Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?

On Thu, 27 Sep 2018 13:17:48 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:
So that one survivor can spread its DNA over
the whole galaxy in a few million years.

Now you are getting more modest, which is good. Earlier you claimed
that this one survivor could spread its DNA to **other** galaxies
within the same time span of a few million years. That would require
travel near light speed.

On Tue, 25 Sep 2018 23:14:24 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote:
The answer in that case is perfectly knowable. I can count the
grains
and know for certain.

I would like to see you count several billion of grains of sand.

It matters not that it would be tedious, or difficult, or take
years.
The point is that the sand is countable. Whether there are an even
or
odd number is knowable.

If you actually tried to count billions of grains of sand it would be
very likely that some of the grains would break into two or more
pieces during the counting process. Even if just one single grain of
sand would break in two pieces, the number of grains of sand would
change from even to odd or from odd to even. How can you know for
certain this didn't happen when you counted them?

On Wed, 26 Sep 2018 04:11:38 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:
On Tuesday, September 25, 2018 at 2:01:11 PM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2018 07:26:36 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:

On Sunday, September 23, 2018 at 8:43:48 AM UTC-6, Paul
Schlyter
wrote:

Exactly what do you mean with "the universe billions of years
older
than our universe"?

The antecedent to "ours" is "civilization" not "universe."

And how do you know that intelligent civilisation will not
self-destruct within a few millennia or so?

Out of MILLIONS of civilizations, all that's needed is ONE to
survive.

And how can we be certain that this lone surviving intelligent
civilization would devote itself to space travel over intergalactic
distances?


I object to your conclusion "almost certainly" when there are
no
known positive cases.

Reject all you want, but that's just your biases and prejudices
speaking. Anyone with a grasp of probability theory and no
preconceived notions would disagree with you.

No, they would disagree with you.

I have a grasp of probability theory and I disagree with YOU.

Your grasp of probability theory must be very weak, or else you would
not make such claims.

You do need a sufficient base of actual data to be able to say
anything
about the probability, otherwise you are just guessing.

We have actual data on one civilization.

Which is a far too small statistical base, and all statisticians know
that.

YOU are just guessing about its longevity,

No I'm not. YOU are the one guessing it will certainly be long-lived.
All I'm doing is questioning your guess. You erroneously believe that
this implies I am making the opposite guess. But I am not. I'm merely
concluding that we don't know...

but that's irrelevant because an example of one AND proof that
almost every star has planets (via Kepler), it is a VERY good
"guess"
that life has developed elsewhere.

We agree about that. But you erroneously assume that "life" implies
"intelligent life doing space travel". It doesn't.

You are the one who is biased here, not me,
:-))
since I have not claimed any probability figure about that.
THAT is YOUR bias speaking.

OK, I am "biased" towards the facts and I see nothing wrong with
that. In this case we just don't know, and anyone making claims about
"almost certainly" regarding extraterrestrial life and their
interaction with us has lost contact with reality.


We just know too little to be able to do that reliably.
Just the sheer numbers of planets in the universe shred that
assertion.

There are too many unknowns in Drake's equation. All we now know is
that there are a large number of planets in our galaxy. How many of
these planets carry life? We don't know, we can only guess. How many
of the life carrying planets carry intelligent life? Again, we don't
know, we can only guess. How many of the planets carrying intelligent
life will have technologically advanced civilizations? And how many
of these technologically advanced civilizations will be space
traveling? How many of the space traveling civilizations will do
interstellar space travel, and succeed? And, finally, how long will
such a civilization last before it becomes extinct (nothing lasts
forever)? Here are four more quantities we know nothing about, we can
only guess.

With so much guesswork involved you just don't know anything "almost
certainly"! In particular when you have only one single positive
known case: us here on Earth.


You should read Aristotle's writings about nature as an
example
of how erroneous conclusions a brain that THINKS can produce
in the
absence of evidence. Such thinking is mostly wishful
thinking.

Aristotle didn't have probability theory to guide him.

That didn't prevent him to declare erroneous claims as facts.


Non sequitur.


All these are supernatural deities with supposedly
supernatural
powers...


Nope. You failed to copy the scriptural evidence I listed to
promote
your preconceived notions.

"the LORD, the God of the spirits of all flesh" -- Numbers
27:16

"By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison"
-- 1 Peter 3:19

The next line I didn't list explains that the spirits referred
to
were disobedient in the time of Noah. From this it is clear
that
after death they became disembodied spirits who weren't
"deities"
since they had to be preached to.

And YOU have a particular definition of "supernatural" that
apparently means "anything that physics hasn't
encountered/detected."
I reject that definition :-)

Nope! Something supernatural is something which contradicts
physics.


https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/supernatural


"departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear
to
transcend the laws of nature"

With that definition, radio communication would have been
"supernatural" a few centuries ago.


And as for the "laws of nature,":


"We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but
we
understand the laws only dimly." -- Albert Einstein


There's a LOT of evidence that our own spirits exist, but it's
mostly
anecdotal (I say MOSTLY but not ALL).

Anecdotal "evidence" is not real evidence.


It's not SCIENTIFIC evidence, but it IS REAL. And I said "MOSTLY,"
not
completely.


But if evidence for the existence of spirits exists, why isn't it
a
field of scientific study?


The scientific method requires that a phenomenon be repeatable by
any
competent researcher. It also requires the ability to change the
inputs.

No it doesn't. Astronomers cannot experiment with the universe by
changing the input, but despite that astronomy is regarded as a
science.


The most scientific evidence for spirits was obtained by Dr. Duncan
MacDougall. People in power prevented further investigation because
it was considered "ghoulish." Such experiments (making measurements
on patients as death approaches) can't be repeated today because
medical intervention procedures are highly advanced and would
interfere
should such an attempt be made.

Conspiracy theory...


And why isn't theology an exact science like physics? Why
aren't our most powerful computers running simulations of God?

There, now you have some things to think about...

I thought. You got nuttin'! We don't know enough about how life
started
to do believable simulations. We don't even know if it started
here.

But what about several centuries into the future?

On Friday, September 28, 2018 at 3:47:01 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote:

On Wed, 26 Sep 2018 12:07:27 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:

As I said, it only takes ONE civilization to make it. It can then spread
to other galaxies in a few million years, a very short time in the
universe=

You are hopelessly overoptimistic. The typical distance between
galaxies is millions of light years or more.

That's true ... TODAY. What about 9 billion years ago?

Therefore you are saying that any civilisation would with great probability
learn interstellar travel at or near light speed.

I believe there are other alternatives.

Are you even aware of the difficulties involved? For instance, colliding
with a grain of sand near light speed would mean the end of your expedition.

Indeed, I am quite aware of the difficulties. That's why I think there are
alternatives.

So that one survivor can spread its DNA over the whole galaxy in a few
million years.

Now you are getting more modest, which is good. Earlier you claimed that
this one survivor could spread its DNA to **other** galaxies within the
same time span of a few million years. That would require travel near light
speed.

Not necessarily. If this civilization developed, say, 5 billion years
after the big bang, the galaxies would have been closer together. And as
we seem to agree, travel near light speed has certain high-probability risks.
I think there are alternative ways to get from one place to another.

Your grasp of probability theory must be very weak, or else you would
not make such claims.

I have to laugh at your assertion again :-)) Are you familiar with the Law
of Large Numbers?

And how can we be certain that this lone surviving intelligent civilization
would devote itself to space travel over intergalactic distances?

Or develop some alternative means where distance isn't important? If "a"
civilization didn't, another one would.

You and I are working from different assumptions. Are you familiar with
Paul Steinhardt's Ekpyrotic theory?

https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0103239

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekpyrotic_universe

It posits a cyclic universe. If it has any credence it means that past
universes existed. If intelligent life is as rare as some here believe,
it becomes a virtual certainty that it developed in a previous genesis,
maybe millions of times. If some couldn't find a way to transport itself
from one genesis to the next, one would have. Imagine, a civilization
billions of years old appearing on the scene 13 billion years ago!

That might make a great SF story to outdo even Olaf Stapledon. But I
don't think it's SF. Anyway, now you see why no argument about probability
has any affect on me whatsoever. So, want to discuss the probability of
Steinhardt et al. being right? :-)

Nope! Something supernatural is something which contradicts physics.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/supernatural

"departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to
transcend the laws of nature"

With that definition, radio communication would have been "supernatural"
a few centuries ago.

Exactly! Now you're getting it :-)

The scientific method requires that a phenomenon be repeatable by any
competent researcher. It also requires the ability to change the inputs.

No it doesn't. Astronomers cannot experiment with the universe by changing
the input, but despite that astronomy is regarded as a science.

Astronomical science requires that experiments performed here on earth be
valid elsewhere in the solar system, galaxy, universe. Now that we have
sent missions throughout the solar system, that part is no longer assumption,
and we have no choice but to assume it's true throughout the universe. It
SEEMS to be, anyway, but it IS a weakness that certain scientific disciplines
have. Cosmology is a case in point. We have the Big Bang model, but there
are alternatives ...

On Thursday, September 27, 2018 at 10:22:01 PM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:

On Thu, 27 Sep 2018 19:37:52 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:

On Thursday, September 27, 2018 at 4:38:37 PM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:

There's nothing to suggest that anyplace in the
Universe is different from anyplace else. Ever.

Not true. If an early civilization existed before others then where it
existed would be different from every place else. Consider the diffusion
equation.

Uh, no. Everywhere in the Universe is the same.

If only one civilization existed on one certain planet? Then that place
would be different.

On Fri, 28 Sep 2018 12:12:36 +0200, Paul Schlyter
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Sep 2018 23:14:24 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote:
The answer in that case is perfectly knowable. I can count the
grains
and know for certain.

I would like to see you count several billion of grains of sand.

It matters not that it would be tedious, or difficult, or take
years.
The point is that the sand is countable. Whether there are an even
or
odd number is knowable.

If you actually tried to count billions of grains of sand it would be
very likely that some of the grains would break into two or more
pieces during the counting process. Even if just one single grain of
sand would break in two pieces, the number of grains of sand would
change from even to odd or from odd to even. How can you know for
certain this didn't happen when you counted them?

That only impacts the new pile, not the original. After the count I
know whether the original number was even or odd. And I can repeat the
test on each new pile I create.

On Thu, 27 Sep 2018 23:56:25 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
wrote:

On Thursday, September 27, 2018 at 4:38:37 PM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:

None. But we can be sure of one thing: all will evolve culturally much
faster than they can evolve physically. Which means all will be
primitive animals capable of a high degree of control of nature. Like
us, toddlers running around with machine guns.

"Evolving culturally" isn't the same thing as "advancing technologically". We
could evolve culturally into more enlightened and peaceful beings.

Yes, but only over a much longer timescale than we advance
technologically. That's the problem. We are still socially primitive,
and that can only change if our brains evolve physically- a slow
process.

In any case, I don't see Australia and Norway threatening each other with
nuclear weapons. Or France and the United States. So the notion that human
biology constrains us to be warlike and violent seems preposterous to me. We
know that we're capable of better.

It doesn't matter what we are culturally capable of. The problem is
our innate characteristics, which are xenophobic. And we see this come
out all the time, from the pathetic little white supremacists running
around down South to the President of the United States. A great many
people allow their innate fear and hatred of out-members to override
their cultural capacity to largely bypass instinct.

One huge hurricane cruising up the entire East Coast is all it would
take to collapse the U.S. into martial law, end democracy, and
possibly put us at war with the world. A war that could very likely
collapse our entire western civilization. Culture is incredibly
fragile.

On Fri, 28 Sep 2018 06:18:14 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:

On Thursday, September 27, 2018 at 10:22:01 PM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:

On Thu, 27 Sep 2018 19:37:52 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:

On Thursday, September 27, 2018 at 4:38:37 PM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:

There's nothing to suggest that anyplace in the
Universe is different from anyplace else. Ever.

Not true. If an early civilization existed before others then where it
existed would be different from every place else. Consider the diffusion
equation.

Uh, no. Everywhere in the Universe is the same.

If only one civilization existed on one certain planet? Then that place
would be different.

No, it wouldn't, except in the most trivial of ways.

On Fri, 28 Sep 2018 07:19:59 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote:
On Fri, 28 Sep 2018 12:12:36 +0200, Paul Schlyter
wrote:

On Tue, 25 Sep 2018 23:14:24 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote:
The answer in that case is perfectly knowable. I can count
the
grains
and know for certain.

I would like to see you count several billion of grains of sand.

It matters not that it would be tedious, or difficult, or take
years.
The point is that the sand is countable. Whether there are an
even
or
odd number is knowable.

If you actually tried to count billions of grains of sand it would
be
very likely that some of the grains would break into two or more
pieces during the counting process. Even if just one single grain
of
sand would break in two pieces, the number of grains of sand would
change from even to odd or from odd to even. How can you know for
certain this didn't happen when you counted them?

That only impacts the new pile, not the original. After the count I
know whether the original number was even or odd. And I can repeat
the
test on each new pile I create.

Not if one of the grains in the original pile breaks without you
noticing it and before you count it. It requires superhuman
capabilities to keep track of each and every one of several billion
grains.

In a way this resembles Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: you
cannot measure anything without affecting it in some small way.

On Fri, 28 Sep 2018 05:49:40 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:
On Friday, September 28, 2018 at 3:47:01 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter
wrote:

On Wed, 26 Sep 2018 12:07:27 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:

As I said, it only takes ONE civilization to make it. It can
then spread
to other galaxies in a few million years, a very short time in
the
universe=

You are hopelessly overoptimistic. The typical distance between
galaxies is millions of light years or more.

That's true ... TODAY. What about 9 billion years ago?

Back then the galaxies were some 3 times closer to one another than
today, so the typical intergalactic distance were perhaps about a
million instead of millions of light years.

But, more importantly, back then there were few if any population I
stars in existence. All stars back then were population II stars,
which have very little, if any, elements heavier than H and He. Those
heavier elements are required to form life. So back then there was no
life in the universe, that we can say with great certainty. Back
then, our Sun and our Earth did not even exist. Life, of all kinds,
formed later.


Therefore you are saying that any civilisation would with great
probability
learn interstellar travel at or near light speed.

I believe there are other alternatives.

Such as wormholes? Or did you have something else in your mind?

Are you even aware of the difficulties involved? For instance,
colliding
with a grain of sand near light speed would mean the end of your
expedition.

Indeed, I am quite aware of the difficulties. That's why I think
there are
alternatives.

WHICH alternatives? How can you travel millions of light years in
just millions of years without traveling at near light speed?

So that one survivor can spread its DNA over the whole galaxy
in a few
million years.

Now you are getting more modest, which is good. Earlier you
claimed that
this one survivor could spread its DNA to **other** galaxies
within the
same time span of a few million years. That would require travel
near light
speed.

Not necessarily. If this civilization developed, say, 5 billion
years
after the big bang, the galaxies would have been closer together.

Not by much. Since the big bang happened 13.5 billion years ago, 5
billion years ago the intergalactic distances already had about 60%
of their current value.

And as
we seem to agree, travel near light speed has certain
high-probability risks.
I think there are alternative ways to get from one place to another.

You are very quiet about these alternative ways... why?


Your grasp of probability theory must be very weak, or else you
would
not make such claims.

I have to laugh at your assertion again :-)) Are you familiar with
the Law
of Large Numbers?

Do you consider one to be a large number? One is the number of
planets known to have life...

The law of large numbers say that if you repeat an experiment a large
number of times, the outcome will be very close to the expected
value. But, in the case of life in the universe, we have no idea what
the expected value is. So the law of large numbers does not help us
here.


And how can we be certain that this lone surviving intelligent
civilization
would devote itself to space travel over intergalactic distances?

Or develop some alternative means where distance isn't important?
If "a"
civilization didn't, another one would.

That's your guess, and it is a far cry from "absolutely certain" that
it actually is so.


You and I are working from different assumptions. Are you familiar
with
Paul Steinhardt's Ekpyrotic theory?


https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0103239


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekpyrotic_universe


It posits a cyclic universe. If it has any credence it means that
past
universes existed. If intelligent life is as rare as some here
believe,
it becomes a virtual certainty that it developed in a previous
genesis,
maybe millions of times. If some couldn't find a way to transport
itself
from one genesis to the next, one would have. Imagine, a
civilization
billions of years old appearing on the scene 13 billion years ago!

But what if it doesn't have any credence? We don't know if it has, so
we can only guess. And you must do much better than guesswork to be
able to reliably claim that something is "almost certain".

That might make a great SF story to outdo even Olaf Stapledon. But
I
don't think it's SF. Anyway, now you see why no argument about
probability
has any affect on me whatsoever. So, want to discuss the
probability of
Steinhardt et al. being right? :-)

You can fantasize as much as you want, but please stop trying to
misuse probability to claim something is "almost certain" when it
actually just is a guess of yours.


Nope! Something supernatural is something which contradicts
physics.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/supernatural

"departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to
appear to
transcend the laws of nature"

With that definition, radio communication would have been
"supernatural"
a few centuries ago.

Exactly! Now you're getting it :-)


The scientific method requires that a phenomenon be repeatable
by any
competent researcher. It also requires the ability to change
the inputs.

No it doesn't. Astronomers cannot experiment with the universe by
changing
the input, but despite that astronomy is regarded as a science.

Astronomical science requires that experiments performed here on
earth be
valid elsewhere in the solar system, galaxy, universe. Now that we
have
sent missions throughout the solar system, that part is no longer
assumption,
and we have no choice but to assume it's true throughout the
universe. It
SEEMS to be, anyway, but it IS a weakness that certain scientific
disciplines
have. Cosmology is a case in point. We have the Big Bang model,
but there
are alternatives ...

There are no alternatives today that match empirical data so well.
The discovery of the cosmic background radiation made the "big bang"
win over the "steady state" cosmology. But note that this is not
final. If and when a cosmology appears that matches empirical data
even better, then it will replace the "big bang" as the standard
cosmological model.