Are we alone? Why do we care?

Today I want to make a few comments on a recent lecture given by Paul Davies. His lecture (The Eerie Silence) addresses the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Quotes and comments;

1. He opens by saying the the biggest question out there is, are we alone in the universe? [1.]

- Isn't the biggest question does god exist? certainly people in the past thought so... but I suppose if you're certain God does not exist, then I suppose this does become the biggest question. It's not the biggest question for me; as I'm at least bright enough to realize I can't know that there isn't a God.

It intrigues me that it's perfectly acceptable to search for ETI (something we have no evidence of whatsoever) but it's not acceptable (among royal socity types) to search for god... of whom many claim there is abundant evidence. We see bias at work here. Davies claims that what the Seti Institute (not Yeti institute) does is real science. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't... but as of yet there is no evidence. He claims (humorously) that Seti is a sexy subject... well, maybe... but I think the search (quest) for God is more profound.

2. I find it interesting that Paul Allen (the rampant anti creationist) is funding a major SETI project (radio telescopes in California). It has struck me over the years that the more opposed to creation a person is, the more attracted they are to the search for ETI. (This can't be a purely scientific thing then can it? i.e. it may be science, or use some of the methods employed by pedestrian scientists, but the impulse is spiritual or philosophical if you prefer; i.e. metaphysical.)

The hope of the Allen project is that it will greatly increase the 'size' of the search; ie. the area looked at (listened to). This ignores the assumption of some, that if ETIs existed they would have spread throughout the universe by now. If that were the case it wouldn't help to increase the search area.

3. Davies says 'we have absolutely no evidence intelligent life exists beyond earth.'

4. He admits this is a speculative project... (so this would seem to admit that a subject can be both speculative and scientific)

5. Davies claims the problem is that this is a needle in a haystack search... but is it? How do we know? Again; this denies the idea I mentioned earlier. (Some people have argued that if there were ETI the universe would have at least machines scattered everywhere... exploring and so forth.)

6. He gives one possible explanation for the silence as being that no one out there know we exist; that since our radio signals have only being going out for a hundred years... anyone more than a hundred light years away wouldn't know we were here. (This too ignores the colonization project as it were... the fact ETIs would have spread out everywhere in the galaxy.)

7. At the 20 min. mark he admits aliens might have sent out probes...

8. He talks about Drake's famous equation (which I consider one of the greatest examples of wishful thinking out there... as it's utterly arbitrary, and not an equation at all.)

9. He claims there might be a trillion earth like planets in our galaxy alone (if I heard him right). I can only say then, that if the grand theory of evolution were true, we would most certainly not be alone... and that the galaxy would be filled with evidence of alien existence. (It's a relatively simple thing to send machines out into space after all... and theory states that many of these planets have existed for many billions of years before earth appeared.)

10. 'We don't know how life began' he says. (In my view we don't know how it could have began.)

11. "Man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he emerged only by chance. " - Jaques Monod

- Davies calls this, a rather sexist remark. Good grief... pc speech has turned our academics into clowns.) Well; contra Monod, we don't know this at all... though I suspect he's right for the reason I mentioned earlier.

By chance? I agree with people who say that if life did 'emerge' by undirected means it could not have been by chance. (The odds are just far too great.)

12. "Life is almost bound to arise... wherever conditions are similar to earth." - Christian deDuve

- This is the more popular view in our day. Notice that he just assumes there are planets similar to earth.) This is the idea 'life' happens by some kind of law; presumably a law of chemistry or physics. (If this were true you would think it would be easy to create life with OOL experiments... and we know this doesn't happen. This being the case I don't see how it can be a law at all.) I don't think 'life' can happen by chance, and I think OOL experiments have shown it doesn't happen by law either.

13. "Life is a cosmic imperative'' deDuve says.

14. Davies says life might have started on mars and come to earth. Why would anyone say that? A totally dead, barren planet gave birth to life on earth? This makes absolutely no sense to me, and show how desperate this alien hunters (whisperers) are. I consider this 'idea' to be only comical; fit only for a satirical sf novel.

15. It's interesting to me that scientists can talk about Mother Nature, but it's taboo to speak of god. (Gee; isn't mother nature a god? or a goddess? she/it certainly isn't an entity in the real world.)

16. Intelligence taks billions of years to evolve he says.

- He doesn't know that. That's theory and speculation. He doesn't bother to tell us how this could happen. No one knows how it could happen, but he feels free to just assume it. (ie. we know there is no god and therefore no creation; therefore e. must be true.) The idea that 'time' (the great wand waving fairy godmother of materialism) can do all things is a logical, philosophical fallacy. This idea really means that given enough time anything is possible; ie. time doesn't do anything, it just allows chance events to happen. The trouble with this idea is that 'life' violates all we know of chemistry and physics.

17. He claims earth is the most earth like planet. This is sophistry. Earth isn't earth like... it's earth itself. When we say x is like y we don't mean it is exactly the same. That makes no sense.

18. He talks of 'unknownons'...

- I take these are particles (or?) we haven't discovered yet. (It never seems to strike people that we may not yet be clever enough to discover god... that this is something that might await us in the future... when we've taken some advance in thinking or in technology... or made some new discovery. Atheists seem to take it for granted that they're clever enough to know if god exists.)

19. He tells us he's sure biological intelligence will be superseded by machine intelligence. (That makes no sense to me.) He talks about something called Quintelligence; some form of quantum intelligence... the size of a suitcase... out there between the galaxies. We see how desperate people are to answer the Fermi paradox. Apparently the greatest horror these people can imagine is that we are indeed unique. They will go to any length to escape this conclusion. One might wonder why. You see by this example how one need never abandon a cherished hypothesis if one doesn't want to.

20. Why should we do seti he muses. Well; he tells us it forces ust to ask the questions we should ask; eg. what is life? what is intelligence? what is the destiny of the human race?

- Should? Does he forget we're just matter in motion? This is a very weak response to his own question. If people want to play this game that's fine; but in no way should people be forced to pay taxes for such a thing. We can ask all these questions without seti.

21. He says that a quintelligence might be uninterested in anything beyond itself and so not seek us out. This can't be known of course... but it flies in the face of our interest in SETI... and presumes that these intelligences are all the same. I find that hard to believe.

Notes;
1. The eerie silence - Paul Davies; video lecture; Royal Society