New Doubts About Extraterrestrial Life??

Well reading this thread go tthe though popping into my head about what life actually is. If you take a step back and realize that everything and all around us is energy, that is what we are energy. To me I will have to jump on the wagon of denying ignorance. If (in my opinion) you do not believe that there is life elsewhere and in abundance you are ignorant to life itself. To see how many different types of life alone are on this planet and keep popping up with new discoveries of different life where we least expected it. We are also looking at the possibility of life on other worlds, as life developed here on earth. On a cosmological time scale we are but mere seconds at the end of the day. Tell me, how we can say for certain that there is no life elsewhere.
Tech

My opinion on this subject never changes: The universe is probably teeming with life, very little of it will be humanoid, most of it will be predatory, and it will very likely consume us if given the chance. Screaming 'WE'RE HERE! RIGHT HERE!' in a jungle, is pretty dumb imo. The fact so many people associate life in the universe with ourselves (as humanoids) is predictable and amusing. I would hope more people would be hoping and praying that life out there is nothing like us, otherwise we are likely to be in big, big trouble.

I flew over that paper, the most dry and boring paper i have seen in a long time.
(Mind you, i always hated math in school too)

You cannot prove or disprove life on other planets by math and/or probabilities.

To be honest, i dont give a # about their "math" and curves and statistics, its meaningless.

More interesting for me, some significant discoveries in *established* sciences, eg. the discovery of the first "earth-like" planets outside our solar system and so forth.

Not only am i convinced that vast life is "out there" - i am actually also pretty sure that OUR life actually came from "out there" via comets, interstellar dust/microbes etc.

This dry study can hardly deny the fact that there ARE "many" (to say it mildly) planets in the habitable zone around many stars, in MANY galaxies.

Add:

I could make a study about the extremely statistical "unlikelihood" that humans evolved as they are today, from the first microbes on that planet. NEVERTHELESS, we exist..along with countless other species on our planet.

In terms of new "insight" or food for thoughts..that paper did not give me anything but a headache

Originally posted by Balkan
My opinion on this subject never changes: The universe is probably teeming with life, very little of it will be humanoid, most of it will be predatory, and it will very likely consume us if given the chance. Screaming 'WE'RE HERE! RIGHT HERE!' in a jungle, is pretty dumb imo. The fact so many people associate life in the universe with ourselves (as humanoids) is predictable and amusing. I would hope more people would be hoping and praying that life out there is nothing like us, otherwise we are likely to be in big, big trouble.

you have a very good point here. Seeing that all species on our own planet basically eat each other - it's how life is. It makes a lot of sense to think that the SAME principle would apply for the whole universe, the same law of "survival of the fittest". There is no "good" or "evil"..but there is a STRONG desire for each species to survive, there is no mercy or any other, similar HUMAN concepts valid in nature.

Maybe, it is not far off to speak of a "horror scenario" which is worse than being somewhere in a remote jungle with danger literally around each corner. Maybe we look at the stars in amazement and dream....but in reality its a nightmare and we would do good to hide.

The Bayesian 'theory' sounds more like being used here as a debating tool using stats to contradict stats themselves, as stats are flawed because they are open to interpretation+expectation=belief

In this case it seems these guys are using 'just because' logic as a logical argument in one way, when it in fact has to have two ways, the other being that because we are here, there HAS to be others.

Carl Sagan, you could argue in some ways, was wrong about extraordinary evidence when, if you look inward, we are in fact the extraordinary evidence, René Descartes, "I think therefore I am" in the popular interpretation says just that.

Bayes was a Reverend minister, and you can bet your boots all that he did was in itself based on a belief system, and of course the bible itself acknowledges that we come from dust, and that we return to dust, so the bible is away ahead of us scientifically since it was written millenia ago.
What you have then is a couple of guys ignoring the existence of unknown quantities of cosmic dust, or pretending to, for the sake of argument.

reply to post by flexy123

I don't see how you can look at it any other way. The perfect model is right here. As you said, everything eats everything else. The survival instinct dominates all life (that includes us!).

The biggest clue for me that the whole Grey/Humanoid alien is a big bunch of baloney is that we humanized it, just like like we do with our monsters and creatures we imagine for our stories and movies and everything else that scares the poop out of us.

So I laugh at these humanoid races that fill the galaxies like a Star Trek scenario.

It stands to reason if there is an intelligent species out there that it will probably eat us. Isn't that how we view lower life forms? Some people have been known to eat other people.

The reason we don't hear from intelligent species it there is very likely they have learned not to make themselves know to other more predatory species.

There is likely benevolent intelligence out there somewhere, just like it is also likely there is violent war-like intelligence. Humankind is proof that both are at least possible.

It also stands to reason that there will be a balance of life in the universe. So there will be just enough prey for the predators.

I doubt very seriously that we are the apex predator of the universe.

You know, I'm more worried about the diseases and bacteria we may encounter out there than some Alien creature.

reply to post by Balkan


Sounds more like you're saying that most species are in fact human or humanoid, 'cos "they will eat us" while laughing at the idea that 'aliens' would be human or humanoid, I'm lost there??

reply to post by smurfy
No, I'm saying we are (arguably) the apex predator of planet Earth. It seems we will eat just about anything that can be eaten. Why wouldn't another intelligent species look at us as food? Because they are all benevolent? I wish I could be that optimistic.

There probably are humanoid lifeforms somewhere. I just doubt that the majority of intelligent life in the universe will be humanoid.

Drake equation is nothing but pure arrogance, " Aliens cannot exist because they cannot get here ( using technology similar to what WE possess)".
Sure its good to look all intelligent, come up with fancy names and scientific equations that blow the minds of the layman and then look smug when they can't prove you wrong as if you have just been proven right by their inablilty to counter your argument.
Why does the arrogance of mankind think that they, the aliens or any aliens for that matter, be using the same technology or be at the same technological stage that we are?

Any person who thinks that there is no life OTHER than man in the universe must also believe that the sun goes round the Earth and that the Earth is also flat in if you want me to come up wih fancy equations to prove it I can, you just won't be able to understand it or prove otherwise.