Shameful

NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan Predicts We'll Find Signs Of Alien Life Within 10 Years
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/08/nasa-alien-life_n_7023134.html

I believe it's safe to say that we will find such evidence - sometime - but I think it's folly to try and put a specific date on it.

The bogus science is bad enough -- the blatant pandering to the science opponents in Congress is what is really shameful.

What is the "bogus" science? I missed that. I also missed the pandering bit. Did we read the same article?

We did -- but I don't think you share my certainty that God sorry aliens do not exist.

Your certainty doesn't make the science bogus; it just means you reach different conclusions. I'm sure you closely perused the science before making your conclusions.

No, my certainty doesn't make the science bogus.

The lack of a single shred of evidence for life elsewhere, while still proclaiming that such evidence will be found within ten years, is what makes it bogus.

If Ellen Stofan had added one little disclaimer -- "if it exists" -- her desperate plea for funding would not be full of bogusity.  If Ellen Stofan had said "someday" instead of within ten years, her bogusity would be limited.  If Ellen Stofan had said "we have seen no evidence yet, but I feel someday we will" her bogusity would have been personal instead of institutional.

However, she did none of those things.  Shame on her.

And my conflating of gods and aliens was entirely intentional. Both leap from the same misunderstandings, both feed the same longings, both comfort the little mind.

When you say there's "single shred of evidence," you are incorrect. There are countless bodies which have temperatures suitable for life. The required elements for life are the most common in the universe; they're everywhere. Various amino acids and other "building blocks" of life have been found in the atmospheres of other bodies. It's quite possible that some of these already-encountered bodies do, in fact, harbor life, but we do not yet have the technology to uncover it.

Have you ever misplaced your remote control? When you look for it and it is not in the first place you look, do you conclude that the remote control does not exist? Or do you continue looking?

Conflating gods and alien life is absurd, inaccurate, and insulting (at least my little mind feels insulted).

For you to conclude that life doesn't exist elsewhere simply because it hasn't yet been found is too ... well, it's too something.

Howard, if I misplace my remote at least I remember having one.

Not the same as spending all day looking for one if I've never seen it before, is it?

That is exactly what I expected for your response, after giving it a little thought. But I was busy and didn't go back and change it. I was considering a rejoinder to it, but what the hell... it was a bad analogy (I'm still The King).

If you want to continue with your conflation of gods and alien life, consider that you are certain as to the non-existence of alien life. Certainty does not allow for the possibility of alien life, just as the religious certainty doesn't allow for the absence of gods. On the other hand, I make no claim as to a certainty that alien life exists; I merely state that I believe it is extremely probable.

There are countless real reasons why gods do not exist, and no rational reasons that provide evidence that they do. On the other hand, there are valid reasons to believe that simple life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, and no solid foundation to claim that they do not. You may believe that they do not, but you have nothing on which to base that belief. The fact that they have not been found as of yet is not evidence of their non-existence on all the other trillions of bodies.

Yes, it's impossible to prove the negative.

One can only point to the dearth of evidence and draw conclusions. From the lack of evidence is it more rational to conclude that life exists everywhere and we just haven't found it, or to conclude that life does not exist anywhere but earth?

And enzymes or alien bacteria outside our solar system wouldn't really be a game changer, would it.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Yes, it's impossible to prove the negative.

I don't know where this claptrap came from but it's not always true. It may be that in some specific instances, the negative cannot be proven, but most of the time it can. The problem normally arises when two sides of an argument cannot agree on the facts; or on what constitutes proof.

Try it for yourself. "Two plus two does not equal 143."
Easily proven.
"I do not have seven legs."
Also easily proven.

Whether or not there is a "dearth of evidence" is arguable. I see this case as having significant evidence pointing to the positive.

No. It won't be a game changer, and the whole pursuit is possibly pointless. If they find simple life on another planet or moon during my lifetime, I will read the article and mumble something like, "Oh, that's cool." and then get on with other things.

(I'm so happy. I've never before used the word "claptrap." What fun.)

The classic example given of "proving a negative" is Russell's Teapot.

Seven legs or simple math are not the same thing.

If you are born in a basketball factory, you might grow up expecting everyone at school to have a thousand basketballs in their bedroom. When none of your friends do, do you re-evaluate what's "normal" or do you consider all your friends odd?

I don't give a rat fuck what the classic example is. And remember that example was to support the position that the burden of proof lies on the person making the unverifiable claim, not on the denier of it.

Seven legs or simple math are perfectly good examples of the falsity of the can't-prove-a-negative claim. If one wanted to take the time, it would be easy to posit thousands more.

And as far as I am concerned, it is simple to prove that gods do not exist.

_Howard wrote:

And as far as I am concerned, it is simple to prove that gods do not exist.

I think you, and many other people including Ms Stofan, greatly overestimate the likelihood of life.

I read that article quickly, but I didn't notice anything that precluded the widespread existence of simple life, or the high probably of it.

It's a variation of the Drake Equation, with rather a gloomier outlook.  

Here's the relevant bit:

Stephen Hawking wrote:

Why hasn't the Earth been visited, and even colonised. I discount suggestions that UFO's contain beings from outer space. I think any visits by aliens, would be much more obvious, and probably also, much more unpleasant.

What is the explanation of why we have not been visited? One possibility is that the argument, about the appearance of life on Earth, is wrong. Maybe the probability of life spontaneously appearing is so low, that Earth is the only planet in the galaxy, or in the observable universe, in which it happened. Another possibility is that there was a reasonable probability of forming self reproducing systems, like cells, but that most of these forms of life did not evolve intelligence. We are used to thinking of intelligent life, as an inevitable consequence of evolution. But the Anthropic Principle should warn us to be wary of such arguments. It is more likely that evolution is a random process, with intelligence as only one of a large number of possible outcomes. It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value. Bacteria, and other single cell organisms, will live on, if all other life on Earth is wiped out by our actions. There is support for the view that intelligence, was an unlikely development for life on Earth, from the chronology of evolution. It took a very long time, two and a half billion years, to go from single cells to multi-cell beings, which are a necessary precursor to intelligence. This is a good fraction of the total time available, before the Sun blows up. So it would be consistent with the hypothesis, that the probability for life to develop intelligence, is low. In this case, we might expect to find many other life forms in the galaxy, but we are unlikely to find intelligent life. Another way, in which life could fail to develop to an intelligent stage, would be if an asteroid or comet were to collide with the planet. We have just observed the collision of a comet, Schumacher-Levi, with Jupiter. It produced a series of enormous fireballs. It is thought the collision of a rather smaller body with the Earth, about 70 million years ago, was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. A few small early mammals survived, but anything as large as a human, would have almost certainly been wiped out. It is difficult to say how often such collisions occur, but a reasonable guess might be every twenty million years, on average. If this figure is correct, it would mean that intelligent life on Earth has developed only because of the lucky chance that there have been no major collisions in the last 70 million years. Other planets in the galaxy, on which life has developed, may not have had a long enough collision free period to evolve intelligent beings.

Well, I think the Drake Equation is a crock. Suppositions surrounded by assumptions.

And some of the things Hawkings puts forth are a little too anthropomorphic for my taste.

The quote you posted regards only the probability and possible fate of intelligent life. That is a far step from the prior posts on this thread which have considered only the possibility or probability of some form of life, including the most simple. My beliefs about alien intelligent life may be very different from those about simple forms.

_Howard wrote:

Well, I think the Drake Equation is a crock. Suppositions surrounded by assumptions.

Interesting that you would say this.

Any estimate of extraterrestrial life is necessarily a product of suppositions and assumptions, since the only FACTS we have are exactly zero evidence.

You're right. There is no life of any form anywhere else in the universe. If we haven't found it by now, when we have already coarsely examined nearly one-billionth of one percent of the possible hiding places for it, it must not exist. I am convinced.

Now you're thinking like a Carlberg!

Hawking mentions, early in his piece, that we are always talking about us finding aliens rather than them finding us. If intelligent life exists in the universe, it's probably equally likely that it's more advanced than us as it is that it's less advanced.

Therefore the fact that we haven't been contacted eliminates roughly 50% of the possibility.

And roughly 100% of the interest.

And there Hawkings make a very common mistake. He is conflating intelligent life with technological life. Drives me nuts when people can't differentiate the two.

I think it is possible, even likely, that there is life out there which should be considered intelligent, but which has no technology beyond maybe a canoe. Hawkings, like many others, assumes that intelligent life anywhere would follow the same course as human life here. There is no reason to believe that, other than the arrogant belief that we epitomize the one true path for life everywhere.

I don't believe that we will ever have any communication of any type with another life form on another planet.

It's a shame that the discovery of life elsewhere holds no interest for you unless it's some Star Trek kind of thing.