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Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

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Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#141

Post by coldtea »

martinced wrote: post #126
wubbfindel wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religious tradition and dogma changes yes, but their "holy" books can't rewrite themselves. Interestingly the bible doesn't make any comment to suggest there is no other life in the universe. In fact it does refer to extra terrestrial life; God sent "angels", literally translated "messengers", to the earth.

"...their "holy" books can't rewrite themselves." I'm shocked. Just shocked. You mean there's no hope that translation errors are going to be fixed? For example in hebrew the same word is used for either "young woman" and "virgin". And some believe that the christian made a translation mistake by transforming the young woman mary into the virgin mary. I think that if that one is a mistake, it should be fixed ; )

That's a mistake alright, but it's made by naive atheist commenters on the intertubes (and/or poorly researched books).

The New Testament is quite clear on the matter of virginity, and no, it's not based on the misinterpretation of a single word.

(I'm not saying that the incident of the virgin birth is true, of course. Just that the "mistake" is false).

Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#142

Post by coldtea »

stevewilhelm wrote: post #26
GuiA wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my dearest wishes is that humanity will find solid evidence for other lifeforms in the universe (whether it is through remains or actual contact). This moment, if/when it happens, will be so mindblowing on so many levels and affect us deeply as a society/species/etc. that I just WANT to see it.

I suspect finding evidence of other lifeforms in the universe, even highly intelligent lifeforms, would briefly be novel, but would have very little long-term effect on most people's daily lives.

Really?

Living as pet slaves for extra-terrestrial overlords would have little "long-term effect on most people's daily lives"?

Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#143

Post by coldtea »

crusso wrote: post #95
hdivider wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Seeing possible evidence of extraterrestrial life in every unexpected observation is nothing more than a superstition." I agree, and I hope I didn't give the impression that this is what we should be doing. This thing is still just an observation - it's not evidence of anything yet. My point was this: we know of things that would effectively rule out the 'life as we know it on Mars' hypothesis (e.g. absolutely no ev…

If you want to understand the "huh?" reactions you're getting, you might want to wrap your mind around the idea that it's effectively impossible to prove a negative. Take a look at Russell's Teapot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russells_teapot Follow that with careful study of Occam's Razor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occams_razor

>it's effectively impossible to prove a negative.

Really? "There is no cat in this box".

Opens box. No cat inside. Proved.

Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#144

Post by rsheridan6 »

gbog wrote: post #135
rsheridan6 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any alien lifeform that can reproduce would be subject to Darwinian natural selection. It would tend to grow exponentially, if the resources were available, and if you do the math, the universe ain't big enough for more than one exponentially reproducing species.

You don't know. Alien could be of a different scale, ant or mountain sized, and then most likely wouldn't even notice or mind our presence.

If aliens decided to use our resources, they would probably do something like build a Dyson Sphere around the sun, which would mean there would be nothing left for us. It wouldn't matter how big they were, because they would use the resources we need. Look at it this way - we don't notice or mind the presence of insects or flowers, but that doesn't help them when we pave or plow their habitats. A lot of wild things escape us because we aren't that good at harvesting every possible resource, so there's a lot left over, but presumably aliens would be more efficient.

Because of the properties of exponential growth, there would be nothing left over for us. If two organisms double their numbers 250 times, their numbers would roughly equal the number of atoms in the observable universe, which means there would be none left for anyone else.

The only hope would be that they either don't reproduce, which seems unlikely since they would be the survivors of a process of Darwinian evolution just like any other critter, or that they're Space Vegans with a moral code against exterminating other species. We really don't know how they would think.

Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#145

Post by blueprint »

wubbfindel wrote: post #55
mixmax wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

religions have an uncanny ability to either ignore scientific facts or bend their religion to fit with the facts. Remember that originally it was thought that the Earth was in the center of the universe because God had put it there. When the facts changed religion was eventually bent to acomodate the facts. Science changes and religion adapts.

Religious tradition and dogma changes yes, but their "holy" books can't rewrite themselves. Interestingly the bible doesn't make any comment to suggest there is no other life in the universe. In fact it does refer to extra terrestrial life; God sent "angels", literally translated "messengers", to the earth.

"but their "holy" books can't rewrite themselves."

Hah, want to bet? Both the Bible and Buddhist scriptures have been rewritten and retranslated and had additions made countless times in the last few thousands years. The teachings of Christ and Buddha are now not able to be found in those texts. They're just the words of ordinary people.

Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#146

Post by crusso »

coldtea wrote: post #143
crusso wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to understand the "huh?" reactions you're getting, you might want to wrap your mind around the idea that it's effectively impossible to prove a negative. Take a look at Russell's Teapot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russells_teapot Follow that with careful study of Occam's Razor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occams_razor

> it's effectively impossible to prove a negative. Really? "There is no cat in this box". Opens box. No cat inside. Proved.

You're totally correct. I should also consider the fact that you can prove that negative voltages exist. The opportunities for pedantically ignoring the context of the discussion at hand are endless.

Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#147

Post by crusso »

akiselev wrote: post #130
crusso wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we really don't know I think that's the point. When you don't know anything about the motivations of an alien race that can easily wipe out our species, why would you take any chances? Pretend for a moment that I have a Button. The owner of that Button can push it and eliminate every person on the planet besides the people that owner didn't want to kill (friends, family, city, state, country, whatever) Would you be a…

Oh yeah it's a totally safe assumption that if intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe and made it all the way to Mars that they won't find us... you know... one planet over, with a century of RF radiating away from our home. Unless of course you believe they're hiding inside Europa...

Which message are you even responding to? Maybe you should read the thread in order to understand what was being discussed. It had nothing to do with your response.

Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#148

Post by crusso »

gbog wrote: post #136
crusso wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we really don't know I think that's the point. When you don't know anything about the motivations of an alien race that can easily wipe out our species, why would you take any chances? Pretend for a moment that I have a Button. The owner of that Button can push it and eliminate every person on the planet besides the people that owner didn't want to kill (friends, family, city, state, country, whatever) Would you be a…

Well I don't think I said I'd purposefully give such a killer switch to an alien race, I just said we don't know. We are all aware of the reasons to be pessimist, because of all the books and movies, but there are reasons to be optimist too: advanced technology may come with advanced ethics, for instance.

This isn't about "giving" the button to an alien race.

You criticized the original poster's sense of pessimism for holding the only parsimonious, evidence-based and logical position on the subject.

Have whatever fanciful opinion you want to on the subject, but pretending it's based in anything but wishful thinking is naive.

Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#149

Post by vacri »

rsheridan6 wrote: post #132
vacri wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also no reason to believe it won't, unless you're aiming for bias in the analysis.

I would not deny the possible that, for reasons I don't understand, any species advanced enough to be capable of interstellar travel behaves like a cross between Bono and Peter Singer. But I would not stake the survival of my species on it. And there is a reason to believe that they probably won't be - they will be the product of Darwinian evolution, just like us, which is really not a very nice thing.

I completely agree on not staking the survival of the species on it, I just think that it's an overly cynical view. Same as I think most people are good people, but I still lock my car because a very few of them are thieves.

Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#150

Post by mistercow »

crusso wrote: post #95
hdivider wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Seeing possible evidence of extraterrestrial life in every unexpected observation is nothing more than a superstition." I agree, and I hope I didn't give the impression that this is what we should be doing. This thing is still just an observation - it's not evidence of anything yet. My point was this: we know of things that would effectively rule out the 'life as we know it on Mars' hypothesis (e.g. absolutely no ev…

If you want to understand the "huh?" reactions you're getting, you might want to wrap your mind around the idea that it's effectively impossible to prove a negative. Take a look at Russell's Teapot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russells_teapot Follow that with careful study of Occam's Razor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occams_razor

I'm sort of annoyed by the notion that "you can't prove a negative". It's true when we're talking about empirical evidence, but it's only a specific case of "you can't prove anything". There's nothing at all special about negatives. It's just that at no point can we ever say "Well, that's it, our confidence in this belief is now 100%" (even though we can get damned close). Of course, sometimes people say "proved" to mean "supported by evidence to the point that all reasonable people should believe it". In that case, you can prove negatives just fine.

I think that the "can't prove a negative" thing must originate from the subtler "it's hard to confirm the null hypothesis", but even that one isn't a hard rule, so long as you have lots of statistical power.

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