The Fermi Paradox and SETI Success

On Aug 25, 8:43*am, (Paul Schlyter) wrote:

I disagree with you - it can only be finitely more important. *Remember
that an arbitrarily large number is still finite, and quite different
from infinity.

Also, the "if" has to be most important here. *If there's no "if", there
cannot be any "where" or "when" either....

Finally, the "where" and "when" must be equally important. *Remember
we're talking about communication at light speed here, and then relativity
applies, which makes space and time integrated and not something you can
consider separately.

Paul Schlyter,

Paul

I was discussing "when", "if" and "where" in purely practical terms.
Anyone outside of a small light radius and close synchronicity of
development holds no great interest for either party except for simple
curiosity. More advanced technologies are not easily reproducable. Or
capable of backwards engineering as the UFO buffs like to call it.
Technology is built up from so many small advances across a whole
range of disciplines that even being handed the drawings on a plate
will likely get us no further. Materials and the sciences to use and
reproduce them in sufficient quantities, qualities and forms is a huge
hurdle. Scale is also another factor which would probably deny us
instant access to any advanced technology we might stumble across. A
warp drive ship which crashed unscathed onto the White House Lawn
would get us no nearer the stars for generations. Not even if the
little green men were willing to help. Taking a very simple example: A
motor cycle designer of today could not build the same machine if
transported backwards in time by a mere decade. Now multiply that
decade by any figure you care to pluck out of the air. Each passing
decade into the future is the stuff of pure magic. Each decade into
the past is nearer to blacksmithery.

In article ,
Paul J Gans wrote:

In talk.origins Timberwoof wrote:
In article ,
William Hamblen wrote:

On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:01:27 -0700, Timberwoof
wrote:

In article ,
John Harshman wrote:

Who says water is an indicator of life? It's only claimed to be
necessary for life. Methane, as far as I know, is never mentioned.
Oxygen is the indicator of life, and if you want to suggest an
inorganic
process that can make a lot of free oxygen in an atmosphere, feel free.

Only oxygen?

Yeah... it's common and it does some handy chemical reactions. But
similar arguments can be made for water.

Oxygen is reactive enough that oxygen in the atmosphere would be
depleted unless restored from some source. The only likely source is
photosynthesis. Where you have atmospheric oxygen you have living
plants.

Yes, that makes sense. I had it in my head that other chemical bases for
live were being discussed, and perhaps some other element or compound
could fulfill a similar role.

But I agree: If oxygen is present in an atmosphere, that would be a
really really probable sign of life. :-)

But its absence would not be a sign that there is no life...

A good indication that said life will not be good conversationalists
though.

In talk.origins Walter Bushell wrote:
In article ,
Paul J Gans wrote:

In talk.origins Timberwoof wrote:
In article ,
William Hamblen wrote:

On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:01:27 -0700, Timberwoof
wrote:

In article ,
John Harshman wrote:

Who says water is an indicator of life? It's only claimed to be
necessary for life. Methane, as far as I know, is never mentioned.
Oxygen is the indicator of life, and if you want to suggest an
inorganic
process that can make a lot of free oxygen in an atmosphere, feel free.

Only oxygen?

Yeah... it's common and it does some handy chemical reactions. But
similar arguments can be made for water.

Oxygen is reactive enough that oxygen in the atmosphere would be
depleted unless restored from some source. The only likely source is
photosynthesis. Where you have atmospheric oxygen you have living
plants.

Yes, that makes sense. I had it in my head that other chemical bases for
live were being discussed, and perhaps some other element or compound
could fulfill a similar role.

But I agree: If oxygen is present in an atmosphere, that would be a
really really probable sign of life. :-)

But its absence would not be a sign that there is no life...

A good indication that said life will not be good conversationalists
though.

I'm not sure. Given what infests many newsgroups these days
I am fairly sure that silocon life-form aliens are already
among us.

--
--- Paul J. Gans

On Aug 13, 5:38*pm, John Harshman
wrote:
K_h wrote:
snip
If Earth is the only planet in 10^150 with life then that suggests that the
universe is fine tuned for Earthly life. *If a substantial fraction of the
10^150 planets have life then that suggests the whole universe is finely
tuned for life. *If the universe if not fine-tuned for life then that
suggests the number of planets with life should be around the logarithmic
middle of 10^150 or around 10^75.

That's what we might call number salad. Can you present a real argument
why any of these numbers would mean what you claim?


He's got this hat, see? And he pulls the numbers out of it. It's
allvery simple.


TBerk

On Aug 14, 12:41 am, Friar Broccoli wrote:
On Aug 13, 8:38 pm, John Harshman
wrote:

K_h wrote:
Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no other intelligent
civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy. On the other hand, intelligent
life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time.

Does it? News to me. What evidence do you have that this is the case?

There has been an increase in the intelligence of a broad range of
species on earth with time.

I saw a documentary that showed velociraptors were smarter than
people

Chris

TBerk wrote in news:b9d3f7fd-fcec-4a15-9ecb-
:

He's got this hat, see? And he pulls the numbers out of it. It's
allvery simple.

Oh, thank goodness. I hadn't thought he was using a hat.

In article ,
Charlie Siegrist wrote:

On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:07:15 +0000, AC wrote:

I'm snipping the rest of your post because, being a sane, well-adjusted
individual, I require paragraphs for the sake of comprehension and
mental health.

Paragraphs are good.

AOL!

In article ,
Chris L Peterson wrote:

My thinking is that life is easy, and probably common. It's the part
about it becoming (technologically) intelligent that's more likely to be
difficult and rare.

It's the movement to the eukaryotic state (or equivalent) that is
difficult, the rest happens in no time, relatively.

In article ,
"Steven L." wrote:

But even the brain case of Troodon shows that it didn't have prefrontal
lobes like the modern human brain or the modern dolphin brain. So was
it intelligent? Probably at the level of a monkey or a cat. Not like a
human or a dolphin.

Neither do birds, IIUC. Considering what some bird can do with very
small brains . . ..

In article ,
Chris L Peterson wrote:

On Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:01:04 -0700 (PDT), Ben Standeven
wrote:

You can lose the "except for humans"; we don't actually know that
some of those fossil animals weren't more intelligent than we are,
after all. They just didn't leave any signs of civilization, a hundred
million years later.

In a sense that is true. Defining "intelligence" seems extraordinarily
difficult. But in the context of this discussion, I think it can be
taken as the ability to create sophisticated technology (a likely
requirement for traveling between the stars). I think that if a
technological species had inhabited the Earth at some earlier time, we'd
probably have evidence of it.
_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

If it was among the denizens of the pre chlorophyll world, I doubt
anything would have survived.