But wait! What fuels the possibility of separating ourselves from nature? Every run-of-the-mill science writer knows that we are merely the 99% chimpanzee that cannot transcend the accidental blob/monad-to-man history of life. This human exceptionalism could be the most radical suggestion that Avi Loeb, no stranger to controversy, has ever made.
Tag: Avi Loeb
At Mind Matters News: Harvard astronomer: Advanced aliens engineered the Big Bang
Avi Loeb writes in Scientific American that when we humans are sufficiently advanced, we will create other universes as well.
At Mind Matters News: Leading astronomer gets it all wrong about free will and destiny
In response to Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb denying free will and all that, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor points out, “Logic and reason aren’t laws of physics and therefore they transcend physical properties.”
At Mind Matters News: The UFOs Carl Sagan was convinced of but couldn’t talk about
Sagan was denied tenure at Harvard for being, according to Zabel, a little too “out there.” But today, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb openly discusses his thoughts on ETs and UFOs in popular science venues. And, in what sounds like a helpful move, NASA is seeking standards for ET life claims, rather than just denying or avoiding them altogether.
At Mind Matters News: NASA seeks standards for ET life claims
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.
At Scientific American: We need a treaty with space aliens
How be someone show us a fossil bacterium on Mars first? This is part of the big new Trust the Science program, right?
Saturday night: Ex-Pentagon whistleblower warns of UFO 9-11
The remarkable thing is that we haven’t found so much as a fossil bacterium in recent Mars samples. The belief that whatever’s weird out there must be aliens is a sheer act of faith. The same people who would dismiss massive evidence for design in the universe and life forms believe in ET with no evidence at all. That’s probably because, at heart, their commitment is one of the few types of religion that naturalism permits.
Fazale Rana: Isn’t Harvard Astronomer Avi Loeb’s using design detection to claim Oumuamua is an alien spacecraft?
Fazale Rana: Loeb’s work affirms a point that I (and others) have repeatedly made. Science has the toolkit to detect the work of agency in nature. To put it another way, Loeb’s thesis demonstrates that detection of intelligent design in nature is legitimately part of the construct of science.
“‘Oumuamua is a spacecraft!” astronomer has come up with a SENSIBLE idea: Search the Moon
Avi Loeb has come up with a very reasonable idea for searching for evidence of other civilizations in our galaxy: Look for alien debris on our still, lifeless, atmosphere-free Moon.
Avi Loeb at Scientific American on the importance of reproducibility in science
Okay re the importance of reproducibility but it was never clear why Oumuamua was supposed to be ET anyway. More Oumuamuas would not make it more likely.
Would specified complexity help us find extraterrestrial intelligences?
Specified complexity is what we should be looking for in signals from intelligent beings — orderly patterns that hold meanings not found in inanimate nature.
A comet, not an asteroid, killed the dinosaurs, say astrophysicists
At Smithsonian Mag: Siraj and co-author Avi Loeb concluded from their analysis that Jupiter’s gravitational field was strong enough to bump many such long-period comets from the Oort cloud off course, bringing them very close to the Sun.
Avi Loeb suggests that the design of life might have been a black hole. Michael Egnor responds
Michael Egnor: Both an intelligent designer (assuming we’re talking about God) and a black hole are supernatural, in the sense that they are not objects in the natural world. This may not surprise you about God, but it is also true of black holes.
Scientific American treats Avi Loeb’s design inference with respect
Maybe the people at SciAm are getting a crash course in the design inference?
Here are some reviews of Avi Loeb’s book about space debris Oumuamua as a space alien signal
Some of us still think Loeb is way off the beam about Oumuamua but at least he is talking about how you would know that something is designed. If anyone is interested, it is called the design inference.