> Your turn: Yes or no, is "communicating with the outside makers of the AI Elon Musk thinks created the universe" something we have zero evidence for? Is that not reasonably categorized as a "flight of fancy"?
absolutely
> If yes, why do you expect to be able to say anything sensible about it?
I said somehting I think was sensible, which is that we have no way of knowing such a thing.
> And why are we apparently obligated to discuss it despite explicitly setting up a premise of "let's discuss things using the physics we know?"
We are not. We are obligated to acknowledge we don't know everything, which you admitted to by stating that sure, something that's a flight of fancy today could someday prove to be true, hence, there are possibly things we don't know. We of course cannot do anything with that, because we have no way to know.
> This is failing on the most basic level of philosophical discussion here. We are allowed to discuss "If X, then Y" without being obligated to also discuss "if ~X", nor is it a reasonable philosophical objection to "If X, then Y" to say "Well, what if not X?" It is a reasonable objection to disprove X and prove the whole "If X, then Y" conversation is thereby vacuous, but if you can disprove science as it stands today, this is hardly the place to do it.
all I wanted to state was that there may be things that prove to be true which if we were to hear them today, we would only be able to conclude they are flights of fancy and nothing more. and we agreed. I'm not attempting to make the "how do you know X doesn't exist?" argument because there's no X that has been suggested except for an intentionally ridiculous example. I'm more making a comment on what seemed to be your absolute certainty that electromagnetic energy is definitely the only way any intelligent life form would ever communicate across distances, science has successfully and provably ruled out any other possibility.
absolutely
> If yes, why do you expect to be able to say anything sensible about it?
I said somehting I think was sensible, which is that we have no way of knowing such a thing.
> And why are we apparently obligated to discuss it despite explicitly setting up a premise of "let's discuss things using the physics we know?"
We are not. We are obligated to acknowledge we don't know everything, which you admitted to by stating that sure, something that's a flight of fancy today could someday prove to be true, hence, there are possibly things we don't know. We of course cannot do anything with that, because we have no way to know.
> This is failing on the most basic level of philosophical discussion here. We are allowed to discuss "If X, then Y" without being obligated to also discuss "if ~X", nor is it a reasonable philosophical objection to "If X, then Y" to say "Well, what if not X?" It is a reasonable objection to disprove X and prove the whole "If X, then Y" conversation is thereby vacuous, but if you can disprove science as it stands today, this is hardly the place to do it.
all I wanted to state was that there may be things that prove to be true which if we were to hear them today, we would only be able to conclude they are flights of fancy and nothing more. and we agreed. I'm not attempting to make the "how do you know X doesn't exist?" argument because there's no X that has been suggested except for an intentionally ridiculous example. I'm more making a comment on what seemed to be your absolute certainty that electromagnetic energy is definitely the only way any intelligent life form would ever communicate across distances, science has successfully and provably ruled out any other possibility.