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View Full Version : Harold's definitve statement regarding aliens



QE Harold Flair
25-10-2015, 03:07 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V-TxYyyLI4

I'm definitively stating this is very interesting. Harold's prediction - alien life will be discovered within the next 10 years. Massive e-victory awaits

Warning!! - camp twat on the left is a twat.

John
25-10-2015, 03:17 AM
What would that victory consist of?

Luca
25-10-2015, 03:23 AM
The bloke on the left needs culling - 'Trace,' for fuck's sake.

It depends on what you mean by 'alien life.' I'm with you on the idea of discovering some form of simple life in the next decade (I'm not entirely convinced, but running water on Mars could indeed sustain life), but I don't know if we'll stumble across a Kardashev II/III society in that timeline.

QE Harold Flair
25-10-2015, 03:32 AM
What would that victory consist of?

My prediction being correct.

Baz
25-10-2015, 08:37 AM
I hereby challenge Harold's definitive statement: alien life will not be discovered in the next ten years.

E-victory awaits.

Mike
25-10-2015, 08:54 AM
I think he needs to be more specific.

Do you mean a creature running about or something. Or a microscopic bacteria in water type thing?

Also, before Baz posted, who was the e victory over?

QE Harold Flair
25-10-2015, 11:17 AM
No, simply alien life. Intelligent alien life will also be discovered if the human race lives long enough. The e-victory is over whoever disagrees but, ultimately, this is more a case of my excellent predictions abilities.

Jimmy Floyd
25-10-2015, 11:30 AM
If there was anything better than us out there, they'd have found us by now.

QE Harold Flair
25-10-2015, 11:58 AM
Why? Maybe there are millions of others and we're not worth bothering with.

Henry
26-10-2015, 11:40 AM
I increasingly believe that there is no intelligent life "close" to us. It may exist very, very far away but I doubt we'll ever contact it.

We'll probably find single-celled life or its equivalent somewhere. If I were betting, I'd say this probably won't be within ten years.

ItalAussie
26-10-2015, 12:11 PM
Even if life is common, the trick is that it needs to be common with respect to the universe, which is a much trickier ask.

An near-infinite number of intelligent species that are near-infinitely separated within a near-infinite volume will still be unable to make contact, no matter how much they search. It's a pickle.

Baz
08-11-2015, 10:01 PM
I'ma use this thread to make another long term prediction: Malala Yousafzai will be the leader of Pakistan within the next 15 years.

Can I put a bet on that?

Jimmy Floyd
08-11-2015, 10:14 PM
She'll get assassinated before that happens.

QE Harold Flair
08-11-2015, 10:24 PM
I'd venture to say Pakistan is heading in rather the wrong direction for that to happen.

Spammer
08-11-2015, 11:30 PM
If there was anything better than us out there, they'd have found us by now.

Not really.

QE Harold Flair
08-11-2015, 11:37 PM
Not at all, in fact. If there is one other civilization out there then there's likely to be thousands, if not more. There's an estimated 1 billion trillion stars in the observable universe. To out that in context that's 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, of which our sun is one. It's fairly hard to get your head around.

Yevrah
08-11-2015, 11:48 PM
Not at all, in fact. If there is one other civilization out there then there's likely to be thousands, if not more.

That's the key isn't it. With a known sample size of one, it doesn't matter how big the universe is, there's no extrapolation one can do from just us.

ItalAussie
08-11-2015, 11:51 PM
Not at all, in fact. If there is one other civilization out there then there's likely to be thousands, if not more. There's an estimated 1 billion trillion stars in the observable universe. To out that in context that's 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, of which our sun is one. It's fairly hard to get your head around.

Yeah. If it turns out that there are a reasonable number of other developed civilizations, then the chances of us occupying one end of the developmental bell curve are infinitesimally small.

ItalAussie
08-11-2015, 11:53 PM
That's the key isn't it. With a known sample size of one, it doesn't matter how big the universe is, there's no extrapolation one can do from just us.

Statistically, this is the real bastard. A sample size of one has infinite standard deviation, and we can't draw any informed statistical conclusions from it.

ItalAussie
08-11-2015, 11:57 PM
If I had to guess at why intelligent life seems impossible to detect, I'd guess at three factors:
- The speed of light remains an impenetrable barrier, independent of technological advancement
- Life, while existing in large numbers, is still rare compared to the size of the universe; there's lot's of life, but it's all separated by vast, vast distances
- The expected lifespan of a technologically-developed civilization is dramatically less than the amount of time one takes to evolve

This would give us (comparatively) short time windows and (objectively) vast distances as obstacles without life necessarily being particularly rare. If life is actually rare (and this is far from impossible too), then we'll be totally out of luck.

QE Harold Flair
09-11-2015, 12:02 AM
There's also the argument that civilizations may destroy themselves once they become sufficiently technological to do so.

Althout point three covers that, I suppose.

You forgot point 4 - that we have already been visited. :thbgrin:

Yevrah
09-11-2015, 12:06 AM
You think there is intelligent life out there then Ital?

QE Harold Flair
09-11-2015, 12:07 AM
To be fair, we haven't been looking that long in the grand scheme of things. Our radio waves have barely got out of the door when you consider the vastness of the universe.

'despite waves travelling a distance of 200 light years in all directions, they still have 118,800 light years to go until the entire Milky Way has heard the word.'

And that's just the milky way. There's billions more of those.

Yevrah
09-11-2015, 12:09 AM
To be fair, we haven't been looking that long in the grand scheme of things. Our radio waves have barely got out of the door when you consider the vastness of the universe.

Indeed. We couldn't have even scratched the surface, could we?

QE Harold Flair
09-11-2015, 12:10 AM
Nope. So far we know of something like 100 billion galaxies, of which the milky way is one. And we haven't even scratched the surface of our own one.

Spoonsky
09-11-2015, 02:41 AM
This is required reading on the question of why aliens haven't contacted us yet: http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

Spammer
09-11-2015, 09:08 AM
Yeah Wait But Why is great for it.

Saying we're gonna find life within 10 years is a massive claim. If we don't find anything on Mars then Europa is about your only other chance of it happening within that time frame, and I'm not sure how far we are in planning a trip but it's not certain we'll get there and get through all that ice within a decade. I'm ruling out finding anything via radio signals.

QE Harold Flair
09-11-2015, 03:16 PM
I think we will find either bacterial life on mars or evidence of it in the past. Liquid water now seems pretty certain so that's a big step.