Well, it seems like the consensus of many people here would be that they are eager to plop themselves in a car, turn on autopilot, and turn off their 5 senses. After all, if the computer says everything is fine why question it. Just because you see a house looming on your trajectory and the computer says the road just continues on in a straight line why should you be concerned?. After all, we've figured it all out and can even sit in the back seat and forget the steering wheel.
That's the argument many here have. Your senses are fallible so turn over your executive function over to something outside yourself. You can call that "something" anything you like. Most people call that something "science" because it makes them feel better and that you are rational not to trust your senses. Whatever you call it must be something that makes you feel better about yourself turning over your sense based executive function to something else. I just don't think many people here understand their own psychology and that people will invent scientific "facts" to avoid cognitive dissonance. It should always be remembered that progress always subsumes errors that were once thought not to exist. Unless you believe like some do that we've already hit the ultimate in scientific understanding and there is no more progress to be made.
That's the argument many here have. Your senses are fallible so turn over your executive function over to something outside yourself. You can call that "something" anything you like. Most people call that something "science" because it makes them feel better and that you are rational not to trust your senses. Whatever you call it must be something that makes you feel better about yourself turning over your sense based executive function to something else. I just don't think many people here understand their own psychology and that people will invent scientific "facts" to avoid cognitive dissonance. It should always be remembered that progress always subsumes errors that were once thought not to exist. Unless you believe like some do that we've already hit the ultimate in scientific understanding and there is no more progress to be made.
Intelligence, "...excludes all the so-called AI..." Are you kidding? we are their tools, our human intelligence has driven their creation & will support and defend their existence...up until the point where we are no longer needed.
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I see you are back to discussing and analyzing the semantics and not the subject!
Look up the definition of decidedly and then look up the definition of probability. If the probability of finding advanced alien civilizations in the Milky Way are put at 1 part in a trillion by academics, I’m decidedly happy to say there probably aren’t any.
So instead of picking on the semantics, why don’t you dismantle their argument?
Re the Drake equation - original factors used(ie % used in the equation) are now considered overly optimistic by many experts based on research over the last 30 yrs.
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so perhaps these alien visitors are AI because it’s unlikely that a biological life form survived long enough to become space faring.
If you subscribe to the conclusions of Sir Roger Penrose in The Emperors New Mind (and also John Lucas), then you might not worry about AI replacing us until quantum computing becomes the platform for it. Then you can worry a great deal.
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Whatever you are taking it to mean, is does not point out what you assert. Here's why. Excerpted from the Drake Equation Wikipedia page: The last four parameters, fl, fi, fc, and L, are not known and are very difficult to estimate, with values ranging over many orders of magnitude (see criticism).
So, then, what becomes the factual basis for your assertion that it's vanishingly unlikely for us to (ever?) meet intelligent life? That claim appears to be pure conjecture, unless you can clearly show otherwise.
The Drake Equation, at the very least, shows that the chances of meeting another advanced civilization are very low. It cannot be zero because we are here, but we now know that our situation is extremely rare ('a fluke' as one person put it) because of the biology side of the equation.
Drake equation is just an equation. At best it's pure speculation. At worse, it's completely baseless and arbitrary.
Bonsai, yes because the Drake equation is fact based and not just a guesstimate. If you believe that I've got this bridge I can sell you. Only one owner, a little old lady, and she didn't use it much... 
The Drake Equation, at the very least, shows that the chances of meeting another advanced civilization are very low. I don't think its useless or arbitrary because it forces one to think about some of the factors that are involved in the rise of intelligence on a planet. It cannot be zero because we are here, but we now know that our situation is extremely rare ('a fluke' as one person put it) because of the biology side of the equation. And that's the bit that is driving the number down as more research shows the going from bugs to intelligent bipedal apes or some other type of being is not a slam dunk. In one of the articles I read (and I think someone here alluded to the same point), of 10.7 billion species that have lived on earth (as far as we know), only 8 species evolved into what we would class as highly intelligent. The other factor (per the Sandberg paper) that is now being grappled with is that it is highly likely that intelligent life only emerges towards the end of a planets ability to host higher life forms. This is linked to the kind of star (red dwarfs are a no-no due to CME's), stars bigger than our don't last long enough so the window is only a few percent below us - the Sun is on the upper bound.
@Ken_Newton to you last point, you dismiss as pure conjecture the view of sceptics like myself who think alien civilizations are extremely rare based on academics view points, but your opposite claims then surely must also be pure conjecture?
@Ken_Newton to you last point, you dismiss as pure conjecture the view of sceptics like myself who think alien civilizations are extremely rare based on academics view points, but your opposite claims then surely must also be pure conjecture?
What do you mean, back? I've been responding to you mainly on semantics all along.
"If" There is that word again.
It's not the same as "looks decidedly unlikely". You keep changing the wording. Are you by any chance trying to squirm out of something?
I've been responding to what I deemed problematic.
I prefer to wait till something more substantial to be discovered. Don't you also have the same preference? At least I thought you do when I saw your post about "We will soon have the technology to be able to...".
I keep hearing it said that the chanced are very low. However, the reasoning always appears to boil down to some level of presumption and conjecture. It seems that most of those same analysis could be utilized, with only some changes in the same assumptions, to prove that other life is very likely. These assumptions, I would suggest, are what tend to reveal whatever is the desired conclusion of the person making the analysis.
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Well... This one at least made me laugh!
QAnon followers now convinced UFOs are being used to distract from Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ | The Independent
QAnon followers now convinced UFOs are being used to distract from Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ | The Independent
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bias? on the contrary, most researchers of this topic will be out offa job if there’s no chance to meet and greet aliens. These researches are aiming to refine difficult estimates to improve accuracy not score points in the Lounge section.
Sandberg, Carter et al put the chances of another advanced alien civilization at 1 in 10^-9 to 1 in 10^-12 for the Milky Way and that’s not via the Drake Equation, but based on what they call evolutionary transitions. For example, planets don’t form with free oxygen floating around in their atmospheres - it gets bound up immediately with other elements and it takes a subsequent sustained biological process to unlock it (photosynthesis) and to get it to the levels we have here took >2 billion years. But there are also photosynthetic processes which do not release oxygen, but hydrogen, so we could have gone down that route on Earth as well.
Ive watched some good YouTube videos on this stuff and there’s a lot of research going on in astrobiology. No doubt there are many planets with life but intelligent civilizations is another question altogether.
Unfortunately the Drake equation can be gamed - no doubt some both sides of the argument have done so to get the answer they want.
Of course, the exact opposite of what you assert is actually the case, although, I think I detect some tongue-in-check there. I've spent a portion of my career in academia, and I'm certain it is the same in the world of any other peer oriented profession. Or for any job of major responsibility. Your credibility is of paramount value. The very last thing you can afford is to be seen as some sort of non-serious person or dilettante. Any eyewitness report, talk, or writing in favor of the possible reality of aliens is professionally suicidal. That's probably as much the reason that we read so little in favor of the alien hypothesis, as are the calculations 'disproving' it. Pressure is, essentially, completely toward not making significant noise, else be ridiculed, ostracized, career dead-ended and, eventually, fired for being a flake.
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Yes, I agree. I do acknowledge that the Sandberg paper has some serious scientific rigor behind it, and that the Drake Equation is an easily knocked over straw man.
Even if not fired, there are research grants that are in jeopardy. I'm sure you are aware of those grants surrounding NOAA.
