Random SETI Comments & Questions

[maurile]

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Regardless of religious beliefs-doesn't it take a tremendous amount of faith to keep looking?

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Of course not.

It takes faith to believe the results will be positive. But it doesn't take any faith just to look.

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What basis is there to keep believing?

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1. It is very likely that life exists elsewhere in the universe.

2. If such life exists, it may realize #1 and try to communicate with life elsewhere.

3. If it does try to communicate with life elsewhere, we may as well be on the lookout.

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Would I be out of line in saying that it's ok for these "scientists" to be taken seriously, but one that believes in God can't/shouldn't?

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No, that'd be fine.

[chezlaw]

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Having found one planet with at least moderately intelligent life forms on it doesn't rule out that there could be others, it's the other way around. It's not like they're looking for something that we have no idea whether it can exist..life forms exist.

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'... lets hope and pray there's intelligent life somewehere out in space, coz there's bugger all down here on earth' - meaning of life

chez

[maurile]

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That's my point. It's not science.

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Neither is love-making. So what?

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It's saying "Hey this would be cool if we found it, though we have no good reason to believe we will...let's go look"

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And?

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That's my point. It's not science.

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Neither is love-making. So what?


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Well - we dont divert scientific funding to love-making. The point is not that SETI has no place, it's just not science. For what it's worth I dont think love-making is science either but that doesnt seem relevant to the original post.

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It's saying "Hey this would be cool if we found it, though we have no good reason to believe we will...let's go look"

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And?

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And - this is not a good reason to spend millions of dollars, anymore than a few homeopaths telling me they have noticed good results is a good reason to invest millions on producing "medicinal" water.

[Jeff V]

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I don't see why it bothers you

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Who said that? I just asked some questions.

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it would be awesome if the did find something.


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We agree.

[Jeff V]

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1. It is very likely that life exists elsewhere in the universe.

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I'm interested to know how you come up with this, and how you justify it.

[chezlaw]

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I don't see why it bothers you

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Who said that? I just asked some questions.

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it would be awesome if the did find something.


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We agree.

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Ok so whether you want to call looking for data part of science or exploration is a really minor point. Its clearly nothing to do with faith (maybe a bit of hope)

chez

[Jeff V]

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And - this is not a good reason to spend millions of dollars,


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This is probably why NASA pulled their funding so quickly.

[maurile]

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That's my point. It's not science.

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Neither is love-making. So what?


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Well - we dont divert scientific funding to love-making.

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We don't divert sceintific funding to SETI either. For the brief time that SETI was publicly funded, it was through NASA, wasn't it? Well, NASA isn't science, either. So the funding for SETI wasn't scientific funding. Like I said, so what?

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The point is not that SETI has no place, it's just not science. For what it's worth I dont think love-making is science either but that doesnt seem relevant to the original post.

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The point is that lots of worthwhile things aren't science.

I'm not saying that SETI is worthwhile. But the fact that it isn't science is not much of an argument that it isn't worthwhile.

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It's saying "Hey this would be cool if we found it, though we have no good reason to believe we will...let's go look"

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And?

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And - this is not a good reason to spend millions of dollars, anymore than a few homeopaths telling me they have noticed good results is a good reason to invest millions on producing "medicinal" water.

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Who said it was?

The obvious difference, though, is that homeopathy can be falsified for $10, so there's no need to spend millions.

[maurile]

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1. It is very likely that life exists elsewhere in the universe.

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I'm interested to know how you come up with this, and how you justify it.

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The universe is big, and the conditions necessary to produce replicators don't seem all that restrictive.