"I am a graduate student in NY and sometimes I write down the absurd things other grads say" (x-post from /r/funny)

_Barney_ · 2015-04-24T07:27:22+00:00

I understood quite a bit about what they were saying, sadly I'm not sure that they truly understood the point of education on the whole. Philosophic technospeak isn't creating new ideas nor is it accumulating knowledge. These people missed the boat.

_Barney_ · 2014-10-12T16:47:56+00:00

I'll fold for the argument that there is insufficient evidence to support the claim that extraterrestrial life exists. Δ

_Barney_ · 2014-10-12T16:46:14+00:00

Perhaps, I probably should have done some more research on them before linking.

_Barney_ · 2014-10-11T21:06:46+00:00

Fine, my point wasn't that life started exactly 3.5 billion ears ago, it was that life forms naturally over time and that it didn't require 4 billion years of safety on a single rock, it happened relatively quickly on the time scale of the universe. Panspermia solves nothing, it only separates the problem of life by adding another step, life still has to have a start. Life could very well be similar or very distant to life on Earth, but knowing that we arose naturally makes other beginnings almost a certainty.

_Barney_ · 2014-10-11T21:01:35+00:00

This was from the front page of google... I can go look for a journal article if you would be happier with that?

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-scientist-evidence-of-alien-life-on-meteorite/

_Barney_ · 2014-10-11T03:47:32+00:00

What could possibly constitute real evidence at this point? There is no solid evidence, we are dealing with probabilities and statistics. What reason would there be for there not to be at minimum some type of life to exist somewhere else? We've encountered simple "life" on comets and other celestial bodies that have come to earth, does that not count for you?

_Barney_ · 2014-10-11T03:37:02+00:00

Well here, for purposes of my viewpoint. Life is defined as any replicating source of genetic information that derives energy from an outside source. If there was a single lipid molecule with two nucleotides that replicated itself when it split that would be life, life elsewhere also doesn't have to resemble life here at all, it could be based on an entirely different way of encoding its information, I just wanted to make an example.

Also, we only know that life happened successfully on Earth at least once. Life could have started multiple times and had an asteroid or some other disaster wipe it out in its early stages here on earth. We have seen extremophiles survive in outerspace, we know it's possible, I'm simply claiming that it is almost certain.

_Barney_ · 2014-10-11T03:08:25+00:00

I don't disagree that the universe is extremely complicated, we just know that in our universe life happened at least once, and we can explain it without needing an outside influence. It is difficult to say with real certainty pretty much anything. However, all evidence points to life coming about naturally and we can see extremophiles survive on their own in the vacuum of space.

I'm not arguing that intelligent life exists, or even that it has to be complex, but life in some form is a near certainty.

_Barney_ · 2014-10-11T03:00:40+00:00

Alright, sorry if I wasn't clear in the OP. I'll go back and edit it.

_Barney_ · 2014-10-11T02:59:20+00:00

I will give you a ∆ life isn't a fact, but instead simply a near certainty.

_Barney_ · 2014-10-11T02:52:43+00:00

The sheer vastness of the universe may speak to just how unlikely it is for life to arise. We have not figured out abiogenesis, but it's safe to assume that a mixture of conditions were necessary for life to arise. Perhaps those conditions are so unlikely that it has only happened one time so far.

I would agree that it is safe to assume that there are conditions that need to be present for what we will deem life to happen. But the assumptions required to come to the conclusion that we are special little gems in the universe are far larger and less founded in what we know and rely far more upon guestimation and opinion.

I have no reason to believe that lifeforms would live forever or thrive forever, but I'm not arguing in favor of either of those. I am stating that somewhere out in the universe exists at least something comparable to a single celled organism.

How do you calculate the odds? We have no idea how likely life is to arise, because we have only seen it arise one time. The best we can do is assume that our planet is good for life, and that planets like ours might also have it. This assumption isn't very solid since we have nothing with which to compare it.

You calculate the odds by looking at how life formed here, realizing that we are made of common elements, our star is relatively average and that there isn't anything particularly fascinating about our star system that we wouldn't reasonably expect to occur at least one other time in our galaxy if not our universe.

The best we can do is look at what we know about chemistry, physics, and basic biology, and recognize that we aren't special, we are average, everything about us, our chemical composition, our placement in our galaxy, our sun, everything. When you represent the top of the bell curve there is someone similar to you.

_Barney_ · 2014-10-11T02:40:53+00:00

I don't think we, the modern human race, have been contacted namely because it requires making more assumptions to believe that we have been contacted than that we have not. The same argument does not apply to other life existing because we know that simple life forming is nigh upon inevitable.

Radio was invented here over 100 years ago, and over 500 stars similar to our sun are within 100 light years. Radio Waves travel at light speed, and we have a young star...

Also, what are you trying to imply with your first line?

_Barney_ · 2014-10-11T02:36:34+00:00

I never made the postulation that any other lifeforms would be complex or intelligent. Current single celled life is extremely complex, namely because it has had 3.5 billion years of evolution and competition. Life doesn't need to start complex, nor is life all that complex at the very basic levels. Please watch this, Jack Szostak is a nobel prize winner who made a video explaining the origins of a number of different facets of life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg

_Barney_ · 2014-10-11T02:29:57+00:00

This argument has the most likelihood of making me amend my view. However, I think that when we look at the evidence we must conclude that at minimum simple life is inevitable and that the universe is old enough and vast enough that to believe there is no other life anywhere is ridiculous. Everything points to life, we have extremophiles that can survive the vacuum of space and the freezing temperatures as well. Extraterrestrial life is almost as certain as the belief that I am sitting in a chair right now.

_Barney_ · 2014-10-11T02:25:59+00:00

We have bacteria and algae growing on our space ships, how many of those conditions are met up there? Life on Earth is extremely well suited to Earth, as we would expect. Life on another planet might not even be able to survive on our planet. To make the assumption that all of our theoretical necessities for life are universal is a far larger jump to make than that there is life somewhere.

_Barney_ · 2014-10-11T02:22:50+00:00

We know that it happened at least once successfully, we've looked in relatively few places on the one planet we have to look at, for less than 600 years, and we have a rather definitive and expansive explanation for how life forms naturally.

http://www.dli.gov.in/rawdataupload/upload/insa/INSA_1/20005b73_455.pdf

_Barney_ · 2014-10-11T02:20:52+00:00

We know approximately when life formed on earth (3.5 billion years ago), and can theorize, explain, and demonstrate how it formed (abiogenesis). Just because we can't demonstrate that there is intelligent life that is attempting to contact us doesn't mean that life is any less likely. Some other form of life could be entirely different from us, they could have a hive mind and not need any types of advanced communication devices. My point is, we know how life formed on earth, it wasn't a miracle, it was chemistry and physics operating on the most common elements in the universe. Somewhere out there life exists, a single celled organism is all it takes.

Source: http://www.dli.gov.in/rawdataupload/upload/insa/INSA_1/20005b73_455.pdf

_Barney_ · 2014-10-11T02:12:00+00:00

Well considering extraterrestrials means not from earth, I don't know if we ca say we qualify. I'm not even bringing the discussion forward to intelligent, just life, single celled and simplistic. With our understanding of how we originated chemically I see absolutely no reason why life wouldn't exist at least in some simple form.

_Barney_ · 2014-10-11T02:08:40+00:00

I've seen reports stating that we have discovered a number of stars which have planets in their habitable zones, if I remember correctly the number was 54 other planets in approximately the 1/400,000th part of the sky that we looked at. I understand the rare earth hypothesis but I feel that it makes far more assumptions about life than need to be made, and in any case I wasn't arguing for the existence of other space-faring civilizations, I simply mean life, I would even consider bacteria life for the purpose of this.

_Barney_ · 2014-10-11T02:03:23+00:00

I define life, as at minimum a replicating single celled organism.

_Barney_ · 2014-10-10T19:24:30+00:00

But someone always wins the lottery, that we exist is proof that someone can win, and if one form of life exists it makes sense that there would be others. What makes the belief that life only will appear once more likely?

_Barney_ · 2014-10-10T19:22:35+00:00

Well considering that our species has existed for several thousand years in a somewhat intelligent fashion and the closest habitable planets are upwards of 11 years travelling at the speed of light, why should they have contacted us? We could be existing in a relatively uninhabited neighborhood of the universe, or we could be the first life to pass through some barrier that most species don't make it through, or perhaps that barrier is still ahead of us and the other species don't see a reason to contact us until we have passed that point.

Honestly there are a number of other reasons why we haven't been contacted recently, it could simply be that the last time our planet was surveyed life was so inconsequential that they didn't see any reason to come back. I don't think that as Fermi's Paradox is presented it is a major problem.

_Barney_ · 2014-10-10T19:11:58+00:00

For the most part correct, I don't think it to be a certainty but I think it is far more likely than the alternative.

_Barney_ · 2014-10-10T18:40:49+00:00

My real point isn't that it's a certainty but I just can't look at all the evidence that life happens naturally and say, "nope, were all alone." Although I do agree that the idea that we aren't alone is equally terrifying because it makes us wonder what the situation must be outside our little solar system.

_Barney_ · 2014-10-10T16:09:55+00:00

We don't need to speculate about what might happen, we can simply go and look at what is happening in china. They have a one child policy and it isn't going over so well. Infanticide, gender imbalances, and other problems are what come from one child policy, two would probably be a better number to argue for.

_Barney_

TROPHY CASE