Except that our "understanding of space and physics" may be INCOMPLETE to a degree that we cannot even CALCULATE
Oh come on, as much as I'd like it to be aliens who'll come along any day now and force us to mate endlessly, the odds of it being aliens from a statistical point of view are near zero. I mean, honestly, which is more likely here? It being a rock undergoing some physical process we don't quite understand and therefor not ending up in the trajectory we expected or an alien probe cleverly disguised as a rock sent here to scout planets for habitability by a civilization that has not only mastered interstellar travel, but has such long term goals on its agenda that it would take hundreds if not thousands of generations before actually getting a single result? Which of these requires the least amount of leaps of faith?
we will discover NOTHING NEW or mind-boggling about space and physics in the next 200 years
It's hard to predict what we'll do in 200 years, but my guess is we'll find a fuckton of things we haven't seen yet, revise our model of the universe, maybe we'll even develop some sort of hyper efficient engine making a trip to Mars similar to a flight to another continent, who knows? Statistically speaking, even my wildest dreams are much more likely than aliens.
we are DEAD CERTAIN that we KNOW EVERYTHING about the vast universe we exist in
We don't know everything, but we can take pretty good guesses about how likely it is that an alien civilization built a probe to look like a rock which would then go on a several thousand years interstellar journey and remain functional enough during that time to accelerate away from us as fast as it could, and report to the homebase "No intelligent life here".
I'm not saying it can't be aliens. Who knows, maybe Zorg will show up in a few years and build a harem of concubines of the attractive humans and use the rest as cattle for the new Manburger (tm) or enslave us all to work in the salt mines of Vednor 3. It's just extremely unlikely. If I were an alien race I'd ram that probe right into the planet and get rid of a potential threat to my galactic souvereignty, but that's just me... If that would have happened, I'm sure I would've said "Huh, what are the odds" in my final moments before burning my books on logic and statistics as a warning to those who'd survive the onslaught.
Unless we get some really convincing arguments that this rock isn't a rock without a giant leap of faith, it's just gonna be a rock. A damn interesting one, but still... just a rock.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that our "understanding of space and physics" may be INCOMPLETE to a degree that we cannot even CALCULATE
Oh come on, as much as I'd like it to be aliens who'll come along any day now and force us to mate endlessly, the odds of it being aliens from a statistical point of view are near zero. I mean, honestly, which is more likely here? It being a rock undergoing some physical process we don't quite understand and therefor not ending up in the trajectory we expected or an alien probe cleverly disguised as a rock sent here to scout planets for habitability by a civilization that has not only mastered interstellar travel, but has such long term goals on its agenda that it would take hundreds if not thousands of generations before actually getting a single result? Which of these requires the least amount of leaps of faith?
we will discover NOTHING NEW or mind-boggling about space and physics in the next 200 years
It's hard to predict what we'll do in 200 years, but my guess is we'll find a fuckton of things we haven't seen yet, revise our model of the universe, maybe we'll even develop some sort of hyper efficient engine making a trip to Mars similar to a flight to another continent, who knows? Statistically speaking, even my wildest dreams are much more likely than aliens.
we are DEAD CERTAIN that we KNOW EVERYTHING about the vast universe we exist in
We don't know everything, but we can take pretty good guesses about how likely it is that an alien civilization built a probe to look like a rock which would then go on a several thousand years interstellar journey and remain functional enough during that time to accelerate away from us as fast as it could, and report to the homebase "No intelligent life here".
I'm not saying it can't be aliens. Who knows, maybe Zorg will show up in a few years and build a harem of concubines of the attractive humans and use the rest as cattle for the new Manburger (tm) or enslave us all to work in the salt mines of Vednor 3. It's just extremely unlikely. If I were an alien race I'd ram that probe right into the planet and get rid of a potential threat to my galactic souvereignty, but that's just me... If that would have happened, I'm sure I would've said "Huh, what are the odds" in my final moments before burning my books on logic and statistics as a warning to those who'd survive the onslaught.
Unless we get some really convincing arguments that this rock isn't a rock without a giant leap of faith, it's just gonna be a rock. A damn interesting one, but still... just a rock.
Every python debate ever summarized in two comments:
>> Has it solved its threading issues yet?
> No, but you can call fork
Really now
Where does that leave slashdot?
The lint in the bellybutton