Do you believe in psychics, extraterrestrial life, time travel, other universes?

[Osmeric]

Swing and a miss. Try again.

Are you or are you not arguing against the assertion/argument that life is likely?

I am NOT arguing that life is likely. I am NOT arguing that life is unlikely. I am arguing, from the start, that the evidence does not compel us to believe either at this point (dismissing the Fermi argument here as merely suggestive, not compelling.)

Then you haven't seen enough or stopped looking at it in the 1980s. Because they go into far more detail on that on what we know is required for life and how common those elements are and how commonly those elements seem to be found together.

That some things are not obstacles to life does not mean life is likely. It just means that those particular things aren't the obstacles.

The rest of that post is garbage and proves that you haven't really looked into what is known on the subject and shows that you are focused on people looking for EARTH LIKE LIFE and not LIFE. We have no reason to assume life will be exactly or even close to how it is here.

I was bringing up a possible counterargument to my claim "we don't have evidence life is common" and showing that counterargument fails. If you consider that counterargument bad because it talks about what we see on Earth, great, I don't even have to refute it. I do wonder where you imagine we can get evidence that life is common if we're not even allowed to look at life here. I mean, you think we're just supposed to imagine life is common by assuming some unknown form of life is?

[Darththeo]

I am NOT arguing that life is likely. I am NOT arguing that life is unlikely. I am arguing, from the start, that the evidence does not compel us to believe either at this point (dismissing the Fermi argument here as merely suggestive, not compelling.)

The fermi paradox only applies to intelligent life, not life in general. Even then, it applies to intelligent life who developed similar to humans.

It isn't a dismissal as much as people lean on it too much and are using it for something other than it was intended for.

That some things are not obstacles to life does not mean life is likely. It just means that those particular things aren't the obstacles.

But the burden then become to show that an obstacle exist to make life unlikely, not merely assert one is mathematically possible. You need to have an idea of what that could be to even claim such a thing is a possibility. You cannot say something isn't proven to be likely because of a possibility you have no reason to believe exists.

As of right now, EVERY obstacle people who study this possibility, every single one that people thought was the "rare limiting factor" has been shown to be more common than we thought. Every one of them. The fact another could exist that we are unaware of is fine, but we have no reason to assume such a thing exists or what the odds of it occurring could be.

I was bringing up a possible counterargument to my claim "we don't have evidence life is common" and showing that counterargument fails. If you consider that counterargument bad because it talks about what we see on Earth, great, I don't even have to refute it. I do wonder where you imagine we can get evidence that life is common if we're not even allowed to look at life here. I mean, you think we're just supposed to imagine life is common by assuming some unknown form of life is?

And once again, swing and a miss.

I am not saying to not look at life on Earth, I am saying not to be bias and assume all life must be Earth like.
Your counter argument is built on the bias that life must be like Earth, there is no valid reason to assume that beside bias.

Again, you don't get to whine about bias while using bias when it suits your narrative.

[Osmeric]

[video deleted]

I'll save others 12:27 of their lives and tell you that nowhere there does NdGT say life is likely elsewhere in the universe. He says it's POSSIBLE life is out there, and I would agree with him. But he never says it's impossible, or even unlikely, that it's not out there.

Where I would part is his statement that it would be egotistical to believe we are alone. Science is about evidence, not moral character; one cannot justify a scientific statement by saying you're a bad person if you don't believe it. Of course someone who is arguing that we are alone (not just that it's possible that we're alone) will have to cough up evidence to justify that.

[Darththeo]

I'll save others 12:27 of their lives and tell you that nowhere there does NdGT say life is likely elsewhere in the universe. He says it's POSSIBLE life is out there, and I would agree with him. But he never says it's impossible that it's not out there.

Where I would part is his statement that it would be egotistical to believe we are alone. Science is about evidence, not moral character; one cannot justify a scientific statement by saying you're a bad person if you don't believe it.

Life is a chemical reaction.
No chemical reaction we are aware of has been proven to have happened only once.
The chemicals for life are common and out there.
Therefore, life is likely to be out there.

How did you not pick up what he was saying?

There hasn't been a person you argued with whose claimed life is definitely out there, just that given everything we know it more likely out there than not and that is strongly favored to being out there. And everyone who has said they believed it because it has been likely to be the case, you've jump on to tell them they are wrong to accept that.

[Osmeric]

Life is a chemical reaction.
No chemical reaction we are aware of has been proven to have happened only once.
The chemicals for life are common and out there.
Therefore, life is likely to be out there.

How did you not pick up what he was saying?

He didn't say that. And it's a good thing, since that's a stinking pile of bullshit.

Let's look at some actual chemical reactions that likely occur, in the Urey-Miller experiment and similar. These put gases that might plausibly be on early Earth (ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide, water, etc.) and stimulate them with energy (electric discharges, energetic particles, UV radiation). One gets a soup of various chemicals out of this. Some of these chemical occur in life (for example, some amino acids.)

But the concentration of the various chemicals one gets from this declines exponentially with the number of atoms in the molecule. That's because the number of different ways to hook atoms together increases exponentially with their number.

So, for rather small molecules, we can safely say that there will be some molecule of that size that will NEVER be produced by this process, simply because the number of atoms in the universe is too small for all possible molecules of that size to have been created.

Life gets around this problem by evolving highly specific catalysts (enzymes) to cause the chemical reactions to go in specific directions. But evolution presumes the existence of a system with sufficient fidelity of transmission of genetic information. And all the systems we know of with that fidelity are very complex, much larger than that minimum size.

There's a very large complexity barrier between "hot prebiotic soup" and "known minimal Darwinian evolver". Somehow this gap was bridged, but we don't know how. Maybe the random reactions were biased in some way by the laws of nature to make it happen, but if so we don't know how that worked. Maybe there's some extremely small system w. reproduction fidelity sufficiently good for evolution to occur. Or perhaps there was some super-astronomically unlikely random assembly of subunits that just happened to be alive. Our ignorance is such we can't usefully bound the unlikelihood of the process. This gives no support to a contention that life must be common

There hasn't been a person you argued with whose claimed life is definitely out there, just that given everything we know it more likely out there than not and that is strongly favored to being out there. And everyone who has said they believed it because it has been likely to be the case, you've jump on to tell them they are wrong to accept that.

That's right, I do tell them it's wrong to believe that (in the sense of being compelled to believe it by the evidence). It's because the evidence does not support that belief. And if you tell others they should believe it, you are lying. All would be ok if you just said "it's possible that life is out there", or "I'd like it if life were out there".

[Darththeo]

He didn't say that. And it's a good thing, since that's a stinking pile of bullshit.

Watch the video. It is called a rephrasing. And the rest of your reply is pure arrogance once again using "Earth life bias." as an argument to why life in general shouldn't be considered likely. And it built with your misunderstanding of the argument ... we aren't arguing life is "common" but rather life is likely to exist elsewhere even if it is rare. And people who use common generally aren't using to use common as you imply here, but rather that such a thing is ordinary or would be expected.

It is no longer accepted that life started with huge complex chemicals life has now, that they were smaller and got more complex over time is the current belief based on the data. So saying "These big chemicals we have now, they couldn't form randomly with any consistent means" is an argument built off your ignorance on what is currently accepted in this field.

One of my first post to you was that you lack understanding of the subject and the more we exchange posts the more certain of that statement I am.

That's right, I do tell them it's wrong to believe that. It's because the evidence does not support that belief. And if you tell others they should believe it, you are lying.

Except all the evidence that you know does support that.
Your only counter point is the possibility that there is a rare obstacle we do not know about.

You have no evidence to support it being wrong besides you believe that to be true.

And I am finding it amusing that everything you accuse me of doing ... you do without hesitation.
Your argument is built on the belief that because our knowledge is imperfect on a subject we can't say anything with certainty on it ... that is an argument of bias, not fact.

[Orange Joe]

I'll save others 12:27 of their lives and tell you that nowhere there does NdGT say life is likely elsewhere in the universe. He says it's POSSIBLE life is out there, and I would agree with him. But he never says it's impossible, or even unlikely, that it's not out there.

Where I would part is his statement that it would be egotistical to believe we are alone. Science is about evidence, not moral character; one cannot justify a scientific statement by saying you're a bad person if you don't believe it. Of course someone who is arguing that we are alone (not just that it's possible that we're alone) will have to cough up evidence to justify that.

The cognitive dissonance you need to say these two statement.... lmfao

[Osmeric]

Watch the video. It is called a rephrasing. And the rest of your reply is pure arrogance once again using "Earth life bias." as an argument to why life in general shouldn't be considered likely. And it built with your misunderstanding of the argument ... we aren't arguing life is "common" but rather life is likely to exist elsewhere even if it is rare. And people who use common generally aren't using to use common as you imply here, but rather that such a thing is ordinary or would be expected.

I did watch the video. Here's what he said:

(1) The chemical elements we're composed of are common in the universe,
(2) There are huge numbers of stars in the universe
(3) It would be egotistical to believe we are alone.

(1) and (2) are fine statements, but they don't imply life is likely. They are consistent with life being likely, but I wasn't disputing that. (3) is an ad hominem argument, not an argument from evidence at all.

As for arrogance... the arrogant one here is YOU. YOU are the one presenting a falsely inflated notion of what can currently be known. The modest position is to not jump to conclusion with insufficient evidence, to not mispresent your level of knowledge or certainty, to not LIE.

It is no longer accepted that life started with huge complex chemicals life has now, that they were smaller and got more complex over time is the current belief based on the data. So saying "These big chemicals we have now, they couldn't form randomly with any consistent means" is an argument built off your ignorance on what is currently accepted in this field.

One of my first post to you was that you lack understanding of the subject and the more we exchange posts the more certain of that statement I am.

One can certainly construct outlines of theories about how life might arise in such ways. But no one has shown that life actually could or did arise that way. Mere conjecture cannot be used to assert that life is common.

You do worse than lacking understanding -- you lack basic reasoning skills. Your posts are a barrage of incoherent illogic. I've attempted many times to correct you, but you seem to be entirely resistant to any realization how lacking you are.

Except all the evidence that you know does support that.
Your only counter point is the possibility that there is a rare obstacle we do not know about.

The possibility of such obstacles is sufficient to refute the contention that life MUST be likely. It's up to you making the strong statement about the likelihood of life to show that that's the case, not up to me to prove life is unlikely.

You have no evidence to support it being wrong

I, of course, don't need any such evidence, since I am not claiming life is unlikely (for that or any other reason). Again, it is up to you, making the strong argument that life is likely, to refute all the possible reasons it might not be.

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The cognitive dissonance you need to say these two statement.... lmfao

There is no cognitive dissonance. I find it unfortunate that NdGT is engaging in an ad hominem argument, even if it is correct that would should not, at this point based on evidence, believe that life is unlikely (or believe it is likely) elsewhere in the universe. And I very much hope he was not saying it would be egotistical to believe it is even POSSIBLE we are alone.

[Dch48]

So yeah, it is just deja vu, something which many people including myself have experienced. You aren't dreaming the future.

What is actually happening is that your brain 'rewires' the moment an event happens and so it makes you believe that either: 1. "This has happened before". or 2. "I remember expecting this to happen". I've experienced both these situations and am under no illusions, I've not been seeing the future.

Nope, it's more than that. I have seen future events. You probably have as well. No illusions involved.

[Darththeo]

As for arrogance... the arrogant one here is YOU. YOU are the one presenting a falsely inflated notion of what can currently be known. The modest position is to not jump to conclusion with insufficient evidence, to not mispresent your level of knowledge or certainty, to not LIE.

Nope, sorry, you are mistaken because you think you understand this subject when you don't.

You do worse than lacking understanding -- you lack basic reasoning skills. Your posts are a barrage of incoherent illogic. I've attempted many times to correct you, but you seem to be entirely resistant to any realization how lacking you are.

Accusing me of being the arrogant one when YOU assert you are correcting me denying any correction to you. You can't see that your argument isn't based in logic, it is based in your personal bias.

We know a line between life and non life exist. The current accepted view life would be when the first self replicating molecules came about. There are people who hold that life requires either a cell or proto-cell, but is not longer the generally accepted view. You are arguing on this subject with information and beliefs that are two decades out of date at least.

We know more than when we started searching for life now.

The possibility of such obstacles is sufficient to refute the contention that life MUST be likely. It's up to you making the strong statement about the likelihood of life to show that that's the case, not up to me to prove life is unlikely.

If and only if such a obstacle has reason to be suspected to exist in the first place. You have no reason, just assertion it is possible.

And no, imperfect knowledge is not an acceptable reason. Just because we don't know everything cannot ever discount what we know. You need to explain why you think such a thing matters and mere possibility is not enough. This is the difference between refuting a point and merely asserting something is wrong.

I, of course, don't need any such evidence, since I am not claiming life is unlikely (for that or any other reason). Again, it is up to you, making the strong argument that life is likely, to refute all the possible reasons it might not be

No, you are claiming it is wrong to say it is likely. You have no evidence to support that saying it is wrong beside your personal bias.

[Super Kami Dende]

Psychics, no.
Extraterrestrials, I believe in life being somewhere else in the universe purely via mathematical probabilities, though actually meeting them in my lifetime? Nah.
Time Travel? depends on what your definition is.
Other Universes? Yeah, since something had to start somewhere.

[Darththeo]

The cognitive dissonance you need to say these two statement.... lmfao

It is amazing he is accusing everyone else as being the illogical ones when he says things like that.

[Orange Joe]

There is no cognitive dissonance. I find it unfortunate that NdGT is engaging in an ad hominem argument, even if it is correct that would should not, at this point based on evidence, believe that life is unlikely (or believe it is likely) elsewhere in the universe. And I very much hope he was not saying it would be egotistical to believe it is even POSSIBLE we are alone.

So he isn't saying there are aliens, he is just insulting people who think it's not possible for aliens to exist?


yeah... no cognitive dissonance at all.....

[Darththeo]

So he isn't saying there are aliens, he is just insulting people who think it's not possible for aliens to exist?


yeah... no cognitive dissonance at all.....

To be fair, Osmeric said "ad hominem argument" which is misunderstanding that Neil was calling them arrogant because they were wrong and mistakenly view themselves as correct, not wrong because they are arrogant. (all the more funny that he thinks other people are being illogical.)

[kranur]

Time travel is a dodgy one.

Extraterestrial life is impossible to not exist (note that this doesn't mean highly evolved green people).

Multiple universes may also be possible (thought not parallel universes).

[Hollycakes]

By this logic, people who fly exist and don't come out and say it cause same reasons.
They are clark kenting it cause why tell people.
I mean we can safely say then that all things exist under these circumstances.
Somewhere a Deadpool is running around slumming it and just doesn't want to tell anyone cause he's afraid they'll area 52 him.

[Stormwolf64]

Ghosts and aliens should not be lumped into the same category

[Ielenia]

No. Only the phonies tried. The real deal doesn't want the publicity.

"No True Scotsman" fallacy aside-- How do you know?

I mean, do you really believe that all those with "real deal" supernatural powers have the exact same mindset and that not a single one of them wants to profit from their abilities? Every single one of them values privacy and anonymity more than profits... or helping other people?

[Shadowferal]

Every single one of them values privacy and anonymity more than profits... or helping other people?

You mean helping government entities or high end criminal elements...
You imagine they have choices...I suppose they do, one option is a bullet in the brain pan.

[Darththeo]

Ghosts and aliens should not be lumped into the same category

Why did you bring up "Ghosts"? It isn't even part of the topic.

The topic is "Do you believe in Ghosts, ET life, Alternate Universes, and/or Time Travel?"