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From: Zen Cycle <funkmaster@hotmail.com>
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Subject: Re: Bicyclist decapitated
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2024 11:41:41 -0400
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On 4/28/2024 11:40 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Apr 2024 14:29:37 -0500, AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org> wrote:
> 
>> On 4/28/2024 1:42 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
>>> On Sat, 27 Apr 2024 15:49:45 -0500, AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> My comment was in reply to your, "They will probably try to
>>>> sell us things that are eventually found to be a scam." We
>>>> have a lot of those here!
>>>
>>> Yep.  Whenever I go somewhere on vacation, that's what the locals do
>>> to the tourists.
>>>
>>>> Food is the least likely 'catastrophic' problem. World grain
>>>> production rises every year on less land with less labor.
>>>> Human innovation rocks.
>>>>
>>>> Regarding overpopulation, the Cassandras haven't been so
>>>> great on that either. All advanced countries suffer
>>>> declining birth rates, many including USA below replacement.
>>>> Regarding extreme solutions to 'impending doom', look at the
>>>> results of Mao's One Child policy which has turned out very
>>>> badly.
>>>
>>> Rather write a long rant on the topic, I think you'll find this video
>>> more digestible.
>>> "The World Population Crisis NO ONE Sees Coming"
>>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk5KoWUwz6Q>  (21:52)
>>> The part on the changing demographics is rather interesting.  Note
>>> that the author of the video made no attempt to predict the future or
>>> even propose a short term trend.  When there were benefits to having
>>> many children, birth rate and fertility increase.  When the benefits
>>> are less valuable or useful, as is currently the situation, birth rate
>>> and fertility decrease.  What happens when the aliens arrive is
>>> unknown.  If they are hostile, increasing the birth rate is what
>>> traditionally is used to build a large army to fight the aliens.  If
>>> they are friendly and help solve our problems, people might think that
>>> it's a wonderful world and a great time to have kids.  Or, they might
>>> decide to have a good time and not want to deal with difficulties of
>>> raising kids.  Toss a coin on that one.
>>>
>>> Chairman Mao's one child policy was a resounding success, but not in
>>> the manner initially intended.  What it actually did was produce a
>>> radical change in China's economic policies and opened China to trade,
>>> commerce and a restricted form of private enterprise.  It didn't
>>> change China's political system in the slightest.  The result was a
>>> spectacular increase in the standard of living.  The birth rate is now
>>> decreasing because the population have found better things to do than
>>> raise large families.  It took a while longer than Mao would have
>>> predicted, but I think if he were alive today, he would be proud of
>>> what he indirectly accomplished.
> 
>> Thanks to you I was thinking of extraterrestrials on a long
>> drive here early today.
> 
> Guilty as charged and thank you for the credit.
> 
>> IMHO it's more likely than not that there is other life
>> beyond Earth. But, given the immense distances, highly
>> unlikely that any two civilizations capable of leaving their
>> own planet would ever encounter one another.
> 
> True.  However, there are plenty of other things in our environment
> and in the cosmos that have very low probabilities.  For example, the
> numerical values of the physical constants control so many things that
> are responsible for making our universe and ourselves that suggest
> intelligent design rather than random chance is what sets their
> values:
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_constant>
> Change any of these even slightly and our universe will fall apart.

AKA the "fine Tuning" argument - generally used as a justification for 
"Intelligent Design" arguments

<snip>

>> And a further thought- One of my pet peeves is the comment
>> in NASA press releases about exoplanets which 'could support
>> life'. pfffft, how parochial and narrow minded.  There's no
>> reason to limit a 'life form' to compatibility with human
>> respiration of our atmosphere, our operating temperature
>> range or more importantly our chemistry. It's not
>> unreasonable to posit an utterly different basis for life
>> outside of carbon chemistry.
> 
> I beg to partially differ.  If we assume that all the known elements
> are present in roughly the same distributions throughout the universe,
> there's a good chance that self-replicating life processes will be
> built using the same elements as on planet Earth.  "Carbon atoms are
> unique because they can bond together to form very long, durable
> chains that can have branches or rings of various sizes and often
> contain thousands of carbon atoms."
> <https://www.nature.com/articles/139290a0.pdf>
> The emergence of life is possible with comparatively inferior elements
> but the main building block will mostly likely be a stable atom that
> will build the strongest and move versatile bonds to other atoms.

That's from our extremely biased perspective. To limit the possibility 
to life as we know it simply due t the fact that that's what we know is 
- as Andrew notes - myopic at best.

> 
>> All random thoughts above are fact-free, non disprovable and
>> one man's opinion.
> 
> Today's science is no long built on truths, facts and certainty.  It's
> built on probability.  There have been many major discoveries that
> were built on guesses, hunches, low probabilities, thought
> experiments, casual observation, wishful thinking, etc.  It's no
> longer possible to judge something as being right or wrong.  There is
> a huge gray area between right and wrong that is currently the source
> material for what we call science.  Throw relativity into the puzzle
> and everything becomes a probability.  There's no need to apologize.

"In an infinite universe, infinite things are possible" - Carl Sagan

vs

"I suppose the probability exists that the apples could rise back up to 
the tress tomorrow, but the possibility doesn't warrant much discussion 
time in the science class" - Stephen Jay Gould

> 

-- 
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