Posted on 01/14/2005 2:19:11 PM PST by Las Vegas Dave
Decades ago, it was physicist Enrico Fermi who pondered the issue of extraterrestrial civilizations with fellow theorists over lunch, generating the famous quip: "Where are they?" That question later became central to debates about the cosmological census count of other star folk and possible extraterrestrial (ET) visitors from afar.
Fermis brooding on the topic was later labeled "Fermis paradox". It is a well-traveled tale from the 1950s when the scientist broached the subject in discussions with colleagues in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Thoughts regarding the probability of earthlike planets, the rise of highly advanced civilizations "out there", and interstellar travel -- these remain fodder for trying to respond to Fermis paradox even today.
Now a team of American scientists note that recent astrophysical discoveries suggest that we should find ourselves in the midst of one or more extraterrestrial civilizations. Moreover, they argue it is a mistake to reject all UFO reports since some evidence for the theoretically-predicted extraterrestrial visitors might just be found there.
The researchers make their proposal in the January/February 2005 issue of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS).
Curious situation
Pick up any good science magazine and youre sure to see the latest in head-scratching ideas about superstring theory, wormholes, or the stretching of spacetime itself. Meanwhile, extrasolar planetary detection is on the verge of becoming mundane.
"We are in the curious situation today that our best modern physics and astrophysics theories predict that we should be experiencing extraterrestrial visitation, yet any possible evidence of such lurking in the UFO phenomenon is scoffed at within our scientific community," contends astrophysicist Bernard Haisch.
Haisch along with physicists James Deardorff, Bruce Maccabee and Harold Puthoff make their case in the JBIS article: "Inflation-Theory Implications for Extraterrestrial Visitation".
The scientists point to two key discoveries made by Australian astronomers and reported last year that there is a "galactic habitable zone" in our Milky Way Galaxy. And more importantly that Earths own star, the Sun, is relatively young in comparison to the average star in this zone -- by as much as a billion years.
Therefore, the researchers explain in their JBIS article that an average alien civilization would be far more advanced and have long since discovered Earth. Additionally, other research work on the supposition underlying the Big Bang -- known as the theory of inflation -- shores up the prospect, they advise, that our world is immersed in a much larger extraterrestrial civilization.
Point-to-point distances
Given billion-year advanced physics, might not buzzing around the galaxy be possible?
Even today superstring theory hypothesizes other dimensions... which could be habitable Universes adjacent to our own, the researchers speculate. It might even be possible to get around the speed of light limit by moving in and out of these dimensions.
"What we have done is somewhat of a breakthrough," Haisch told SPACE.com. "We have pulled together various recent discoveries and theoretical issues that collectively point to the strong probability that we should be in the midst of one or more huge extraterrestrial civilizations," he said.
Haisch said that superstring dimensions and wormhole and spacetime stretching possibilities address the "can't get here from there" objection often argued in view of the interstellar, point-to-point distances involved. Also, diffusion models predict that even a single civilization could spread across the Galaxy in a tiny fraction of the age of the Galaxy - even at sub-light speeds, he said.
ET signature in the data
Can the scientific community bring itself to consider any evidence coming from mysterious sightings of strange things by the public?
In large measure, the scientific community seemingly has eyed ET visitation as far from being serious stuff to cogitate over. Why so?
"The dismissal has several causes, all reinforcing each other," Haisch responded. "Most of the observations are probably misinterpretations, delusions and hoaxes. I have seen people get confused by Venus or even Sirius when it is flashing colors low in the sky under the right conditions. Having been turned off by this, most scientists never bother to look any further, and so are simply blissfully ignorant that there may be more to it," he said.
Deardorff, the lead author of the JBIS article, points out in a press statement: "It would take some humility for the scientific community to suspend its judgment and take at least some of the high quality reports seriously enough to investigate but I hope we can bring ourselves to do that."
According to Haisch, there is a motivation not just for scientific tolerance of the UFO issue, but a strong scientific prediction that there ought to be some genuine ET signature in the data.
"This potentially changes the relationship of the UFO phenomenon to science in a significant way. It takes away the not invented here prejudice, pointing out that a yes to ET visitation is exactly what side our current physics and astrophysics theories would come down on as the most likely situation," Haisch concluded.
I think perhaps you might need an illustration of how one can be totally incorrect when it comes to orders of magnitude. Please consider this example.
A mosquito flying at 5 miles per hour flies into an elephant and kills it by virtue of the fact that its kinetic energy is so high. Possible? NO. A mosquito weighs less than 1 gram. It is moving at a kinetic energy of 1/2MV^2, which is about 4 orders of magnitude too small to effect the elephant when it hits it at 5 miles per hour. Do you see my point? It either needs to be moving 4 orders of magnitude faster or it needs to be 4 or 5 orders of magnitude heavier when it hits the elephant.
That's what it means to be off by several orders of magnitude.
Which is it? Do you think life got here by chance? Or did it get here by some other venue such as Divine Intervention?
Your myopia is stubborn. Conscious beings living in another universe set the initial conditions for the big bang to cause a life-bearing Universe.. That you don't include that as a choice, despite my stating it as a possibility is a blind spot for you. Your only choices are chance or divine intervention. As I wrote in post 134...
conscious being in a different universe set the initial conditions of the big bang.134
Your myopia is stubborn. Conscious beings living in another universe set the initial conditions for the big bang to cause a life-bearing Universe..
***That's a fascinating proposition, but since you choose not to back it up by facts, I'm going to have to move on. Please answer the questions and try not to stoop to labelling, such as calling someone myopic. The converse is to suggest that you aren't intelligent enough to understand the question. So let's not go there.
That you don't include that as a choice, despite my stating it as a possibility is a blind spot for you. Your only choices are chance or divine intervention. As I wrote in post 134...
***Answer my questions and I'll consider your (very very very unlikely, less than 10^125) possibilities.
conscious being in a different universe set the initial conditions of the big bang.
***Provide evidence, please. Your posts are no longer making much sense.
***Provide evidence, please.
I gave you my inductive reasoning. You only gave the option of chance and Divine intervention. But you already know all that. Perhaps it's not myopia, rather, simple irrationality.
You may move along now. But of course we both know that you can't do that and will have to respond. Thus I'll save you the embarrassment and grant you the last word.
No... What is "acknowledged" is that anti-evolutionists keep posting these bogus calculations, and then many Freepers point out where they're flawed. It's also acknowledged that this doesn't stop the anti-evolutionists from posting the same crap again next week as if no objections had ever been raised before...
And what in the hell is a "lower amino acid" -- you're not even making sense here.
The chances of getting accidentally synthesized left amino acids for one small protein molecule is one chance in 10^210. That is a number with 210 zeros after it! Such probabilities are indeed impossibilities. The number is so vast as to be totally out of the question.
Nice straw man you've got there. You're calculating something that most likely is "impossible" in a statistical sense (even though you're garbling it when you try to say it -- "accidentally synthesized left amino acids" are the *easy* part...), but it's a bait-and-switch since that "something" you're calculating is *not* among the many scenarios being considered for abiogenesis. You're modeling the wrong process, and then dishonestly using it to declare *any* kind of abiogenesis beyond possibility. Nice try.
For example, you've completely failed to take into account RNA-bootstrapping of protein formation via ribozymes, among many other alternative routes to protein formation.
Here's a less simplified overview of a workable abiogenesis scenario, based on recent research in biochemistry and reverse-engineered processes in living organisms:
Note that protein synthesis doesn't come into it until much later -- it doesn't spring forth from full-blown prebiotic chemistry, as your calculations simplistically (and incorrectly) presume.
So please -- go learn actually something about the subject before you attempt to critique it. You really, *really* don't know what you're talking about, and I (and others) have better things to do than keep correcting this sort of comic-book "analysis" that creationists and other anti-evolutionsts are so fond of using as a substitute for actually knowing something about the subject.
To begin your education on this one topic, start here:
Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis CalculationsThen be sure to read the primary references, followed by becoming conversant with the current research on the matter. If I can do it, you can too.Borel's Law and the Origin of Many Creationist Probability Assertions
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/addendaB.html
ROFL!!!!!! Do you even *read* your own citations? That link explains in detail how *faulty* are all the common "probability calculations" that anti-evolutionists wave around to "prove" the "impossibility" of natural abiogenesis. Even your own excerpt which you provided in your own post disagrees with the assertion you made in that post and your prior one. Here it is again with the significant parts highlighted:
Hubert Yockey's article "Self Organization Origin of Life Scenarios and Information Theory" in Journal of Theoretical Biology 91 (1981) pp. 13-31 (this is an extension of work done by him in 1977 in vol. 67 of the same journal). The objective of his paper is not to prove special creation (he actually rejects such theories as useless), but to argue that alien life is so improbable that we ought to shift science to draw talent and funding away from projects like SETI and into "research on the origin of life." In his own abstract, he presents his conclusion as "belief in little green men in outer space is purely religious not scientific." But his assumptions are as faulty as those made by creationists, although his approach is much more sophisticated--and above all, he does not generate any actual estimates of probability. He tries to argue that only 10^5 arrangements of a protein 100 amino acids long, out of a total possible 1.26 x 10^130 arrangements, are of concern to biology, if we assume a 4-bit code. Though he does not state this explicitly, this means the odds against life starting, if it had to start with just such a protein, would be 1 in 10^125.And you sort of "forgot" to quote the NEXT HALF OF THE SAME PARAGRAPH, which immediately goes on to say:
Though this is not his argument, creationists have tried to spin it that way. But this is not allowed for two reasons: Yockey assumes exactly and only 20 kinds of amino acids are relevant, but life might be possible with any combination of any number of the thousands of kinds that can exist in nature--the mere fact that life on our planet got settled on a certain twenty does not entail that this is the only way it can be done [1a]; and he also assumes that exactly and only 100-amino-acid chains are relevant, but life could have been begun by any number of possible chains of many different lengths, and Yockey does not sum all the relevant combinations of all the possible naturally-occurring chain lengths which may be self-replicating--he only solves this for the 100-amino-acid chain.Later, your same link writes:
[...] he makes bold claims such as "the belief that...any...protein could appear by chance is based on faith" (257), yet fails to have brushed up on his research: for the tetrahymena discovery refutes such a claim, and he never addresses it. [...] But this calculation is moot, since we need to know the chance of any viable replicating protein arising, not just one specific protein. His approach is like proving that he is most unlikely to win the lottery and therefore the lottery can never be won, when in fact someone wins the lottery on a regular basis. What we want to know are the odds of some protein winning the lottery, not the odds of a specific protein doing so. Thus his number is moot.So hey, thanks for providing material that torpedoes your own position, and supports mine.
khouse.org if you wanna check out Missler's stuff. And yes, he gets deeply into the issue of the spirit world and what's likely occurring around us right now.
Ever done any study on the nephilim? I believe a fairly strong case can be made that demons and Satan's angels are two distinct types of entity. I think it can be logically inferred that demons are the disembodied spirits of the nephilim, while Satan's angels are simply the angels that took his side in the revolt against God and wound up getting booted from heaven.
On this same topic, I think it's entirely possible that God sent the flood not only because sin had become so rampant, but also because the human gene pool had become so corrupted and He wanted a fresh start. Note in Genesis that Noah was chosen because he was "perfect in his generations." A clean genetic line?
I find all this stuff utterly fascinating.
MM
Thanks for the post. I very rarely knowingly venture onto the crevo threads, Ironically, just a month ago I stumbled into one and followed a link to the paper you quoted.
NO! I'm not at all of the conviction you mentioned about guns or gun manufacturers. I'll thank you to not put words in my fingers.
Scientists have been part and parcel complicit with political rulers from the beginning of science. Perhaps you think of yourself as a better scientist than historian. It appears that you may well be.
And the nihlistic, secularistic RELIGION OF SCIENCE has now brought millions of innocent deaths upon our hands in our nation alone year after year to what--60 million! Science and the RELIGION OF SCIENCE MENTALITY complicit with socialism/globalism/communism has brought us that.
You can deny it. Won't change the facts.
Stubborn myopia, indeed.
I'll thank you to not put words in my fingers.
Apparently you have a reading comprehension problem. I said "perhaps". I wrote "Perhaps you think gun manufactures indirectly kill people. Perhaps you think Smith and Wesson should be sued when a criminal murders a person with a Smith and Wesson firearm." I never said you did, I said perhaps.
Perhaps: possibly but not certainly : MAYBE
Making such simple, easily avoidable error sort of explains how you can made a complex error.
Perhaps I should have been more careful to have written
I will thank you to continue to avoid putting your words in my fingers. That was my thought at the time. I realized you said perhaps. And I was giving you the benefit of the doubt while also noting your tone and implication.
And asking you to please avoid doing so in the future and I will thank you for it.
We shall see who has made the most complex error in due time.
Thank you for the last word, that is very thoughtful of you. I'm not used to being in this position, usually I am the one who has to let the other have the last word. Thats an interesting last jab, that irrationality thing, especially in light of your lack of acknowledgement or refusal to survey the facts in front of you. It strikes me that science itself is becoming an irrational pursuit, requiring specialists with PhD's to debate the fine points back & forth. That's more evocative of ancient Persia and Stargazers than the Age of Englightenment.
This isnt a myopic approach as much as it might be limited by time constraints. Ive been fascinated by this topic for a short while, but I am not a biologist/geologist/geneticist, which is where most of the latest arguments end up.
I gave you my inductive reasoning.
***You did not give me inductive reasoning, you only gave me a reiterated opinion.
The following is the first hit I received on Google for "Inductive reasoning".
Characteristics of Deductive Reasoning
Logical Fallacies
V. Characteristics of Inductive Reasoning
Unlike deductive reasoning, Inductive reasoning is not designed to produce mathematical certainty. Induction occurs when we gather bits of specific information together and use our own knowledge and experience in order to make an observation about what must be true. Inductive reasoning does not use syllogisms, but series of observations, in order to reach a conclusion. Consider the following chains of observations:
Observation: John came to class late this morning.
Observation: Johns hair was uncombed.
Prior experience: John is very fussy about his hair.
Conclusion: John overslept
The reasoning process here is directly opposite to that used in deductive syllogisms. Rather than beginning with a general principle (People who comb their hair wake up on time), the chain of evidence begins with an observation and then combines it with the strength of previous observations in order to arrive at a conclusion.
VI. Generalization
The most basic kind of inductive reasoning is called induction by enumeration, or, more commonly, generalization. You generalize whenever you make a general statement (all salesmen are pushy) based on observations with specific members of that group (the last three salesmen who came to my door were pushy). You also generalize when you make an observation about a specific thing based on other specific things that belong to the same group (my girlfriends cousin Ed is a salesman, so he will probably be pushy.) When you use specific observations as the basis of a general conclusion, you are said to be making an inductive leap.
You only gave the option of chance and Divine intervention. But you already know all that. Perhaps it's not myopia, rather, simple irrationality.
***Martin Gardner wrote an interesting book which would be instuctive here: Fads & Fallacies. Your preoccupation would qualify as an amusing deception in his book. Theres nothing irrational here other than your refusal to appropriate the facts. Please answer the Drake equation considerations.
Fads & fallacies Martin Gardner
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0486203948/103-9036467-3465432?v=glance
Somehow I don't have that "Damned Lies" link in my List-O-Links. That's being remedied.
Good point. However, it could be like the plot of an old "Outer Limits" episode where we made contact with an intelligent life form in outer space and arranged for a exchange where we sent a representative to their planet and they sent a representative to Earth. But the one they sent (a real ugly sucker) turned out to be a notorious criminal that the aliens wanted to get rid of. (I guess they did not have the death penalty.)
" The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders......"
..... assorted jelly rolls (Micheal Moore), Hollywoods own TV evangelistic aid fundsters in the form of *star* power.
Thanks, LVD
To: Kevin OMalley; ConservativeDude; PatrickHenry; Zon
No... What is "acknowledged" is that anti-evolutionists keep posting these bogus calculations, and then many Freepers point out where they're flawed.
***Cool, thanks for responding. That reinforces one of my positions, which is that big science is becoming a necessarily highly inductive and specialized pursuit more along the lines of a religion. Our society is becoming more like Persia under the Stargazers with each passing year. What you should know is that I am not a biologist/geneticist, but I invite their comments. My comments would be limited to pointers on inductive reasoning. Please, by all means, feel free to take on the study that was mentioned and tell us all why SETI is worthy of our tax dollars in light of the Drake Equation modifications. This is not a creationist thread. Please give us the actual figures that are pertinent here. What I note from the differing views on what should go into the Drake equation is that it stops becoming a deductive pursuit and becomes more inductive because all the data are not in. When scientists argue with scientists over what the data really means, usually there are some baseline data that both sides rely on. Im not interested in debating the creationist/evolutionist issues on this particular thread.
It's also acknowledged that this doesn't stop the anti-evolutionists from posting the same crap again next week as if no objections had ever been raised before...
***As I noted, this is not a creationist thread, so feel free to tell us what the pertinent figures should be and why the esteemed scientists who are spending our tax dollars are not wasting them.
And what in the hell is a "lower amino acid" -- you're not even making sense here.
***Sorry about that, I was proceeding from memory and I am not a biologist/geneticist. You seem to have figured out what the gist of the controversy was.
The chances of getting accidentally synthesized left amino acids for one small protein molecule is one chance in 10^210. That is a number with 210 zeros after it! Such probabilities are indeed impossibilities. The number is so vast as to be totally out of the question.
Nice straw man you've got there. You're calculating something that most likely is "impossible" in a statistical sense (even though you're garbling it when you try to say it -- "accidentally synthesized left amino acids" are the *easy* part...), but it's a bait-and-switch since that "something" you're calculating is *not* among the many scenarios being considered for abiogenesis.
***I pulled if from the www as a representation of the controversy. Thanks for setting us all straight. As I noted, Im not a biologist/geneticist. There is a triangulation going on here. Many people will read through threads like this and decide for themselves. I notice that evolutionists seem to have a lot of scorn for people who arent experts in their particular field, but when they run up against folks who are experts, the dialog tends to evolve into one of those finer point discussions similar to theologists who discuss how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Such digressive discussion furthers my point that science is becoming a religion. Thats the first part of this inductive triangle. The second part is the science that was relied upon for getting federal dollars so that we could do the SETI program. When renowned scientists such as Stephen Hawking start acknowledging that the odds against abiogenesis are astronomical, it makes your average conservative look askance at the money being spent on SETI. The third part of this triangle is in the evolution/creation debate, which is full of acrimony. I dont have time to get into it for now, just lurking on that one for the time being, but I do think that eventually some baseline data will be agreed to by both sides. Its the baseline data inside the inductive triangle that Im interested in.
You're modeling the wrong process, and then dishonestly using it to declare *any* kind of abiogenesis beyond possibility. Nice try.
***Its not dishonesty, its more like
someone who isnt a biologist trying to explain biology. But I welcome your inputs, and please take your scorn elsewhere or you will be operating outside of that inductive triangle.
For example, you've completely failed to take into account RNA-bootstrapping of protein formation via ribozymes, among many other alternative routes to protein formation.
***As I stated, Im not a biologist. But your comments towards the record are welcome. It may take me awhile to chase down what it is youre saying but eventually I should be able to figure it out or someone else might take you on.
Here's a less simplified overview of a workable abiogenesis scenario, based on recent research in biochemistry and reverse-engineered processes in living organisms:
Note that protein synthesis doesn't come into it until much later -- it doesn't spring forth from full-blown prebiotic chemistry, as your calculations simplistically (and incorrectly) presume.
***Please provide the new factors which would be input into the Drake equation.
So please -- go learn actually something about the subject before you attempt to critique it. You really, *really* don't know what you're talking about, and I (and others) have better things to do than keep correcting this sort of comic-book "analysis" that creationists and other anti-evolutionsts are so fond of using as a substitute for actually knowing something about the subject.
***Perhaps you need to take that up with the author who was arguing against SETI funding, which is my position. If you really, really think they dont know what theyre talking about, tell us where they're wrong. Tell us where Stephen Hawking is wrong. Tell us what numbers should be put into the Drake Equation.
To begin your education on this one topic, start here:
Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations
Borel's Law and the Origin of Many Creationist Probability Assertions
Then be sure to read the primary references, followed by becoming conversant with the current research on the matter. If I can do it, you can too.
***Cool. Just need the time, thats all.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/addendaB.html
ROFL!!!!!! Do you even *read* your own citations? That link explains in detail how *faulty* are all the common "probability calculations" that anti-evolutionists wave around to "prove" the "impossibility" of natural abiogenesis.
***What can I say other than THANK YOU for going on the record. As I said earlier, that reinforces one of my positions, which is that big science is becoming a necessarily highly inductive and specialized pursuit more along the lines of a religion. Our society is becoming more like Persia under the Stargazers with each passing year. But what you should know is that I am not a biologist/geneticist, but I invite their comments. My comments would be limited to pointers on inductive reasoning. Please, by all means, feel free to take on the study that was mentioned and tell us all why SETI is worthy of our tax dollars in light of the Drake Equation modifications. This is not a creationist thread. Please give us the actual figures that are pertinent here. I may not be a biologist today, but eventually someone will take on this issue which strikes average readers as a bit of gobbledegook.
Even your own excerpt which you provided in your own post disagrees with the assertion you made in that post and your prior one. Here it is again with the significant parts highlighted:
***Please address the Drake Equation, the inductive points being brought up, my contentions and the MAIN POINT of this article. Im fascinated by the fact that scientists can argue for and against both sides on these points. I just need it on the record, one way or another and I can chase it down eventually. For your benefit I have preserved it:
The objective of his paper is not to prove special creation
but to argue that alien life is so improbable that we ought to shift science to draw talent and funding away from projects like SETI and into "research on the origin of life." In his own abstract, he presents his conclusion as "belief in little green men in outer space is purely religious not scientific."
Though he does not state this explicitly, this means the odds against life starting, if it had to start with just such a protein, would be 1 in 10^125.
And you sort of "forgot" to quote
***I didnt forget anything, this isnt a creationist thread, its a SETI thread. But you gave me a good start. Note that I did use the 10^125 figure, so please address that issue. If you continue to utilize scorn, you push the debate outside of the inductive triangle and you end up feeding the general impression that science is becoming a religion.
the NEXT HALF OF THE SAME PARAGRAPH, which immediately goes on to say:
Though this is not his argument, creationists have tried to spin it that way.
***Well, as I have stated, this isnt a creationist thread, so please take your creation/evolution arguments elsewhere if you are not going to give us the figures to insert into the Drake equation and waste all of our time. For the benefit of others, I will excerpt what I perceive to be the crux of the matter:
might be possible
life could have been
This cagey language is more suitable to a religion and suggests that both sides are simply postulating.
Later, your same link writes
***by all means, please explain this tetrahymena discovery, why the 20^6 figure isnt what we insert into the Drake equation, and, while youre at it, why some of the Creation science literature is worth considering when tax dollars are at stake but it isnt worth considering when something else is at stake. I wont be able to comment on your position because, as I stated, Im not a biologist/geneticist, but that doesnt mean that I cant get someone who knows what theyre talking about. So, by all means, please comment for the record for the benefit of the gallery.
So hey, thanks for providing material that torpedoes your own position, and supports mine.
***By all means. Thanks for going on record.
145 posted on 01/14/2005 9:00:40 PM PST by Ichneumon
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
Not exactly. It isn't, for example, anything like never having seen a car go faster than 100mph until one did. The speed of light is based on observation, experiments, and theories that are interlocked throughout physics and have proven to be predictive. No such support exists for arbitary numbers.
My point is that 2+2=4, always has, and always will. The speed of light may be similary immutable, and we may be stuck crawling across the universe at the same speed at which light and gravity propagate.
Not only do we lack observations of anything violating this limit, but we also lack a theory about what would be true if it was possible. The speed of light is delighful to speculate on, but it may be as immutable as the weight of the atoms in your body, or any number of more prosaic constants and limits.
We can't have private opinions. Opinions must be blended with scientific opinion, opinion of society.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.