Chance of life on other planets

You misunderstand me. I do not state natural selection is ''insanity'' - those are your words. I stated the term ''natural selection'' is misleading, because selection invokes choice, however ''natural'' is something by an act of nature, not one necesserily of a ''choice''.

 

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actually more than 3

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u can find it where u don't expect it

 

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You think asking if life is a result of the environment a religious question!? Is there an environement on the moon? Which is more severe - the evironment on moon or the deepest ocean bed - and will we have life on the moon by altering its evironment?

 

The Q is corrupt by its lacking to nominate at which point is the Q asked. If asked only after one box is examined, the correct answer is all boxes contain eggs. This changes only when another box is opened and no eggs are found. The assumption the other boxes may be different is baseless from the then facts on hand.


In math, possibilities have no merit; probabilities do.

 

But! Are you not metaphorically inclined to the question of life outside earth? Here, the question is not whther life exists out there, but why life does not exist if environment is its cause. If one says earth has a critical enivironment for life, then first they have to rephrase: critical environment, not environment per se, causes life. Then they have to deal with 'NEW' critical environment - because no life existed at the outset. This poses a host of other questions which are too involved to tackle in this thread, but are negative assumptions held as the cause of life.

If one says they don't know what causes life - they are also saying the environment did not cause life. I believe I expanded on this dilema with the premise life per se [as a premise and concept] had to predate the environment - which you rejected as a legitimate question, calling it religious!

 

Then my mistake. But does the issue change - after one box the answer must be all boxes. If 10 boxes are opened, then we can say 10% contain eggs.

Yes - by the probability factor evidenced in a survey. Not saying this is better the magic premise. Being wrong here if the 10% does not get vindicated, stiill makes the answer right at that point. You have no valid reason to allow more than 10%.

We have no valid reason to assume life outside earth at this point.

 

No - that is not the same arguement. Because you have not conducted a survey of any tv sets owned by me. We have conducted surveys of life outside earth - thus we can make a deduction of the data at hand.

 

And how would you apply that data to more potential egg boxes thereafter? What lessons and deductions?

Correct. Not until another box is checked can any forcast be valid.

At least one tv set.

Examining other planets does not impact - untill we examine them. At this point, we cannot say there must be life outside earth - all evidences say NO LIFE. This concerns math, not religions. The latter does not get effected with life outside earth.

 

yes but eggs usually don't just show up in boxes by themselves

 

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yupe!

 

Incorrect. We know that whatever and wherever we look, other planets have no life. The same question asked 2000 years ago would get a different response. Today's answer is NO LIFE. Here, the only interesting question is, what are the impacts of NO LIFE elsewhere?

 

'barely' is a subject term and does not effect the math. Even if only 1% of the universe is not fully explored - barely can apply!

 

On the Drake equation: I think it has been highly over rated: Partially due to prejudicial estimates of the parameters; Mostly due to lack of a meaningful analysis of the history of life on Earth. I also think that it tends to lead to faulty analysis due to encouraging concentration on trees, resulting in failure to consider the forest. Note that there have been a lot of arguments focused on individual parameters for use in that equation.

James R; The analogy is interesting, but I do not consider it very convincing. From one of your posts.

We actually have more information relating to the possibility of life elsewhere than that implied by the above. The distribution of eggs in your analogy provides very little information compared to what we know about the history of life on Earth & consideration of habitable zones (both galactic & solar system).

When analyzing an issue such as that raised in this thread, I like to consider the the following thought experiment.

• Imagine that a trusted source of information (god for the religious; An ET who landed on earth yesterday) told you he knew the answer.
  
  
• Next you were told that you would be given a great reward if your estimate of the answer was close to the actual facts & perhaps punished if it was very far off the mark.

Given the above, how confident would you feel about your estimate of the number of eggs in the remaining 90 boxes? How confident would you feel about your estimate of the number of intelligent species per galaxy?

As per my post #19

• I would say 9-11 total eggs in the 100 boxes & have very little confidence in my estimate. My lack of confidence is due to the absence of any information relating to the person who filled the 100 boxes & then opened the first ten. I would have a bit more confidence in my estimate if I had accidently discovered the 100 boxes & opened ten of them in a some what random manner, discovering an egg in one of the ten opened. I consider this a WAG.

As per my post #21

• My SWAG is that life of some sort is likely to have occurred several times or more in a galaxy like ours. Guessing that we are the only technological culture in our galaxy is not a bad SWAG. I would expect many galaxies to have never had a technological culture & very few to have had more than one.

I would have a high degree of confidence in the above SWAG compared to my confidence in the original problem of the 100 boxes.

BTW: A SWAG is a Sophisticated Wild Ass Guess & is better than a WAG.