[extropy-chat] Re: cosmic silence

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > 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_.

Well, I believe NASA has something to dispute with you. They now claim
that alien life is most likely now living on Mars:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_life_050216.html

"WASHINGTON -- A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space
officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong
evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and
sustained by pockets of water.

The scientists, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke of NASA’s Ames Research
Center in Silicon Valley, told the group that they have submitted their
findings to the journal Nature for publication in May, and their paper
currently is being peer reviewed.

What Stoker and Lemke have found, according to several attendees of the
private meeting, is not direct proof of life on Mars, but methane
signatures and other signs of possible biological activity remarkably
similar to those recently discovered in caves here on Earth."

Now, we can quibble over 'likely' vs. 'is'. I am sure that even the
most optimistic scientist would not say there _are_ aliens until they
have the BEM in their test tube.

However, one must be able to expect the probabilities are in favor of
life being bountiful if we can show that two planets in this solar
system have life on them both. If we find life on Europa, Ganymede, and
Titan, then we must conclude that anywhere life is possible, life
*will* happen. Given this, we must also conclude that anywhere life
does happen, it will evolve as best as the environment allows, being a
stochastic process. Any environment as amicable to life as ours should
develop intelligence at some point.

WRT Dan's claims that pessimism wins these arguments, sorry, wrong.
History is littered with the wrong predictions of pessimists who
professed to be experts. Why do you think that cryptozoologists are so
underfoot? Their critics have been wrong so many times in the past.

=====
Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Sadomikeyism


		
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