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At Mind Matters News: NASA seeks standards for ET life claims

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The agency wants to develop a credibility scale so we know what to pay attention to:

Such a standard might help guide decisions. What about the people who have insisted that the White House is hiding space aliens? They doubtless sound less credible than the Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who insisted that Oumuamua is an extra-terrestrial solar sail. But on what are we basing that decision? Social class? If not, what? For that matter, what about the Pentagon’s recent admission that there are phenomena out there that we just can’t explain?

Guidelines are certain to be disputed but they would at least provide a basis for reasonable discussion. That might lead to more and better public education on the issues.

News, “NASA seeks standards for ET life claims ” at Mind Matters News

Now that looking for ET is a serious business, we need standards for evaluating what counts as evidence. As it happens, Avi Loeb comments here on the “Galileo Project,” as it is called:

The Galileo Project follows three major avenues of research. The first involves obtaining high-resolution images of UAP using an array of dedicated small-aperture telescope at various geographical locations. Extensive artificial intelligence/deep learning (AI/DL) and algorithmic approaches are needed to differentiate atmospheric phenomena from birds, balloons, commercial aircraft or drones, and from potential technological objects of terrestrial or other origin surveying our planet, such as satellites.

For the purpose of high-contrast imaging, each telescope will be part of a detector array of complementary capabilities from radar systems to optical and infrared cameras on telescopes. Parallax could also help to map the motion of objects in three dimensions. For example, two telescopes separated by three feet would see an object at a distance as large as 10 miles with a resolvable angular separation of ten arcseconds.

Avi Loeb, Announcing a New Plan for Solving the Mystery of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena at Scientific American (July 26, 2021)

Okay but never overlook the possibility that they are space cows.

See also: What if the unidentified aerial phenomena (UFOs) are much simpler than we think? Why assume, if the unexplained phenomena are ET, that they are more advanced than we are? What if the opposite is true?

Comments
In the Scientific American article we also find Avi Loeb waxing poetic about Darwinian evolution, space travel, the morality of ETs, and self replicating AI systems, via 3-D printers, that are far smarter than humans.
Despite the naive storylines about interstellar travel in science fiction, biological creatures were not selected by Darwinian evolution to survive travel between stars. Such a trip would necessarily span many generations, since even at the speed of light, it would take tens of thousands of years to travel between stars in our galaxy’s disk and 10 times longer across its halo. If we ever encounter traces of aliens, therefore, it will likely be in the form of technology, not biology.,,,, On a recent podcast about my book Extraterrestrial, I was asked whether extraterrestrial intelligence should be expected to follow the rational underpinning of morality, as neatly formulated by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. This would be of concern to us during an encounter. Based on human history, I expressed doubt that morality would garner a global commitment from all intelligent beings in the Milky Way. Instead, a code of conduct that allows systems of alien technology to dominate the galaxy would also make them more likely to be the way we would first encounter extraterrestrials. Practically, this rule will act as a sort of Darwinian evolution by natural selection, favoring systems that can persevere over long times and distances; and multiply quickly and spread at the highest speed with self-repair mechanisms that mitigate damage along their journey. Such systems could have reached the habitable zones around all stars within the Milky Way, including our sun, by now. Most stars formed billions of years before ours did, and technological equipment sent from habitable planets near them could have predated us by enough time to dominate the galaxy before we came to exist as a technological species. Our own artificial intelligence systems are likely to supersede many features of human intelligence within the coming decade. It is therefore reasonable to imagine AI systems connected to 3-D printers that would replicate themselves on planet surfaces and adapt to changing circumstances along their journey between planets through machine learning. They could hibernate during long journeys and turn on close to stars, using starlight to recharge their energy supply. With this in mind, it is conceivable that the flat thin structure that might have characterized the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua was meant to collect sunlight and recharge its batteries. The same dish could have also served as a receiver for communication signals from probes that were already deposited on habitable planets, like Earth or Mars. - Avi Loeb
Oh my gosh, and this guy is actually a Professor of science at Harvard??? As News highlighted, Avi Loeb also stated,
"The Galileo Project follows three major avenues of research. The first involves obtaining high-resolution images of UAP using an array of dedicated small-aperture telescope at various geographical locations. Extensive artificial intelligence/deep learning (AI/DL) and algorithmic approaches are needed to differentiate atmospheric phenomena from birds, balloons, commercial aircraft or drones, and from potential technological objects of terrestrial or other origin surveying our planet, such as satellites." - Avi Loeb
So we have extremely sophisticated, Intelligently Designed, instruments looking for other extremely sophisticated, Intelligently Designed, instruments on or around other planets? And the good professor at Harvard sees no problem with this for his Darwinian worldview? If he hasn't noticed, there is a small problem for Professor Avi Loeb and his Darwinian worldview. if his Darwinian worldview is actually true, then there is, and can be, nothing for all our extremely sophisticated, Intelligently Designed, instruments to look for. "Intelligence", in any meaningful sense, simply would not exist as a distinct, and unique, 'thing' to look for. As Paul Nelson clearly explains in the following article (with helpful illustrations), "some feature of "intelligence" must be irreducible to physics, because otherwise we’re back to physics versus physics, and there’s nothing for SETI to look for."
Do You Like SETI? Fine, Then Let’s Dump Methodological Naturalism - Paul Nelson - September 24, 2014 Excerpt: some feature of "intelligence" must be irreducible to physics, because otherwise we’re back to physics versus physics, and there’s nothing for SETI to look for. https://evolutionnews.org/2014/09/do_you_like_set/
It is also very interesting to note, as Avi Loeb himself demonstrates, that Darwinists apparently have no trouble whatsoever knowing what it would take to detect 'signatures of Intelligence' when it suits their fancy, but when that 'signature of Intelligence' is sitting right inside their own body, all of the sudden they become completely blind to being able to detect any 'signatures of Intelligence' whatsoever. Perhaps Avi Loeb might be much more receptive to Intelligent Design if we claimed, instead of God, that ETs designed DNA? Like these following researchers claimed?
The “Wow! signal” of the terrestrial genetic code - May 2013 Excerpt: Simple arrangements of the code reveal an ensemble of arithmetical and ideographical patterns of the same symbolic language. Accurate and systematic, these underlying patterns appear as a product of precision logic and nontrivial computing rather than of stochastic processes (the null hypothesis that they are due to chance coupled with presumable evolutionary pathways is rejected with P-value < 10–13). The patterns are profound to the extent that the code mapping itself is uniquely deduced from their algebraic representation. The signal displays readily recognizable hallmarks of artificiality, among which are the symbol of zero, the privileged decimal syntax and semantical symmetries. Besides, extraction of the signal involves logically straightforward but abstract operations, making the patterns essentially irreducible to any natural origin,,, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103513000791
Or perhaps Avi Loeb might listen to Francis Crick?
“Life did not evolve first on Earth; a highly advanced civilization became threatened so they devised a way to pass on their existence. They genetically-modified their DNA and sent it out from their planet on bacteria or meteorites with the hope that it would collide with another planet. It did, and that’s why we’re here. The DNA molecule is the most efficient information storage system in the entire universe. The immensity of complex, coded and precisely sequenced information is absolutely staggering. The DNA evidence speaks of intelligent, information-bearing design. Complex DNA coding would have been necessary for even the hypothetical first so-called’ simple cell(s). Our DNA was encoded with messages from that other civilization. They programmed the molecules so that when we reached a certain level of intelligence, we would be able to access their information, and they could therefore — teach” us about ourselves, and how to progress. For life to form by chance is mathematically virtually impossible.” - Francis Crick – Life Itself – September 1982
But alas, I think that honestly admitting that our DNA clearly, and overwhelmingly, displays "signatures of Intelligence", even if the "Intelligence" were postulated to be ET, would still be a bridge too far for even our nutty Professor Avi Loeb and his Darwinian worldview. Of supplemental note:
Search for signs of alien civilisations in 100,000 galaxies has turned up nothing - 12 MAY 2015 Excerpt: "Our results mean that, out of the 100,000 galaxies that WISE could see in sufficient detail, none of them is widely populated by an alien civilisation using most of the starlight in its galaxy for its own purposes," said Wright. "That's interesting because these galaxies are billions of years old, which should have been plenty of time for them to have been filled with alien civilisations, if they exist. Either they don't exist, or they don't yet use enough energy for us to recognise them." This is the dilemma at the heart of the Fermi Paradox. Logically, there have been plenty of opportunities for life to occur around the Universe, so where are all the aliens? http://www.sciencealert.com/search-for-signs-of-advanced-civilisation-in-100-000-galaxies-has-turned-up-nothing
As to searching for Intelligence "out there somewhere", might I point out that God, who created heaven and earth, certainly does not hide from those who sincerely seek and/or need Him? Verse:
Isaiah 45:18-19 ?For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth and made it, who established it, who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited: “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth; I did not say to the seed of Jacob, ‘seek me in vain’; I, the Lord speak righteousness, I declare things that are right.”
bornagain77
July 27, 2021
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Well, we know that NASA's standards will be purely caste-based. Loeb is credible because he belongs to the Correct Caste in every way. Class, ethnicity, religion, degree. An uneducated Alabama Evangelical who claims to see design in a long comet-like rock is bottom-caste in every way, so his story is automatically wrong. It's easy when you know who is WHO.polistra
July 26, 2021
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