
A Search for Alien Life Begins in Earth’s Oldest Desert - Pharmakon
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/searching-life-martian-landscape/576628/
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akshayB
There can be forms of life in universe which we may not even understand.

For example - Think of yourself an ant living next to a river. The ant would
have no prospective or understand of what is going on in the river and all the
fish inside it.

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toasterlovin
The difference between ants and humans being that humans can invent ways to
understand what is going on in the river. If there's something out there and
it is discoverable in principle, there's a good chance we'll discover it
someday.

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vokep
This. We think we can see clearly with our senses and command the world at
will, and we can, compared to ants. But what would an ant thinking about a
river it's observing be like? Ok tbh idk if an ant is best expample, lets just
assume its able to think to the level I'm describing. So the ant is looking at
the river, what does it see? Most likely just a bunch of shimmering stuff,
just randomness. Maybe it notices there are patterns but, it likely has a hard
time even determining that what is in front of it has the same stuff that it
finds on grass in the mornings. The thing is, the ant can't really see
anything clearly. What it does know, and can see clearly is navigation of its
tunnels and working with the other ants.

Unlike ants, we can use our rationality to go beyond our senses. Instead of
looking at rivers we look at space, planets around stars light years away.

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toasterlovin
And that's all true before you even get to the fact that it looks like we are
on the cusp of some really breathtaking ways of augmenting our intelligence.

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Pigo
> The odds seem pretty good that we will find extraterrestrial life, someday.

I know I have an unpopular opinion here, but I just don't see it happening. It
seems like wishful thinking to expect to find life extraterrestrial life. Of
course, I'd love to find out I'm wrong. But what is the observable data to
suggest otherwise?

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JoeAltmaier
The prevalence of planets around other suns. The exchange of physical material
between planets. The recent visit by an extra-solar asteroid, which if it had
been involved in a collision could have ended up in part on our planets. The
frequency of protein and DNA precursors in ordinary organic chemistry.

I think of the early history of our own planet. Sun and shade, heat and cold,
tides causing wet and dry in phases unsynchronized with the other effect. A
tiny random chemistry lab on every grain of sand on every beach for a billion
years. What are the odds that life _wouldn 't_ happen? A more interesting
statistic in my view.

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Pigo
I guess finding that instance of life would go a long way to proving that it's
just a statistical probability. I'm just a doubter by nature. I sometimes
wonder what people's motivations are for looking for the things they do. The
Universe is so endlessly fascinating, there's so many questions we don't even
know to ask yet.

