You go would go further to show me what's happening now instead of inventing analogies that don't hold. All anologies are false anyway, by definition of what an anology is- it's comparing two different, but subjectively similar things, supposedly.

To show you what I mean, I could create a false analogy by saying you guys believe they're going to find alien life forms soon, well, they used to believe in alchemy, they used to believe in phrenology, some people still people believe you can ground up rhino horn to for curative medicines. What does that prove in relation to this topic? Nothing, except that people can believe in things that are wrong.


Eveything you've said I could re-direct back at you: the tunnel vision that is grotesquely optimistic, if I've asked you to explain to me why you think that life doesn't have appear to have evolved on other solar planets, but you're arguement rests on what people have done or presumed to have done wrong in the past. I assure you I'm not doing that- I'm aware of those arguments, which are very flimsy to connect them here, and I still say you guys rely on more hope than on a detailed description of the basis for what you believe.

It's just my opinion, but that's the problem right there...."Earth-like". The majority of people on Earth are so caught up in their own self-importance and delusions as the premier species on Earth that we think "life" somewhere else HAS to be just like ours is on Earth, it cannot be any different and cannot exist unless it has the same environment as Earth does. We cannot say that life doesn't exist outside of our known world...we can only say that we haven't found any planets that could support life as we know it, using what we as humans need to survive.

We'll all just have to wait until Cochran perfects warp travel and the Vulcans passing by our insignificant, underdeveloped planet notice his flight signature and make contact somewhere in the Dakotas.

I assure you, that's the not the point I'm starting from, I've even said in this topic that Earth isn't special in regards to its importance.

But I am saying it's not knowledge to say that that alien life forms exist, and we're on the cusp of communicating with them- that is certainly not knowledge, it is pure speculation, and at that, passes itself off as knowledge.

I at least am basing my arguments on what we know and observe already- even if you want to argue that it's an insignificant sample, what are you basing yours on, if not that? Well, nothing- it's not based on knowledge, it's more based on the notions that either you can't conceive of it not being the case, or you hope that it's true. Any odds you would come up with from there are totally invented- they're not based on any surveys.

How about this- point me to a discovered world that seems likely to have life on it, and explain why.

I think you're reading more into my comments, Kontakt, than are there or are including me in comments I've not made.

I've never said that there WAS life out there. What I've said is it's pretty narrow-minded of us to think that life only exists as we know it and that it cannot be any other way in the vastness of space. There have been too many things throughout history that the human race "knew" at one time or another that have proven to be false, just on our own little planet....and all of those things were "known" by academics and scholars that were based on their "surveys".

The problem with hunting for other types of life other than what we find on earth, not that it is a bad idea by any means, is that it is very hard to see it through a telescope which as I insist above is how we will find it. There may be a planet that has sulfur based life for instance, but maybe they appear yellow and maybe the produce some other kind of gas. So when we peer at that planet, we see a color/chemical spectrum that does not resemble earth, which doesn't easily appear to us as life. Since we can't get there to scoop up a sample it's hard to prove life is there unless an alien TV station is blasting their version Big Bang Theory into space.

So, I get most excited about the possibility of finding a rocky world, not too big and not to far from a star like ours, only because that would be, based on what happened on Earth, the place we "could" possibly find life staring back at us. A logical place to start to me. And to erase any doubt, a blue/green exoplanet would very easily tell us if there is life there. With the amount of stars that exist and now 700 planets detected, some not too much larger than earth, I think the chances of finding an exo-earth is growing. Look at far we have come already, we have only been discovering exo-planets for 17 years. 700+ divided by 17 is 41 planets a year. With better instruments that number will skyrocket.

Unfortunately, Earth seems to be on the smallish end of the planet size chart and there may be thousands of other-earths waiting to be found, but our instruments aren't sensitive enough to detect or see them yet.

As I mentioned above, I am 100% confident that humans will create instruments poewrful enough to detect these other-earths and then we will really crank up the tech to actually look at them and see what is there. If it's green, it changes our perception of the universe and all religions die and world peace breaks out. Or so my non-believing friends say. LOL.

Jason

This discussion reminds me about Solaris by Stanisław Lem where humans discovered a planet completely different from Earth, and after decades of studying scientist did not make any scientific breakthrough whatsoever simply because they are trying to apply the earth science.

Which leads to my favorite quote, "We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos".

I'm going by words that you're using- one word you've used is delusional. There's no basis for a word like that. If you don't have knowledge of where life can be found elsewhere, you can't imply people are delusional. You need to have something to show them that they are refuting.



This isn't itself an idea that really tells me a whole lot- why you expect to find life so abundant in the Universe. I don't think you're going to see it so much, I think the basic elements and the basic building blocks won't evolve under common conditions found in the Universe.

That people didn't have complete knowledge in the past does not imply you're going to see intelligent life in the near future- in your lifetime or in mine. I fail to see that connection. All that means is that people didn't have complete knowledge in the past, it has no bearing at all whether life in the universe is abundant enough to be detected any time soon. If you're trying to imply the same kind of ignorance exists today that makes people less optimistic, that's a presumption.

Again...what I've said is there is no way we can know just what might be anywhere outside the world we know, and used examples of things we didn't even know about in our own world in the past. There are still things that we only have theories about concerning our own planet.

Point to me where I've said I expected to find "life so abundant in the Universe". What I've said is it's delusional to state that there cannot be life out in space, given that we really don't know much at all about the majority of the Universe. All the majority of theory, and Internet discussion, is based on is that because there's no water or oxygen, then life cannot exist. To discount the possibilty that there is something/someone/some species out there that doesn't live, eat and breathe like humans is comparable to stating the way to Asia in the 15th century by water is just by sailing west from Spain. There turned out to be a little landmass that we now know as the Americas in the way of that widely conceived theory...it was something no one knew existed at the time.

All we can say right now is we know of no planet that would sustain life as we know it. You seem to be reading what you want to read and not what I'ver been saying.

Certainly I'm not disputing that- but it doesn't merit the natural conclusion that life exists elsewhere. There's simply no empirical knowledge of that at all- any claim that arises out of that is not a proposition in the Universe. What happens however is that it is claimed with a certainty as if that is among the most certain knowledge. It's more the kind of 'knowledge' in Plato's sense- anti-scientific, but more based on the power of the intellect to deduce it, to infer it, or to reason it.

I'm saying that the evidence appears to be that the conditions for life are rather stingy based on what we observe, otherwise life should be finding a way on other planets not like Earth, and we can look to our own solar system to ask the question why that is so. These planets and moons and bodies we find don't appear to have life, and it looks like the harsh or barren conditions they have are rather common based on what we've seen. On the other hand, if life is common, that has to be taken over large, cosmic scales, not just in our neighborhood, which could entail the consequence that life is common across the universe, but for our purposes, it's still rare on a local level and out of reach. There might be billions of worlds with life on them, but the average distance between them could be larger than the technology that anyone has to communicate information across.

What evidence is there that life is more common than it is rare? None- because people people need to find at least one other example besides Earth in order to begin suggesting that life is more common- but that isn't happening. What am I to go on? Speculation? Why? Is that a normal thing to believe people who are passionate but cannot produce results?

I'd think that if liquid water exists the planet must be in the right spot. Now there might be other issues, such as no magnetic field to shield from the solar wind or no outer gas giants to intercept the majority of comets or a toxic atmosphere, but liquid water means the planet is in the goldilocks zone.