Owen,
I am still puzzled. Is this just a hankering, or is there some fundamental puzzle about the Nature of Things that would be answered by Knowing 100 % that there was other life out there, rather than just knowing it 99 and 44/100 %? And what is this thing about INTELLLIGENT life? Isn't all life intelligent? Is it that one is hoping to see one's mirror image looking at the sky one night? Is this the twin many of us lost in the uterus that we are trying to find? I just find it all bemusing. Like I was Mork or something. And there are so many other puzzles, closer to home, that seem worthy of our attention. Our lifetimes have been filled with miracles and wonder (Don't cry, baby, don't cry, don't cry) and yet I have no sense that the average misery of the human species has diminished one bit. We live in a country into which untold luxuries pour from all over the world, and yet nobody seems particularly grateful. Perhaps it's because of these intractable problems that life on Alpha Romero II seems so interesting. Nick From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2012 2:18 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] So, *Are* We Alone? Doug: thanks for the additional material. It exactly encapsulates my initial thoughts: there are so many possibilities in terms of time, space, number of galaxies and solar systems, that it just GOTTA be true! But taking Page's Model Thinking class made me wonder, after hearing Hawking on TED, that I might be able to build a bit more of a model. So I looked into star types and their evolution and ages and was quite surprised that the number of generations of stars is a small number. Granted they overlap and possibly a Population II star could support life, .. but if we're betting on Population 1 stars, we may be seeing widespread life starting within a billion years or so of each other, not spread out over the 14BY of our universe. Nick: mainly that star formation and percentage of heavy elements would greatly change the probabilistic models of "intelligent" life. I was taken aback by the thought. And what INTERESTS me is that one can make scenarios that are a bit more concrete than my prior thought that there are so many worlds and time, that intelligent life is inevitable. My model is becoming more like within the era of formation of Population 1 stars is a reasonable boundary condition. Still a lot, and still intelligent life looks pretty probable. But less so than before. In general, I think other intelligent life forms are interesting to think about. I bet for example, they are pondering prime numbers as we do. I bet they have found that "chance" does not mean "no structure" .. i.e. random processes can create highly structured results. Evolution and Us for example. -- Owen On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 1:23 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[email protected]> wrote: Dear Owen, I don't know how to ask this question without sounding churlish. But why is this question INTERESTING? That's not a rhetorical question, It actually doesn't INTEREST me. The cranky voice inside me wants to say, of COURSE we are term limited, of course our term of office could end at any time. In fact, I think it has probably come quite close to ending a couple of times during our life time. If we are around long enough to be picked off by a comet, I would say we are doing REALLY WELL. OF COURSE, there is no MEANING to our existence. And of COURSE, we are probably not the only life in the UNIVERSE, although I don't see how knowing that there is some bit of slime with two heads on Alpha Romero II makes me feel less ALONE. There seems to be a huge confusion in this sort of discourse. Aloneness has to do our inability to muster the courage to engage with one another. (The courage to start a reading group; the courage to invite others to dinner; the courage to go to church, if that is one's inclination.) It does NOT have to do with whether there is other life in the universe. And casting it in this lofty celestial way only gets in the way of our enjoying, being grateful for, and doing what we can to nurture, what we have. I have to admit, much as I have been titillated by the space program, I have always seen it as evidence of wildly misguided priorities. See, I really am in need of help, here. Nick
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