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Originally Posted by firstlight
This year at the Queensland Astrofest Charlie Lineweaver spoke about "Are we Alone" and his argument was pretty convincing that there is no reason at all for the rise of intelligence. Over 200 million years the dinosaurs ruled the Earth with out the need for a superior intelligence. No other intelligence has arisen on this planet other than homo sapiens from Africa, despite the fact that several continents have been isolated for tens to hundreds of million years. The expectation that if there is no superior intelligence occupying the top of the tree then one must arise he referred to as the "Planet of the Apes fallacy" or some such. The only place that we know that intelligence arose appears to have only occurred once, and "trawling through material on the internet for proof" shows that that is very much in debate. Getting back to Charlie, he is very much of the opinion that non terrestrial (that is Earth) life is not a foregone conclusion because there is no reason that it should or has to occur.
I myself cannot believe that there is so much universe out there that life, even intelligent life, does not exist or did not exist or will not exist. I do find his arguments pretty convincing that there may be less that I had previously thought. Sadly this may mean that it is extremely unlikely that any other intelligence may visit us. I can hope, but I fear that he is on the right track.
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With respect to Prof Lineweaver...everything he may have said at Astrofest on this matter was nothing more than supposition and conjecture, based on very little or no evidence. He can't verify any of the assertions he has made, so all he has proffered is nothing more than opinion. It's not even based on theoretical grounds.
Of course he can spin a convincing argument, and gain a captive audience simply because he has the educational background and reputation behind him. But that doesn't make anything he has said correct. Once you've developed a good background in science and understand how science works, you will come to understand that despite what you're told, nothing is a clear cut as it seems. We are far from knowing anything about the possibilities of life, and even intelligent life in the universe. We barely even understand how it came to be on this planet, yet we do know that not very long after its formation, life appeared. That's really all we know, for the most part. Yet you hear scientist make statements that, in all honesty, they know they can't hold up to the glare of objective scrutiny. But they still make them because they, themselves, are trying to make sense of what they see, and/or to hide from the truth that they don't know as much as they'd like to think they do. Especially from those that hold them to their word as someone who has answers.
A scientist who was honest with themselves would know that they don't know the answers, and would say so. Proffering opinion as fact is not honest. Even if it's unintentional on the part of the person offering that opinion.