[extropy-chat] Re: cosmic silence

[Russell Wallace]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 04:16:20 -0800 (PST), Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> --- Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Yes, but you have zero evidence for that estimate. There's no reason
> > at all to believe it to be e.g. 1e-6 rather than 1e-60, other than
> > that you (in general, not just you personally) _want_ it to be the
> > higher number. Which goes back to my puzzlement - why do so many
> > people want there to be aliens in our galaxy?
> 
> Why do you want there to not be aliens?

Because most of the proposed answers to "then where are they now?" (at
least, most of the ones that appear semi-plausible) are disconcerting
ones.

Of course, the universe isn't obliged to be such that I won't find it
disconcerting, and I'm not claiming to know there _aren't_ any aliens
in our part of the universe. I'm merely pointing out there is no
reason to believe there _are_.

Your turn ^.^

- Russell