Is SETI science?

Isn’t this interesting. A Turing test will settle it in my mind. Of course practically applying such a two-way test… well, I think SETI needs to come up with an idea to implement it in order to sound a bit more…scientific. Or do you think they are applying a one way Turing test (if such a thing exists) of some sort? I guess you are back at :
Science has no method to evaluate and determine whether or not something is the result of intelligence or not without independent evidence of the intelligent beings (or whatever you want to call it).

Now let’s see how an IDiot can apply a Turing test. Mmmm, picture scenario 1 and scenario 2:
Scenario 1:
SETI: "Eureka, we have found a signal that we think is from an intelligent source. We don’t exactly define what intelligence is, but hey, we think there is enough evidence to support this… blah blah, it is too complex to form naturally (argument from ignorance and discontinuity) or it looks like some sort of language to send out their position (argument from analogy)
Skeptic: I think you need to apply the Turing test, as it will provide real proof of intelligence and besides, the IDiots aren’t doing it and makes us more scientific.
SETI: Yeah sure, let’s send out a signal and see if they respond…
Skeptic: Errr, it is going to take a few hundred years to get there and another to get back…
SETI: Don’t worry, it might seem impossible and impractical at the moment, but it is still science…

Scenario 2:
IDiots: "Eureka, we have found a conglomerate of particles that we think is from an intelligent source. We don’t exactly define what intelligence is, but hey, we think there is enough evidence to support this… blah blah, it is too complex to form naturally (argument from ignorance and discontinuity) or it looks like some sort of code and might even contain information about the kind of intelligence (argument from analogy…because you know, stuff that makes codes generally want to let others know what they do right right ;))
Skeptic: I think you need to apply the Turing test. SETI does it, it makes them a bit more scientific you see and will provide real proof of intelligence.
IDiots: Yeah sure, however, we are pretty sure the information of the intelligent beings together with their location in the cosmos as well as their reason for making is somehow stored in one of these codes (you know the conglomerate of particles we think is from an intelligent source). Only then will we do a Turing test. Those SETI idiots are sending out a Turing test to a place where there might not even exist intelligence anymore, at least our method might give us more information.
Skeptic: Errr, it is going to take a few hundred years to get there and another to get back…
ID: Don’t worry, it might seem impossible and impractical at the moment, but it is still science…

In both cases the skeptic is welcome to laugh out loud at the idiocy in both camps… but hey SETI is science right?

Ah, you sound like your average IDiot spouting BS.

I am sorry muppet, you are going to have to generate a hypothesis that is at least falsifiable. Science is the creation of testable hypotheses.
Do try at least when you consider SETI to be a science.
BTW, if the SETI hypothesis is even remotely like the following:
Hypothesis: There are intelligent alien civilizations (besides us) which send out radio signals that are recognizable by us.
Please explain how it is falsifiable in principle.
If your hypothesis (or understanding of SETI’s hypothesis) is very different from the above (it probably is because you just like to be a disagreeing idiot), then please do elaborate on this wonderful falsifiable SETI hypothesis that you are aware of.

Yeah, and IDiots can argue we can create life, and one day we will seed other planets with life because we are curious about the natural world and looking to expand our knowledge and we can expect the same thing about the aliens that probaly designed us (IDiots say they have evidence you know). And sorry, falsify yours as well as the IDiots arguments…

Damn, you can’t even recognise paraphrasing after you explain it to others. Mmm, I think you should go for a Turing test, you might fail there bozo.

Oh boy, you should really do the Turing test there matey. here:
ID - we’ll wait for God to show us the way. Mmm

Is that the sum total of your knowledge about IDiots? Mmm, I think I have met more IDiots who do not hold that view. Anyway, your straw man, you support it…

IDiots are also looking for information they can work with, surely you cannot be that dumb and not see the parallels.

Shame man, and you are still left with your finger up your arse and giving the same old argument from discontinuity, ignorance and analogy and then completely fail to at least give a definition of the very thing SETI is looking for…

SETI science 101: A study without a subject, but we’ll know it when we see it because we can expect at least some aliens to be the same as us in some way.
ID science 101: A study without a subject, but we’ll know it when we see it because this stuff looks complex.

Aaaw, what a pity… And I thought that we could agree on one thing at least. ID is not science.

Well done Don Quiote. cyghost 1 windmill 0. Damn, you should get an award.

If you must know, I read the following links and merely agree with them and their arguments. Their arguments aren’t new; as I am sure others have made the same ones before they did. That you were just ignorant of them and then accuse me of plagiarism is a bit sad to say the least. From experience I have realized that whenever you see your arguments are poor, that your tantrums don’t attract attention and that you see that you are just talking crap, you start to attack others and accuse them of all sorts of things just to distract the discussion away from your idiocy. Sorry, no-one buys it anymore, the emperor has no clothes mate. Try to stick the discussion, if you do not have anything constructive to add, rather shut you face and move along.

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html

http://designmatrix.wordpress.com/ (the author also thinks ID is not science lots of discussion about SETI there as well)
Similarities Between SETI and the Design Matrix |

neither is science…

I don’t think a Turing test would be required, evidence of even basic computational ability would probably be sufficient.

Hooray, Eureka, we have discovered basic computational abilities, therefore intelligence. Oh wait, it is a BS argument…

No, basic computational abilities, therefore evolution. If the signal shows evidence of basic computational abilities then it’s source was probably subject to natural selection.

Therfore no need to speculate intelligence, duh, you defeated your own argument, thought, or whatever you want to call it there with regards to SETI, evolution and natural selection…

Nope, you defined intelligence as a product of natural selection. Therefore any such product could at least potentially be intelligent. Admittedly intelligence is a rather subjective term, but since we know of no other source than natural selection it seems a search for such products is a good place to start. When you really get down to it we are looking for evolved complex life like ourselves. If we find it, whether you choose to call it intelligent or not is really up to you.

I did not define intelligence anywhere, stop lying.

And you call that science? Oh, that looks like intelligence to me, let’s call it intelligence because I think so… No science required, no testing, just my opinion folks and that is SETI science.

SETI science 101: A study without a subject, but we’ll know it when we see it, because this stuff just looks intelligent.

Hey Mecchie, you haven’t answered the question. Typical. And between you and me it’s “Don Quixote”, okay? Chalk up one more to your deep respect for accuracy.

There once was a poster called Mecchie
who sucked up Eye-Dee every brekkie,
with cut’n’paste capers
and plagiarized papers,
his “science” was horribly yecchy!

Mech-man, here’s a riddle for ya. Q: Where does perseverance end and pigsh…, I mean pigheadedness begin? A: Look in a mirror.

From the OP:

It seems you’re right on that one hehe!

Actually I do remember seeing them from your gatgabba Mike Gene, but had forgotten them. Our brains are quite good at chucking irrelevant drivel into the trash.

You have an established record of plagiarism.

Hehe! Touchy touchy!

Now, allow me to repeat some questions I asked you over on MyBB, on which forum you also dropped your SETI/science dogturd:

1. Do you believe that human kind possesses intelligence?

2. Does intelligence exist in your view outside of supernatural beings such as god?

3. What interpretations, in your view again, would be possible if signals from a consistent point in space were received of sequences of prime numbers, the value of pi, and/or other numbers others have mentioned?

Or are you just putting forward more “arguments from ignorance”?

PS. Irreverend - nice limerick there. ;D ;D

Repeat after me:
Irreverend agrees with mecchie that ID is not science, and that answers Irreverend’s question.

That does not help your cause one bit (and btw, that is not a definition of intelligence). Everything in nature can be explained via evolutionary processes, you still have not provided any means of detecting intelligence without any information about the intelligent beings (or whatever you want to call them).

1. I believe we do, although I am unable to provide you any kind of empirical evidence of that belief or whether it is true. Just another argument or belief from ignorance you see. It might all just be an illusion of mindless materialistic mechanisms and impersonal, mindless competitions between undirected and randomly interacting genes and memes
2. I believe it does. Sadly I lack the empirical evidence to back up such a wonderful belief (see 1).
3. Oh you can dream up any number of possibilities which are empirically testable in the future. I am sure you are not dumb enough to say that intelligence is the only possible and probable explanation if you don’t even have a definition for intelligence.

Hey mechie, just thought I’d let you know you are missing a great thread in which you have been soundly beaten. Again. People are well capable of seeing through the bluster and pomp mate, never you fear.

Oh and incidentally, the Turing test isn’t an intelligence test like you seem to think it is. I have already passed it. I’ll leave that for you to work out. If that is possible. I have my doubts.

And every signal we know is from a natural, unintelligent source, is a test to the falsifiability of this endeavor.

Once you stop making the basic category error, you’ll be seeing through a clear window. When you build your whole argument on bullshit premises, it is hardly surprising you end up vomiting bile. It is the stink of it that causes the involuntary gag reflex.

No you lying dumbass, I dont think the Turing test is an intelligence test. You should read next time. I am sure if you and a computer talks to another person the other person will think the computer is a person with some sort of intelligence and you are just a bungling moronic failure in AI. I don’t expect you to get that, afterall, you think SETI is science because arguments from ignorance, discontinuity and analogy and a hypothesis that is not falsifiable counts as science in your…how can I say…complete and utter AI failure of a “brain” consisting of mindless materialistic mechanisms and impersonal, mindless competitions between undirected and randomly interacting genes and memes with no real thoughts…

Next time please get a clue (oh damn I am tralking to something that simulates intelligence very poorly)…

roflol

Sure, I use “Turing Test” rather loosely. It need not involve an actual exchange, although of course there’s no reason that it couldn’t. The Turing Test is just a formalised way of looking for markers of intelligence, something we have little trouble recognising informally in other people when we interact with them. Nor do we need interactively to exchange ideas with them to know with considerable certainty that they are intelligent. We can judge this by their artefacts: I’ve never met or spoken to Einstein or Pauli or Heisenberg, but their works leave little room for doubt that they were intelligent beings.

Moreover, if, à la the movie Contact, we discovered a signal from space that carried, among other signs of intelligence (say, a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis – pick your own favourite level of sophistication), a recipe for constructing a device that would enable us to do something useful we had either thought intractable or never thought of before, i.e. something that is clearly a product of intelligent contemplation, then it is both parsimonious and justified to infer that, to high degree of probability, we had intercepted a signal from an intelligent source. What would clearly be anti-scientific in such a case would be to write it off to an “illusion of intelligence” or to “chance, necessity or evolution” and leave it at that. If, instead of a signal, we found an alien technological marvel orbiting our moon we would be equally foolish to write it off to an “illusion of intelligence” or to “chance, necessity or evolution” without further investigation.

We have one example of (sufficiently) intelligent beings in the universe, namely us, so to posit, as a working hypothesis pending persuasive evidence, that there may be others is hardly objectionable. Physicists have done an analogous thing several times in the past. For example, based on certain models, the existence of previously-undiscovered particles was put forward, and these particles were later found, thereby validating the model as a working hypothesis. Nor could those particles be observed directly; instead, they were inferred from the telltale signs they left in cloud- or bubble chambers. SETI researchers too are also looking for telltale signs, albeit that those signs are of a particular kind that consists principally of data/information.

But Mechanist’s curious obsession is obviously a struggle against the above ideas, i.e. that (a) there are obvious indicators of intelligence that are readily recognisable without the need for a rigorous definition of “intelligence,” (b) that systematic searching is in itself a scientific enterprise (if we don’t look, how can we hope to find?), and (c) that there is no such thing as perfect certainty, there always remaining a tiny residuum of doubt about any scientific hypothesis no matter how much evidence supports it.

And, as a working hypothesis, I posit that all we’ll hear in return is the same stale “arguments” about why SETI is like ID is not science – that is, it’s all “arguments from ignorance, discontinuity and analogy and a hypothesis that is not falsifiable,” all of which are plainly bogus charges.

'Luthon64

You do know that the nonsense above can be paraphrased to support ID. Sure, call it a working hypothesis, call it a study without a subject, tell people we will recognise it when we see without any rigorous definition of intelligence. Tell people that they might actually find piccies of spaceships and charitable alien homies and their wifes. hey, after all, it is science and you better buhlieve it.

Yes, of course you can, given enough desperation and a pathological unconcern about distorting things.

'Luthon64