was another intelligent race out there somewhere, even if we could only communicate with it once every 30 years, don’t you realize there would be people dancing in the streets? It would be like a secular miracle. People would just freak. And maybe the best part would be the millions of people who would want to work together to figure out how we could break down the distance barrier between us.
Of course when we finally met face to face, they’d probably haul us off to be wretched prison bitches like in The Sparrow. But, that wouldn’t stop us from being delirous for months and months and it wouldn’t stop Fox from airing Alien Autopsy one zillion times.
So, does he know what he’s talking about or is he just bitter about second-hand smoke (further down the article)?[/quote]
He’s just bitter. Even if we can’t accurately state what the probability is, we can put error bounds on it.
You’d have to imagine that there are as many variations on life out in the Universe as there are stars. And with those kind of odds - who’s to say that intelligent life would ever evolve, anywhere?
Which strikes you as more capable to survive - intelligent life, or non-intelligent life?
We did some calculations twice when I was in Grad school on the odds of intelligent life existing on earth. Once was in a biotech class, the other an astrophysics class. In the astrophysics class the number was something like 1 in the number of atoms in the universe; in the biotech class it was even less, due to taking into account other factors. In fact, the odds of randomly creating a single DNA strand, taking into account entropy and all of the random steps that would have to happen previously and not go back, were significantly less. So, by those calculations we don’t even exist here.
This is a common error, but it’s wrong; human beings just didn’t pop out of the ether fully formed. A better way to do it:
- What’s the likelihood of amino acids forming out of an early-Earth chemical mix?
- What’s the likelihood they would combine into proteins?
- What’s the likelihood you’ve get a very basic self-replicating collection of proteins?
And so on, and so on. You’ve got to include the tendency of various things to happen in the universe - amino acids are more likely to form out of the correct ingredients than not, proteins are more likely to form out of amino acids than not, all the way up the chain.
The “random chance of a human being assembling” ignores the natural bias of the universe towards greater complexity at all the stages.
Here’s an analogy: what’s the chance of a rocky planet assembling out of post-supernova space dust? If you just calculate “well, this atom has to go here, and the iron has to go in the interior, etc.”, you get a ludicriously low answer. If you include the laws of physics, however - gravity makes things stick together, denser elements tend to move towards the center of a body, and so on, you get a more accurate answer.
It might be an arrogant view but it is one backed up by the Bible.[/quote]
Wow, could you aim me at a particular passage?
Along those lines… as I recall, the Mormons believe that the God used to be a man on another world, and if you are a devout enough Mormon, you get to be a god of your own planet after your death. IE, God is only God to this planet – other planets get their own gods.
As far as afterlife beliefs go, I have to say, that sounds like a lot of fun. Would kick the crap outta Sims 2, I tell you what.
I know it was the commonly held belief among my Southern Baptist friends in GA, SC, LA, and MS… Believing in alien life was right up there with believing God created man through evolution.
I mean, hey, if you’re into literal Bible interpretation, God created the heavens and the earth before anything else. Light (ie: the sun and stars) didn’t come around until Day 3.
So that kind of puts Earth above all else, and would explain why he wouldn’t bother putting life elsewhere.
…but does it actually say that he didn’t?
WTF, Koontz? Which arguments are dangerously close to that?[/quote]
TSG: “I’m not convinced that there is intelligent life out there, and I don’t think it is vanity to acknowledge the mathematical unlikelihood of advanced alien life being common. If it’s out there at all, it is exceedingly rare.”
Given our knowledge set, we don’t even know if humans are advanced, much less the mathematical likelihood or unlikelihood of “advanced” beings elsewhere. Saying things as “advanced” as humans are “exceedingly rare” is dangerously close to “humans are special”.
TSG: The laws of physics are pretty serious barrier to interstellar travel, so that could easily explain why no one has contacted us.
Who gives a crap about the laws of physics? Do aliens? Why don’t we poll some aliens to find out what they think of OUR laws of physics? We have not clue #1 what is or is not a barrier to something we know nothing about.
Humans are a sample size of 1, even assuming we exist in the category of “intelligent life”. You can’t draw ANY conclusions from that lack of knowledge. If our silly “laws of physics” are actually some kind of universal interstellar barrier… well, “humans are special” sums that up pretty well.
Page 1 of the New York Times: 20th century human invention rules the universe! We Rock… We Rule!
extarbags: -They evolved roughly the same time that we did and are similar to us and from a similar planet, and therefore have the same (very limited) capability for space travel that we do.
Riiight, the odds of this being virtually nil unless the “humans are special” is invoked.
We need Information, not Speculation.
My god, it’s full of stars.
Brian: I agree with your last line, but it seems that you’re treating the laws of physics as if they were the same kind of laws that we talk about in courtrooms. All of the Information that will replace your Speculation is built on top of postulates, two of the most important of which are that the laws of physics are space-time invariant and that the speed of light in vacuum is the constant c. “Who gives a crap about the laws of physics” immediately begs the question of just what kind of information you would find acceptable, because what we know as information has assigned great importance to the idea that all life has no choice but to give a crap about the laws of physics, and in fact they ought to give much more than a crap.
Said another way: of all the things we need to analyze and question to learn more about this, the laws of physics, specifically the two postulates above, should be quite low on the list.
There is little point to spazzing out about the current laws of physics since by the time we know substantially more about the universe we’ll have new laws. Physics is one of the things that’s going to change bigtime if and when we grow some wings.
Humans are the only things that care about their laws of physics. All earth-bound things are bound by them. Non earth-bound things are a totally different story. Its purely speculative at best to say that aliens ought to care about what humans are doing off in our little speck of the universe. Maybe we ought to colonize the universe to “civilize” the alien savages. You know, give 'em some of that Human Power that is So Damn Cool. Teach 'em how to be Human, for their own good of course.
Current information is built upon current postulates. Future information is built upon future postulates. If we’re talking about information accumulated 200+ years into the future it doesn’t make sense to assume current postulates. A path doesn’t stop just because you don’t know where its going to lead.
The natural sciences just are not your area. Physics must be one of those things that you can experience through hearing other people talk about it. Do you have any notion of the realms in which your balderdash actually can be said to attempt to apply, and those in which it comes across as complete ignorance?
I think I just failed my Astronomy class for reading that.
“God does not distribute arithmetic exams to dolphins.” – Albert Einstein
I now understand why the man is regarded as a Genius.