Intelligent civilizations rarer than one in a million

Originally posted by Blue Shift
That many civilizations would be hard to miss, and yet... where are they?

Well
Here is one:
Wow signal

Potential..and for such quaint tech we are using, very lucky.
Not a open and shut case by any means, but to simply toss it out is doing a disservice to information gathering.

Its absurd to think we are the only advanced (use the term advanced loosely here in regards to us) civilization in the milky way. This much is generally agreed by everyone (with half a brain or more). What is in question is, are they popping by for tea.

I remain open for now on that...want to believe is not the same as believing...I want proof...otherwise, fence sitting.

I watched a special that discussed crop circles. Obviously they could all be man made, but some are really intricate and it was brought up that they could be some sort of message from other planets. There are people trying to figure them out. It is an interesting thought to say the least.

Originally posted by Blue Shift

Originally posted by SaturnFX
But Earth..we know and of this one planet, it is 100% in finding life on planets.

As discussed in another topic, knowing that there is life on Earth in no way allows us to extrapolate to other planets and say sure there is life on any of them. We could very easily be the only planet in the entire universe with life on it, just as we are the only planet in the entire universe that is the third planet orbiting around our Sun. We are unique in an infinite number of ways, and that uniqueness might carry over to being the only one where a bunch of dead chemicals happened to stick together and create a living thing. Or however life happens. We really don't know.

Let me explain to you why your view is illogical.
Now, if we are the only planet currently housing life, then there must be a deity involved. Since I see no evidence of deitys (regardless of how many people demand there are), then we must assume physics works.

Chemical reactions is not some abstract creative process..it is a constant. As you suggested in a laymans way, a bunch of chems stuck together and etc..life happened.
But wherever those chemicals exist, then the same opportunity happens
So consider then some cold hard math

You got say a billion life potential planets (this is insanely conservative, but will use a very low number to make it simple). you then got a billion chances today of these or similar chemical reactions (simple science) to occur as it did on earth

Yesterday you had a billion chances also...2 days, 2 billion chances.

Give the age of the universe...each day giving a billion chances...you got a pretty outstanding number that would crash my calculator trying to figure out.

Life is an absolute out there..the only..only possibility that this is not simply the case is if the bible is accurate and we are in a 6000 year old universe and most of the stars are just little balls of light god put up there for nice evening views..otherwise we live in a tiny bubble.

Again, the only big question seems to be, from contemporary physicist genius to crystal gazing moron is are aliens visiting us. The are they even out there question has been pushed down to the twits and religious to debate...but math solved the overall question.

Originally posted by jimmiec
I watched a special that discussed crop circles. Obviously they could all be man made, but some are really intricate and it was brought up that they could be some sort of message from other planets. There are people trying to figure them out. It is an interesting thought to say the least.

Crop circles are a distraction. Ignore them if you ever want to get a clear understanding of what we know so far.

Its akin to anonymous videos on youtube showing motherships landing in mexico city...total bull (at least that's where the starting stance should be).

Call it Crop Art..because that's really all it is for now. pretty..but just art done usually by a few people with a stick and some rope.

Originally posted by Blue Shift
And if we can rule out contamination, then the most we can say is that life happened at least twice. But no more.

Wanted to hit on this also.
Imagine you found someone with a horrible virus..like..zombieism or something.
It would be a wow, amazing, but ok...this isn't catastrophic..just some guy that is now a zombie..1 case (earth).

Then you go out and see another person...he looks fine so far (mars).
Then you look at a 3rd, and its a zombie (your potential 2nd candidate).
At what point do you then say..ok, we got zombies....lets prepare..

If medicine did things your way then we would be 100% reactionary (and polio would still be a thing)

If say you were this advanced in technology and a way more advanced civilization then us humans here on Earth. Say you have been here see the advancements we make blowing each other up while polluting the Earth like we have another.
Would you actually want to make contact? I wouldn't myself. But I would watch as I believe they are doing.

And if they know how money hungry the airwaves are here they might not respond due to they don't want billed for the programs they pick up from us or tossed in prison for not purchasing the show like we do to our own people.

Originally posted by Connman
If say you were this advanced in technology and a way more advanced civilization then us humans here on Earth. Say you have been here see the advancements we make blowing each other up while polluting the Earth like we have another.
Would you actually want to make contact? I wouldn't myself. But I would watch as I believe they are doing.

What makes you believe that "they" would be somehow better in these regards?
Maybe the reason they even got off their planet was because they had to, in order to leave the radioactive war torn dump they created...necessity is the mother of invention.

Hell, they may be taking pointers..."wow, they have all those nukes and yet there are still independent nations? why don't they just nuke the ones that refuse obedience like we did".

reply to post by SaturnFX

I wouldn't call that intelligence my friend.

Originally posted by Connman
reply to post by SaturnFX

 

I wouldn't call that intelligence my friend.

Just stating that aliens are, by definition, alien in their intent..it would be outside our understanding of motivation.

In the end, they may be here to chat to the dolphins, or the ants...seeing us as the way we would see a termite (just eating the wood)

The flaw I see is we say many types of life could exist but only seem to think one type of intelligence could exist.

We also assume that any higher civilisation must have evolved along similar lines to ours.

Let's say for example a civilisation evolved along the lines of a hive mind. A group that had no need for television, radio or war. Did not care about if other life exists elsewhere. They presumably would have a similar chance to reach a high level civilisation as we do but may take a very different path and have very different drives that fired their progress.

They are by definition alien so why do we think our intelligence would be universal?
We have no yard stick even when it comes to types of intelligence on this planet and are now finding many dumb animals are not that dumb after all.

Humans are basically problem solvers. Is the result of those actions really intelligence anyway?

Originally posted by Blue Shift
So far, the evidence that we have for alien existence is zero

Besides our own, which lends a lot of legitimacy to the idea.

Since we are space capable with global communications networks established through satellites etc.
Monitoring space via telescopes.

We are that 1 in a million. But the 'million' is only one tiny slice of the pie. There are trillions of variables.

We haven't stepped foot on another planet, yet we will claim to know what life exists outside our solar system, and we'll even wager the odds!

This all reminds me of the updates to what dinosaurs looked like... Scientists say the T-Rex had feathers, no it could fly! Oh my goodness, such research!

We can't discover 5% of our own oceans but by golly, I tell you what mister, we are fairly certain life outside of our planet is one in a million! We know this because we shoot radio waves into the sky and no one shoots radier waves back. Science!

I KNOW RIGHT! We may be so BASIC compared to the majority of species we cant even comprehend how they might communicate.

We BARELY had rockets for 60 years LOL and we're declaring the universe is empty. WOW THE ARROGANCE!!!!!!!!

reply to post by SloAnPainful

AHAHAHAH what are the odds that WE, US..yes YOU! Are the 1 in a million in our entire galaxy! WOW Im gonna try the lotto right now Im feelin very very lucky..

Originally posted by yourmaker

Originally posted by Blue Shift
So far, the evidence that we have for alien existence is zero

Besides our own, which lends a lot of legitimacy to the idea.

Since we are space capable with global communications networks established through satellites etc.
Monitoring space via telescopes.

We are that 1 in a million. But the 'million' is only one tiny slice of the pie. There are trillions of variables.

reply to post by SaturnFX


You do know how we find other planets right?, by monitoring there passage arcros its sun?

Now, the idea of a flashlight is more than likely a bit silly, BUT the signal you produce would in effect be acting with the same principle as a flash light. Use a specific type of radiation, I dunno, anything that would potentialy alert another observer to something anomylous. But im not a theoretical physicist nor a nuclear scientist so my knowledge of such things just like everyone else on this board is fairly limited, inlcuding yourself im sure.

I just think if you were to take the idea seriously of there being other lifeforms out there, im pretty sure there are better ways of finding them than waiting on a radio signal that more than likely does not exist.

Then what? wait another 5 years to see if they answer back with an equal light?

Ten years in the grand scheme of things isnt exactly much, especialy regarding the time frame of potential contact with an alien civilization. We just dont have long enough internet tubes unfortunatly.

The DNA of dolphins is similar to humans, they are intelligent in their own way but have zero chance of sending a detectable signal to another civilization light years away (that we know of).

1 in a million sounds a little over optimistic considering just the flukes of DNA development here on Earth. The real odds of some alien civilization evolving in a manner that would allow them to communicate using directed electromagnetic waves must be much smaller. And everybody has already pointed out because of the age of the universe and vast distances the chances of receiving a signal in "our time" is infinitely small. Tesla was probably one of the first to actually hear signals from the storms on Jupiter or Saturn and that was in 1899.

Originally posted by SaturnFX
Now, if we are the only planet currently housing life, then there must be a deity involved. Since I see no evidence of deitys (regardless of how many people demand there are), then we must assume physics works.

I think you need to check your own logic on this. There are too many assumptions in these two sentences that I don't even know where to begin.

Originally posted by yourmaker

Originally posted by Blue Shift
So far, the evidence that we have for alien existence is zero

Besides our own, which lends a lot of legitimacy to the idea.

Unless we're unique, which is possible. Our own existence proves that exactly one planet out of the billions in the universe has life on it. That's all it proves. It proves that it's possible, but it says absolutely nothing about the probability that it could ever happen again.

Originally posted by SaturnFX
Then you go out and see another person...he looks fine so far (mars).
Then you look at a 3rd, and its a zombie (your potential 2nd candidate).
At what point do you then say..ok, we got zombies....lets prepare..

We don't have any evidence/proof of movie-type, rising from the dead zombies, either. The minute we find two other alien species, then yes, we can start worrying or extrapolating about how many others might be out there. So far, though, just like zombies, we haven't found any aliens.

Originally posted by Blue Shift

Originally posted by SaturnFX
Now, if we are the only planet currently housing life, then there must be a deity involved. Since I see no evidence of deitys (regardless of how many people demand there are), then we must assume physics works.

I think you need to check your own logic on this. There are too many assumptions in these two sentences that I don't even know where to begin.

No, its practical
It is so mathematically small that we are the only lifeforms in the universe that the only explanation one could conclude of such a result is due to magic (aka, a deity)

I tend to dismiss magical thinking by default..