No Intelligent Life on Earth

UFO people are just as stupid as religious people.

This kind of speculation is common. It has been going on since Opportunity and Spirit landed and began their missions. Over optimism coupled with over active imaginations with little skepticism and knowledge of how planetary exploration with these rovers works.

"Speculation" is too polite a term to use for the nuts proposing the idea that the photos are evidence of an underground civilization (ufosightingsdaily.com).

"Idiocy" or "lunacy" would be better terms, I think. UFO fanatics have the same mind-set as religious nuts. Anything that is not immediately obvious is either "God did it" or "Aliens did it."  These people are either too stupid, too lazy, or too arrogant to simply say, "Hmm.. I wonder what that is." They always have to have an easy answer - their answer.

Perhaps with this example you are right. But I remember participating at a forum for Mars exploration, at around the time S & O landed, and many otherwise seemingly rational, science minded people fascinated with the photos coming back, many were seeing things in rocks and soil that just weren't there... they saw what they were hoping to see. These same people just about weren't into hysterics when those blue spheres were first photographed. .. just went into alien life hissy fits. These were not UFO nut cases. They were so excited they saw what they wanted to see.

Intelligent fans of real science who are overly-anxious to see something new and wondrous, and are willing to try and see what's not there, who are amenable to cast aside their rationality for a moment, are very different from the UFO crazies who see the same thing everywhere - UFOs and aliens.

Different types, same wishful thinking mental mechanisms at play. There are scientists who hold onto pet theories with high degrees of stubbornness and reverence.

You seem to suggest that all 'UFO nuts' are uneducated and/or nonscience interested idiots. They may be idiots, I'll grant you that, but both domains have their fringe nutters. Its just that the nutt butter aspect of UFO enthusiasts is likely larger and their more intelligent fringe element is smaller by comparison.   

NASA needs to stop describing every mission as a "search for life" or worse "a search for intelligent life."  Too many morons buy into the concept that, like god, aliens are out there but they're just hiding.

Good science policy is to go with the known and make decisions based on consensus reality. Therefore, there is no life out there much less intelligent life.

That's rare even on earth.

Why should it bother you so that some people see things where nothing exists? Gives the skeptics and debunkers exercise.   

NoCoPilot wrote:

Good science policy is to go with the known and make decisions based on consensus reality. Therefore, there is no life out there much less intelligent life.

That's rare even on earth.

You are correct about the scarcity of intelligent life on earth, but do you really believe there is no life anywhere else in the universe?

_Howard wrote:

You are correct about the scarcity of intelligent life on earth, but do you really believe there is no life anywhere else in the universe?

Until I see the first shred of evidence to the contrary, yes. I think it's the most logical stance.

There are trillions of planets and moons in the known universe. You think the most logical stance is the assert that there is life only on Earth simply because we haven't yet found it elsewhere?

Then what sets Earth apart from every other other planet in the universe that allows for life here, but not anywhere else?

I think that the existence of lower life forms elsewhere is very widespread; probably on hundreds of billions of planets and moons. Logically, I can see no reason for its absence in most places.

You base your opinion on one example, the earth.

I base mine on the hundreds, if not thousands of other astronomical bodies which we can rule definitively, positively are life-free.

Who is being more rational?

_Howard wrote:

Then what sets Earth apart from every other other planet in the universe that allows for life here, but not anywhere else?

I don't think "allows" is the word you want here.

Just because a planet's characteristics allow for life, that is no guarantee it exists.

Life is not the default property. Quite the contrary.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Life is not the default property.  Quite the contrary.

We do not have - and probably never will have - the ability to determine the existence of life on all except a handful of the planets in the universe. We do not know - and probably never will know - what is the default property, or if there even is a default property.

Russell's teapot.

You may be absolutely convinced one of the items orbiting out beyond Mars is a fine china teapot ("there are MILLIONS of items out there, how can one of them not be a fine china teapot?") but I remain skeptical until I see the first shred of evidence.

The man who has six toes assumes everyone has six toes until proven otherwise.

Earth is a poor template for the rest of the universe, from everything we have learned so far.

I'm perfectly happy to be proven wrong. However, proof is exactly what it'll take to change my mind. Faith will not.

Russell's teapot is a ridiculous thing to bring up in this case; I am not convinced of something ludicrous. Nor am I talking about faith. It just seems unbelievable to me that out of the trillions of planets, only one has any life on it. To me, that seems irrational. Surely, there are at least algae and microbes out there somewhere.

And consider that you are asking for unequivocal proof in a situation where it may be impossible to provide proof.

... not impossible, just difficult at the present time. As opposed to disproving that a light or reflection on Mars can be done with a simple command sent to a rover, which would be a waste of time and resources because most people at Nasa are aware that it is VERY likely something like a reflection of sunlight or some such phenomenon.

I agree proof may never, probably will never be forthcoming.

Given that fact, which is more rational to believe? That one of the items circling the sun is a fine china teapot, because you happen to have two of them in your cupboard?

I think Russell's teapot is the perfect illustrative example why believing something highly unlikely is foolish without evidence.

Put it another way. How many planets do we know of that harbor life?

One.

How many times has life arisen on this planet? How many incompatible forms of life are there here on earth?

One.

What does this tell us about life?

It tells us that life is highly unlikely even on planets that "allow" it (bearing in mind that the first 4 billion years of life changed the planet substantially, making possible the subsequent evolution of the vast diversity of life we see around us today).

_Howard wrote:

Russell's teapot is a ridiculous thing to bring up in this case; I am not convinced of something ludicrous.

State your evidence, if it is not "faith."

"I feel god must exist, therefore he exists." "I feel logically god must exist, therefore he exists." "I feel the universe is too vast to not contain a god, therefore he exists." Substitute "life" for "god" in any one of those statements of faith.

Or, for that matter, a fine china teapot.

Quote :

Russell's teapot, sometimes called the celestial teapot or cosmic teapot, is an analogy first coined by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making scientifically unfalsifiable claims rather than shifting the burden of proof to others,...

If you want to hang your hat on the teapot, then you must also accept that - at this time - you are making a scientifically unfalsifiable claim (and you concur with this: "I agree proof may never, probably will never be forthcoming."). Statistically, the number of planets of which we have any knowledge at all is too small a sample size to have any meaning whatsoever.

I do not have "faith" that there is life on other planets, but I accept the probability of it because I can find no reason why there should not be life elsewhere. All planets were created in the same manner as the earth, from a bunch of dust that coalesced. After this..well, who the hell really knows what happened everywhere?

Your position is valid if you require absolute proof for the existence of life elsewhere. But your requirement, considering the incredible difficulty ( or impossibility) in proving the matter one way or the other, is insufficient to lay claim to the truth. Admittedly, as is mine.

I'm just extrapolating from known facts.

What are YOU doing?

The same.

No you're not.

You have one positive case, and tens of thousands of negatives. How can you say the exception proves anything?

I don't know anything about the studies you talk about when you say that thousands of planets have been proven to not have any life whatsoever on them.

Studies based on Hubble data place the estimated number of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way alone at between 40 and 60 billion. As far as I know, none of these have been carefully examined for the existence of life. Nor have the hundreds of billions of non-Earth-like planets in the galaxy.

The existence of life on Earth does not prove the existence of life elsewhere, nor have I said that it does. It does prove that life actually does exist (unlike the insulting comparison you made to my opinion and those of God believers) and can arise on a chunk of once-molten rock.

As there are hundreds of billions of planets in each of hundreds of billions of galaxies, I just find it inconceivable that life, especially very simple forms, has never arisen on any of these planets.