<html><body><div>You spent so much time trying to show off your brains that you forgot to think. I didn't claim that the universe is engineered. I said that there is no evidence showing that it hasn't been. They are not the same. The evidence does not need to be some huge structure that is obviously "built". Simply nudging some things around a few billion years ago so that they arrive in the right spots a hundred billion years from now would be quite enough and hardly noticeable to us. </div>
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<div>Your responses are absurd. You do nothing to argue the point. You attack as if I am the enemy with name calling, and talk of unicorns, starships, and girls with cups? I wonder what drugs you may be on. No one thinks of Douglas Adams as scripture. It's just humor. I don't suppose you know what that is?</div>
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<div>Your enemy is not me - it's your own lack of knowledge. As long as you prance around and think you know everything that is out there and assume that advanced civilizations will fit the molds we place them into, you will be confounded by the Fermi Bifurcation just as Zeno was stuck on his dichotomies. You only allow two choices - we are all there ever was, or the universe would be full. I'm sorry, but it's just not that neat.</div>
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<div><BR><BR>> "the universe does not appear to be engineered" - this is not a<BR>> statement of fact. It is opinion based on very little observation.<BR><BR>HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! This is so ridiculous to be best left standing as is.</div>
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<div><BR>> "The universe is not engineered" would be a fact if you could prove<BR>> it, but you can't. Yes, I know we have tons and tons of images from<BR><BR>"Images", huh? Don't let a gang of astrophysicists and particle physicists<BR>gang up on you in a dark alley. They both got so many nasty tricks you'd<BR>never knew what hit you. <BR><BR>> telescopes. But in comparison to what is out there we know close to<BR><BR>What do you think is out there we haven't seen yet? Does it interact<BR>with photons? Does it have mass? Is it observable, even in principle?<BR>Does it largely consist of invisible, pink unicorns, and girls with cups?</div>
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<div><BR>> nothing. We don't even know what's under our own ice caps or deep<BR>> within our own oceans. We have no clue about some of what has been<BR><BR>Precisely -- we know a lot more about what is out there than what<BR>we've got a few 10 km below our feet -- though you would be surprised<BR>what we do know about that.<BR><BR>> churned back into the earth over the 4.5 billion years it's been<BR><BR>Um, atoms? Those things in the PSE?<BR><BR>> here. We are just now starting to grasp some of our own history. We<BR><BR>A star is a much simpler object than a cell. So is history of stellar<BR>objects.<BR><BR>> don't even know for sure if Neanderthals bred with ancient H. sapiens.<BR>> Your "fact" is similar to stating that it is not raining in my country<BR>> because I see sunshine coming through the cracks in my blinds.<BR><BR>Your facts don't even exist. All you've uttered so far is mythical bullshit,<BR>and opinions. You have to do much, much better than that.<BR><BR>> As to the second fact, "could" does not equal "would". Otherwise it<BR>> would not require it's own word. "Would" is an assumption based on<BR>> what little we know of life on our own planet. Going back to the first<BR><BR>We're not talking about life on this planet. We're talking about<BR>large-scale signatures of engineered objects, or, rather, remarkable<BR>absence thereof. <BR><BR>> point, we know so little about our own solar system we can't even<BR>> safely say that ETs haven't been on our planet. It's entirely possible<BR><BR>Because you're being able to write this message and because there are<BR>stars in the night sky we're in nobody's smart lightcone. Unlike Hollywood<BR>or anime, aliens don't come in cute little starships out of nowhere,<BR>and then leave. <BR><BR>> that we are the result of genetic mingling. We're so early in the<BR>> stages of our intelligence that we barely even know what to look for.<BR><BR>Do you think that thermodynamics is just window-dressing, or optional?<BR>Or that you can arbitrarily relabel observables to fit your crazy-moon<BR>theory, which is a rehash of tired old animism?<BR><BR>> Heck, it was just in the last few decades that we even thought life<BR>> could survive around volcanic vents. Of course, we are out on the<BR>> fringes of the galaxy. Assuming that any other mind would think like<BR>> us - which is a stretch considering that most of us don't even think<BR>> alike - it may simply not be worth the energy to come way out here<BR>> where we are.<BR><BR>Life is about atoms and entropy gradients. There's plenty of atoms<BR>and entropy gradients where you sit. Any inoculated petri dish will<BR>grow radial colonies (temporal snapshots stacked on top of each<BR>other are their light cones), which only stop when they run out of substrate.<BR>You are substrate. <BR><BR>> To say the only choices are that we're first or that there is ALWAYS<BR>> an impenetratable wall is a large and unnecessary leap. I've seen<BR><BR>Absolutely not, anthropic effect doubly applies. You will always observe<BR>yourself with the probability of unity, regardless how rare you are, and<BR>you can't observe very well if you never happened, by virtue of my ancestors<BR>eating the primeval muck that would have become your ancestors.<BR><BR>> dozens of explanations from minds that have become so efficient that<BR>> they hardly use any energy and can survive off star light alone to<BR><BR>Even reversible logic is not completely reversible. It's also slow, <BR>and 10^23 beings would still need a great many photons, which need to<BR>be reradiated in deep infrared.<BR><BR>Where are these photons? Where is the dark mass, at least?<BR><BR>> post singularity beings who have slowed their clocks to 1 cycle every<BR>> million years to get a better view of the universe. But all that<BR><BR>If you slow your clock cycle too much to keep up with those joneses<BR>who haven't, you're crunchy, and good with ketchup. In general, the<BR>joneses are glowing-red hot, and are between one million to one<BR>billion times faster than you.<BR><BR>> speculation isn't necessary when the entire argument can be shut down<BR>> by a single possibility: Mind is uncommon.<BR><BR>That's something what we've been saying the whole time. Fermi's paradoxon isn't.<BR><BR>> "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely,<BR>> mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down<BR>> the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space." -<BR><BR>Man, what a lousy book. I never understood why so many consider it<BR>scripture.</div>
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