Jason Joel Thompson writes:
> Except for the brutally obvious fact that intelligence does in fact exist,
> and is a product of natural processes of the universe.
Sure, cogito ergo sum, little problem with that.
> Any rational individual must be aware of the fact that we live in place
> where matter, under certain circumstances, self organizes into a state of
> intelligence. Rational and -curious- people will begin to inquire as to
> what those circumstances are, and whether they exist elsewhere.
Sure, but what has this to do with the issue at hand?
> Remember, WE are evidence for the existence of ET. Unless you're able to
That's not logical, captain. We have to exist to be able to realize
that we exist (anthropic principle). Our view is hence necessarily
biased, since we cannot contemplate the puzzle of our nonexistance in
lots of other places. In absence of other data points our existence is
evidence for our existence, and nothing beyond that. (Ok, I promise to
lay off bad acid for the future).
> show that the events that occurred on earth could not possibly be replicated
> elsewhere...?
Principia non sunt. Burden of proof. (=You lose).
> Asking questions like, "Where are they? Why can't we see them?" is far more
> valuable than closing one's mind to the fact that "intelligence happens."
In absence of further data, the simplest explanation to Fermi's
paradoxon is that we're not in anybody smart/powerful light cone. I
would like to amplify that by stating that we would not be holding
this discussion if it was any different. Double anthropic principle.
> Can't we, Doug, at the very least, attach probabilties to the likelihood of
> intelligence spontaneously arising at other spatial coordinates in our
> existence matrix?
Not in good faith, since our planetary accretion models nor our
steriliztion-catastrophe models nor our evolutionary kinetics models
are validated, and we don't have very-large-baseline interferometry
and very-large-aperture spectroscopy instruments to gather data points
on remote planet composition, size and orbit distribution/stability at
least in our stellar neighbourhood.
We Need More Data.
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