I think you sometimes lack the patience to fully explain what you consider obvious, or can't quite imagine that somebody can't see the 'obvious,' or something like that. You're very terse, which is good for jokes, but not always the best for arguments. My best friend from high school is similar. Aren't / weren't you a teacher? How'd that go? Seems like you'd struggle with non-gifted students.

YEA RITE CARDO GIVE US 15 PAGES ON HOW MUCH YOU LIKE BEING NICE YOU ****ING CLOWN

killa,

My advice is to dress down if you haven't already. They don't want you for a jury if you look like a professional. You want the quick pick for the easy shoplifting case.

[QUOTE=FlyWf;14650708] It's not 50/50 just because we don't know, we can make intelligent speculation because we have some ideas. That speculation has error bars. Those error bars are large because we have such a small idea. However, it is totally reasonable to conclude that the chance there is life outside Earth's atmosphere is large, approaching 100%.[QUOTE]

I think his point is that the error bars are so large that you can't draw any reasonable conclusion from the speculation.

His points are:
There is an arbitrarily large number of planets in the universe that can support life. (N) (approaching, although not infinity, lets say)
There are arbitrarily small odds that life will arise on an given planet. (L) (approaching, although not zero, lets say)

N x L = the probability of life outside earth. (P)

P could be almost 1. P could also be almost 0. We have no way of knowing, no idea even the order of magnitude of odds that life exists or how many planets there are that can support life. Therefore we do not know whether P is closer to 0 or 1.

Back to your regularly scheduled LC thread.

i was a teacher yeah, and the actual teaching part went rather smoothly. i tutor people privately also. i've never had a problem explaining concepts that i understand well to others. the internet is a bit different because sure i'm trying to mix education with making people think and a dash of mockery. but can you give me an example from the thread?

Well that makes more sense. For a second I was worried a brain slug had attached itself to your head.

jeans and a polo and i actually did my hair (no hat) i think i failed

gump- Dudd's English language analogy is legitimate bad logic, because there is one English language and multiple(potentially infinite!) forms of life. Shifts like that are logically questionable.

More fundamentally, it's proving a point that nobody disagrees with. I mean, we know that one number is 62. What are the chances that another number is also 62?

The actual Drake equation is heavily speculation, but the logic behind it IS SOUND.
1) There are a lot of places
2) We are aware of properties of a place that can allow life
3) There are possibly other places where life could exist
4) Life might exist in those places

Which step is wrong?

Daryn- Can you explain your bet with Clark?

Yeah, thank Jesus, by whom there is no intelligent extraterrestrial life. We were worried about you there for a second.

And they're totally worth making! People are expressing their ineffable certainty or close-enough-that-it-makes-no-difference that there's extraterrestrial life when, by Daryn's hella obvious thinking, there's not really a sound basis for that.

Of course the logic is sound. But we have no idea what the variables are. That's like me saying:

A*B=C

Is C positive or negative?

(hint: it's 50/50)

'Card0- People are aware that they are speculating.

We don't have NO IDEA, though. How many planets are there in the universe? Could it be -3?

People are ****ing SF geeks who participate in the same faith-based hoping that they deride in others.

Yes, yes, there is infinity billion times more scientific basis for the confident belief in extraterrestrial life than for the confident belief in god, don't start.

what is to explain about the clark bet offer? he asked if i would bet on life existing at +120, i said yes. i never tried to "dodge it" (which is laughable) but initially said i wouldn't bet because i misunderstood. but he's giving me odds on what i stated was a 50/50 prop, so yeah i'd bet.

i wanted to make a tsi tsi fly joke but i feel it is now too late.

daryn- Which side of it do you think you have? Life or no life?

My point (and daryn's too, I think) is that we have little enough idea that we effectively have no idea. There could be 10^15 planets. There could be 10^18 planets. We have no evidence to suggest that either one is more correct than the others.

Same thing for odds of life arising on those planets. It could be 1/10^15. It could be 1/10^18. Both (from our empirical evidence and observations) are equally likely.

Obviously if there are 10^18 planets and the odds are 1/10^15 on each, then you'll have planets with life on them. But if there are 10^15 planets and the odds are 1/10^18 on each, then it's a 1/1000 chance that you have life.

I can't really imagine how this was going to work.

Really? I bet that claim is a lot harder to defend than you think it is. Regardless, it's irrelevant. All it does is rescale the probabilities. That the proposition "A or B or C or D" is more likely than the proposition "A" doesn't say anything about its absolute likelihood, which is what is relevant for making the assertion that it is "obvious."

Is it? It seems to me that most of the argument in the thread is in some way or another on this point.

It's not that it's wrong, it's that it is most likely useless because garbage in, garbage out.

life.. wtf? it's like i'm in the twilight zone here. how is what i'm typing unclear in any way?

he said he'd give me +120 on life existing

translation: if we could somehow get the answer immediately, and it was shown that life exists elsewhere, you win $120 for a $100 wager.

i said i'd take it, meaning i would risk $100 to win $120 and would win if life were shown to exist elsewhere.


if i've misunderstood AGAIN then wow i'm out of it. i'll go back and reread.

ok.. read the thread again. he was offering NO life at +120, but it doesn't matter either way. if i believe it's 50/50 i'd bet on both.

And that's wrong. A little bit of an idea is more than no idea. We know that yellow stars with such and such planets allow life. We know that other yellow stars exist. Etc. There may be other avenues towards life, and for those we know nothing, so the Drake equation is a lower bound on life probability. It's speculation, harmless speculation at that, but meh the universe is really big and there's no real reason to believe that we are unique in any way.

we might know they ALLOW life, but what are the odds of life springing up, even in perfectly favorable conditions?

ya it's an entourage reference referring to LFS' work situation

So you thought it was plausible that Clark, who was arguing with you and was on the "there is life" side, was inexplicably switching sides to book hypothetical magical action against what he thought was true?

This is why you get into pissing matches, because you don't really try to understand the other side but still like calling them dumb.