Intelligent life is common in the Universe: Free Public Debate

[renormalised (Carl)]

Has to face war crimes tribunal at the Galactic Council, for crimes most fowl (pun fully intended)

[gman (Grant)]

One would have to go right out on a limb to say that there hasn't been, is not or ever will be intelligent life somewhere in the universe.

I am one who does believe that there is, was or will be due to the distance and time from our vantage point.

[Lumen Miner (Mitchell)]

Originally Posted by marki

I am begining to think we have past the point of no return and are on the slippery slope of self extinction.

Mark

I like to think of it as the Earths / a planets / the universes, automatic debug function.

This would apply to all, habitable planets in the universe.

This is only my personal opinion and pure speculation.

It looks oldly to me that evolution would coincide, directly and proportionally to the elements surrounding a species, during their existence phase.

The elements are present and used via, processes available / developed, during that stage of their evolutionary progress.
Eventually there will be a point, where either consumption of the available raw elements is ceased / alternatives sourced, or the inhabitants of the planet erradicate themselves via over population and stripping the planet of it's available resources. Rendering them obsolete as a species.

If evolution does not provide a means do develope alternative resources / find them, then the game is over, we lost.

So the question is, have we already lost? Or are we just skimming through by the skin of our teeth..?

[Lumen Miner (Mitchell)]

Originally Posted by avandonk

Can anyone remember the sci fi movie where the aliens were taking humans to a better place. The 'hero' in the movie worked out that the aliens Book 'To Serve Man' was a cook book!

Bert

I think that was The Simpsons...

[marki]

It's official, Sanders sentenced for crimes against aves. He is to be tarred, feathered, plucked and sent to the barders. His remains will be used to fertilise corn crops.

Mark

[renormalised (Carl)]

Sentence to be carried out at the Crow of dawn

[marki]

Humanity weeps, now they will never know what the twelve secret herbs and spices were. This knowledge is in the exclusive possession of their fowl overlords.

Mark

[bobson (Bob)]

So, this is what happens when weather is bad

[starlooker (Duc)]

I am not sure how anyone can just say "we are alone".

If we exist here, then why can't life exist elsewhere? We are made of matter that exists abundantly elsewhere in the universe. So what is it that makes us unique?

If you were on an island in the Pacific, with no way of getting off it, and no way of communicating with anyone else outside of the island, would it be correct to think that there is no life off the island?

Earth is just an island, in space.

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

I remember a program or article many years ago that looked at the possibilty of what possible creatures would look like if survived in different condition. Mostly based on gravity but the possibility exists for aliens to exist under different Nitrogen, oxygen mixes.

So the possibilties could be enormous. Whether they would be inteligent enough or not is a different matter. Also the speed of light and the distances to be covered to determin the existance of intellegent life could be at what time they have or even developed enough.

Anything is possible we just may no have enough technological advancement to determin this. SKA may give us a little more infomation if it is ever used for SETI.

I also beleive that there is more integigent life out there but I also beleive that we are not advanced enough to determin it yet. Time and light speed travel may help if possible.

[Robh (Rob)]

You can quote all the statistics you like about the number of suitable stars etc, but until some form of even the most primitive life is found elsewhere or intelligent signals are received from afar, there is no evidence that any intelligent life exists anywhere else in this Universe.

The existence of life implies the existence of the basic chemicals of life.
However, the existence of the basic chemicals of life does not imply the existence of life.

We may, quite simply, be unique.

Regards, Rob

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Originally Posted by marki

Bert you will get no argument from me on this one. Our species has been the most destructive ever to evolve on this planet. I am begining to think we have past the point of no return and are on the slippery slope of self extinction.

Mark

Sadly for the billions of other species that share the Earth with humans, I agree with you.

Bert makes some very valid points - things have drastically went downhill in the space of 30 years.

Wishing things would fix themselves, or go away if ignored, doesn't think them. This is exactly what our government and corporate sectors are currently doing.

Dave

[Robh (Rob)]

Mother Earth has itself evolved an inanimate intelligence. She automatically varies her systems to changing internal and external inputs. The life she supports must re-adapt or perish.
Man is attacking her life-systems with increasing effect. Mother Earth is reacting to these inputs and producing an environment hostile to man. Once man is gone, she will have plenty of time to restore the balance and allow a more friendly species to evolve again.

Regards, Rob

[renormalised (Carl)]

How do you know that the intelligence is inanimate??. We know so little about what life actually is that for all we know the planet might itself be a living organism (remember the Gaia Hypothesis). Intelligence in this form might be so far beyond us that we wouldn't even recognise it as such. We'd have no way of knowing unless someone had figured it out intuitively or we could communicate with it. In either case, we're just stabbing in the dark so far as our present condition is concerned. James Lovelock's theory wasn't all that well accepted in the scientific community and whilst they see some resemblance to their latter ways of thinking, I doubt if any biologist/ecologist/evolutionary scientist would consider the planet itself to be alive. That would be too much for them to consider and would be quite outside their world paradigm. A lot of very unpalatable ideas and possibilities would be brought up if they had to consider it as factual existence.

[bobson (Bob)]

I'd like to see your faces once you find out that we are aliens on this planet.

[Robh (Rob)]

Originally Posted by bobson

I'd like to see your faces once you find out that we are aliens on this planet.

The way we treat our planet, you'd think we were!
Where's home?

Regards, Rob

[avandonk]

Self awareness is not unique to humankind. Life in my opinion is the Universes way of becoming self aware. It is also Carl Sagans who I stole the idea from!

Thirty percent of your dry body weight are organisms (bacteria etc) that are not you. Without them you would not survive. These resident organisms live in a symbiotic relationship with all of us. Disease can really be thought of as this balance going awry.

Where does an individual start and end. We actually all rely on the vast web of life that covers this planet for our survival.

I happen to think that the human brain and others are body temperature quantum computers at some underlying level. I can think of no other reason for the existence of self awareness or conciousness. Quantum entanglement then can link everything together in ways we can only guess at.

This is all conjecture of course but is testable. We do not even know where to start. Perhaps the development of quantum computers which is happening as we speak can shed some light on this.

I have done a lot of my best work while asleep! Or outside for a smoke not even conciously thinking of the problem I had, and an idea would materialise that quite often was correct.

Bert

[renormalised (Carl)]

Or maybe, the Universe (or any universe) is just the playground which life itself creates in order to grow and learn through physical existence.

Look at it in this way...how non trivial/random, beautiful and elegant are the underlying structure, the constants and mathematical constructs of the Universe. So finely balanced and precise. As if it were designed and yet if you put this to any scientist these days, they'd laugh at you...start quoting about the weak and/or strong anthropic principle and say they find no evidence for it to be anything other than some random chance occurrence. A "fluke of nature", "the natural outcome of the laws of physics", if you will. Having to consider that the Universe is not some random, chance event but that it may have been staged brings up some rather unpalatable ideas for scientists. It invokes a creator (now I can hear the creationists singing with joy about this....don't open your mouths yet, fellas. You've completely misinterpreted/misunderstood everything right from the start). However, there is no need for a specific being or entity to have been a "creator", not in the sense of a religious interpretation of what creation means. There's no "God" sitting on a throne somewhere waving his or her wand and making everything "according to their likeness". What if, since we are invoking the notion that all life is interconnected, on a higher level of consciousness/intelligence/being, all life is in fact the one living entity, but with countless parts making up all the living beings in existence. That living entity would have abilities and intelligence far beyond anything we could even dream of ourselves. Our minds would barely be able to touch it, but only because we choose not to. We live by what we see, and yet there is so much of the Universe that we don't see. We've become enamoured of the materialistic way of viewing things and our science is dependent upon it. What if we're missing 99% of everything just because we refuse to look beyond some small little box of reality, just because it offends our sensibilities. Because we can't test for something doesn't mean it's not testable. It just means we haven't the capabilities yet to test it. Remember, we're still evolving, but at different rates depending on what you're looking at. And just because we haven't figured out a way of observing or testing something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There's also the corollary of that statement too, but that's the beauty of science. We can actually do something about finding out about it through study and careful measurement, intuition and leaps of logic. Religion, on the other hand, requires us to follow the dictates of others based on blind faith, with no supporting evidence (or very little, except for that which is twisted into a semblance of evidence). It relies on fear and insecurity, and is exploited by those wishing to have power over those who feel fear and insecurity. Yet they are the least secure and most fearful.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Where's home?

The planet Coozbean....yep yep yep yep yep!!!

[avandonk]

Were you talkin' to me? Carl.

Here is a very simple 'gedanken' experiment.

What if as all of what we see now was at the same place and the same time in a hypothetical singularity. This means at the quantum entanglement level everything in the Universe is connected! Could it be the evolution of the Universe is controlled by some feedback mechanism we can only guess at. So the whole shebang is one feedback controlled evolving entity. A self referential organism?

Bert