Intelligent alien life unlikely, study claims

[UM-Bot]

Researchers at Oxford University maintain that we are probably the only intelligent life forms in the universe.

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/319116/intelligent-alien-life-unlikely-study-claims

[Paranomaly]

Does the "intelligent life" the article is referring to similar to people or more like bacteria or an alien amoeba? Seems pretty unlikely that there's nothing out there...

 

[Chaldon]

When it comes to outer space, scientists are no better than philosophers, no matter how logical their conclusions sound. New Horizons proved that to be true: what should have been an Enceladus or Triton clone turned out to be something much more different, to the unanimous amazement of all the scientific community. Hypotheses and even theories are in no way facts, always remember that, and never stop your search. It was quite often in the history of science that groundless scientific intuition was way more productive than pessimistic conclusions preceding it.

Edited June 25, 2018 by Chaldon

[Essan]

28 minutes ago, Paranomaly said:

Does the "intelligent life" the article is referring to similar to people or more like bacteria or an alien amoeba? Seems pretty unlikely that there's nothing out there...

 

I think use of the world intelligent is misleading since it's an entirely subjective term.   What they mean is species of equal or greater tecnological ability to humans.

Of the many billions of species that have existed on Earth over the past 3,500,000,000 years, only one has reached that level. 

Statistically that suggests that technologically advanced life is not common at all.  Life, however, may well be.  Even relatively intelligent life (like dogs, whales, dolphins, apes, parrots, elephants, crows etc etc).



 

[+Not A Rockstar]

I totally back @Chaldon and his opinion. These are too early days for science to be claiming we are alone out here. Speculation at best, based on what we know on ONE planet and how it developed.

[Noxasa]

I've been saying this for years.  The Drake equation get's us no closer to answering the question of extraterrestrial life than theology and/or philosophy, let alone guessing at intelligent life.  Science likes to claim it understands how life started on Earth but it's all just guesses.  They have yet to understand how you get from a puddle of primordial ooze to a prokaryote and I'm not sure they will ever be able to bridge that knowledge gap.  They should keep trying to understand it, of course, but perhaps a hefty helping of humble pie should be consumed whenever they start trying to say that life began this way or that way.  The fact is, they just don't know and there's a probability that they will never know how it happened from a scientific perspective.

[stereologist]

The important part of the article is stating once again that the Drake equation is filled with probabilities that have no real basis. They are guesses and about all we can do is state that the probabilities are nonzero.

[The Narcisse]

what criteria are they using to label the human race as "intelligent"?

[Tom the Photon]

This is a downright stupid summary of a deliberately-pessimistic article written by self-declared 'philosopher of doom'.  According to one of his followers:

"At the age of forty-two, Bostrom has become a philosopher of remarkable influence. “Superintelligence” is only his most visible response to ideas that he encountered two decades ago, when he became a transhumanist, joining a fractious quasi-utopian movement united by the expectation that accelerating advances in technology will result in drastic changes—social, economic, and, most strikingly, biological—which could converge at a moment of epochal transformation known as the Singularity. Bostrom is arguably the leading transhumanist philosopher today, a position achieved by bringing order to ideas that might otherwise never have survived outside the half-crazy Internet ecosystem where they formed. He rarely makes concrete predictions, but, by relying on probability theory, he seeks to tease out insights where insights seem impossible."

There is nothing in this I haven't read a hundred times over the last twenty years.  When I first learned about nanotechnology I immediately realised the potential implications for life on Earth.  Perhaps I should have set myself up there and then as a transhumanist philosopher - perhaps now I too would be sat in a comfy office at Oxford University sprouting b0ll0cks like this.  Instead I got on with life.

What makes this guy different?  NOTHING.  Except, maybe, a lack of comprehension of maths and probability.  The sheer scale of the Universe is such that intelligent life is inevitable multiple times.  Whether or not we will discover this before it destroys itself is a different matter, but that's not what Professor Bostrom claims.  He is arguing that intelligent life has never evolved anywhere else, i.e. we are the exception.  This is an argument driven by flawed philosophy rather that science or statistics, and deserves to be ignored.

(Try to) read some of their blurb before taking sides.

https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/superintelligence/

https://nickbostrom.com/papers/unilateralist.pdf

https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/GoFv9-1.pdf

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invention-artificial-intelligence-nick-bostrom

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1758-5899.12002

 

[kartikg]

The cabal and the higher up people who control the world are slowly preparing the masses by trickling information so that there would be no shock when the time comes to reveal the truth, which is there are no aliens. 

[stereologist]

1 minute ago, kartikg said:

The cabal and the higher up people who control the world are slowly preparing the masses by trickling information so that there would be no shock when the time comes to reveal the truth, which is there are no aliens. 

Are you trying to tell me that there are no Klingons?

[L.A.T.1961]

It's an interesting new take on the subject, although their conclusions are hardly definitive. -

"We find a substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our
observable universe, with probability's of (53%–99.6% and 39%–85% respectively)." 

 

I would say this approach is just as worthy. -

A Less Bleak Lesson from the Silent Universe 

https://utopiaordystopia.com/tag/adam-frank-and-woodruff-sullivan-dead-civilizations-paper/ 

 

 

 

[spud the mackem]

Unbelievable that an Oxford Don comes up with this theory, there are dozens of planets out there that could support life,maybe not as we know it, but with the vast distances between stars and galaxies, it will maybe take a long time to prove that life does exist outside our own little rock, but my guess is that WE ARE NOT ALONE , and one day we will get an intelligent signal from space,which will prove this "intelligent" guy is talking a load of bs. 

[UFOwatcher]

Oxford obviously lacking Grant money. WAG at the best.

[Tom the Photon]

1 hour ago, L.A.T.1961 said:

It's an interesting new take on the subject, although their conclusions are hardly definitive. -

"We find a substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our
observable universe, with probability's of (53%–99.6% and 39%–85% respectively)." 

I would say this approach is just as worthy. -

A Less Bleak Lesson from the Silent Universe 

https://utopiaordystopia.com/tag/adam-frank-and-woodruff-sullivan-dead-civilizations-paper/ 

Thanks for the link - in my humble view a far more reasoned approach to the topic than this puffed-up Oxford don's melodrama.

Could you provide a link for those stats you quote?  I'd like to read how they came up with such precise figures (not 99.7 but 99.6%!) but I don't want to grub through all their bs literature to get there.

[+OverSword]

3 hours ago, Not A Rockstar said:

I totally back @Chaldon and his opinion. These are too early days for science to be claiming we are alone out here. Speculation at best, based on what we know on ONE planet and how it developed.

Yes, that is true.  But all available actual evidence seems to point to the evolution of intelligent (technically capable life like humanity) is the exception and not the rule, arguably to the point of we being unique.

[+OverSword]

2 hours ago, The Narcisse said:

what criteria are they using to label the human race as "intelligent"?

As expected you sit in a chair at home broadcasting that question, potentially, to the entire population of the world on a machine and over a network created by humans and question whether humans are intelligent.  The obvious answer is look in the mirror and decide that not all of us are. Duh.

[Dejarma]

6 hours ago, UM-Bot said:

Researchers at Oxford University maintain that we are probably the only intelligent life forms in the universe.

 

 

if so then one can only wonder the point of, eer everything!

like @Not A Rockstar suggests:

'Researchers?' only have this planet as a yardstick

[Dejarma]

3 hours ago, The Narcisse said:

what criteria are they using to label the human race as "intelligent"?

what criteria are you using to suggest we might not be?

[L.A.T.1961]

1 hour ago, Tom the Photon said:

Thanks for the link - in my humble view a far more reasoned approach to the topic than this puffed-up Oxford don's melodrama.

Could you provide a link for those stats you quote?  I'd like to read how they came up with such precise figures (not 99.7 but 99.6%!) but I don't want to grub through all their bs literature to get there.

There is a link to a download for a PDF of the paper within the article below, the paper's titled - Dissolving the Fermi Paradox.  It is also on Arxiv 

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/stop-looking-for-et-modelling-suggests-we-re-alone-in-the-universe

 

Edited June 25, 2018 by L.A.T.1961
put link for PDF

[The Narcisse]

43 minutes ago, Dejarma said:

what criteria are you using to suggest we might not be?

Donald Trump is President and Oversword exists....

[TruthandKnowledge]

Those rose colored glasses must fit really well

[Merc14]

4 hours ago, The Narcisse said:

what criteria are they using to label the human race as "intelligent"?

A creature who can look at itself, contemplate its existence and then call all creatures such as itself unintelligent, would be an intelligent being albeit a very spoiled and childish one.

[paperdyer]

5 hours ago, The Narcisse said:

what criteria are they using to label the human race as "intelligent"?

Maybe the intelligence part is based on alien life not wanting anything to do with us!

 

42 minutes ago, Merc14 said:

A creature who can look at itself, contemplate its existence and then call all creatures such as itself unintelligent, would be an intelligent being albeit a very spoiled and childish one.

Well Merc, that fits the human race to a "T" or is it T-Shirt?

[Dejarma]

1 hour ago, The Narcisse said:

Donald Trump is President and Oversword exists....

nope, don't get that