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<title><![CDATA[Comments for entry "Alien Hypothesis" at Dilbert.com Blog]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/799]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Regular thoughts and updates from Dilbert.com]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from motormind]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1739585]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Of course, your alien hypothesis only raises the question what the origins would be of those aliens. Did they evolve? If not, then who seeded THEM? And who seeded their seeders?]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[MonAMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from BryanK2]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1736760]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Here's my tow cents about the topic.

Nice post, but I think that, in the end, it doesn't really matter. 

The beauty of evolution theory is that it doesn't need a creator of any kind. Even if we evolved from seeds that aliens planted, evolution theory is still the best explanation of how these aliens came into being. At present, there is no evidence that we're seeded, but if it ever came up (like in Ridley Scott's Prometheus) it would just modify the theory a tiny bit. 

Until' the moment the evidence of aliens' seed comes up, we might just as well go without involving aliens, don't we?]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[TuePMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from minotauraus]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1736619]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[To be honest, I don't care how life started. If only I could meet a different sentient being...
That is the only reason I wish humans could live for hundreds of years. I'd like to see us travel amongst the stars and wave at the little green men. :D]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[MonPMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from RMan]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1735959]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[I can see the movie trailer now...
&quot;In a world where confusion and disgust reign, a large alien probe appears in the sky and shoots its life starting seed all over the face of the earth.  Shortages of raincoats exist because of paranoid straight males.   Religious authorities are not amused when the word GOD is seen in the patterns of the alien probe.&quot;]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[WedPMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from smokefoot]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1735956]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[[Like creationism, your version of Intelligent Design isn't testable or nullable...]

It can be tested with sufficient technology - for example if we search space for left-over seed packets, or can analyze life on other planets looking for design similarities.  Like proton decay we can't ever rule it out completely, but that doesn't mean we don't search for proton decay.]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[WedPMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from smokefoot]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1735922]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[[[A hypothesis that can't be tested should be ignored.]

...says the guy who accepts a scientific theory that rests upon hypotheses that haven't (or even can't) be tested.]

What scientific theory do you think I accept?  Evolution as a process can certainly be tested and has been.]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[WedPMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from Drowlord]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1735920]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Wow.  Thanks for replying in my post personally, Scott.  I think that's a first for me.  Unfortunately, I think you accidentally replied to someone else in my post, as I can't understand how your reply relates to my comment...]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[WedPMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from BobNL]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1735916]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[@Kingfisher:

I go with your nr. 3:
- We are the byproduct of some other process, an accident with no real purpose

Not very spectacular, but it fits the &quot;what is most likely&quot; test.]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[WedAMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from EMU]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1735913]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[[Occam's Razor is !$%*!$%*! In practice, the simplest explanation is the one you already decided is true. -- Scott]
No scientists worth their salt say that some explanation or other is the &quot;true&quot; one. But often journalists twist scientists' statements that way, which may explain your point of view.

Even for politically charged topics like global warming, the question is never &quot;Is it true?&quot; but &quot;Is the evidence good enough to justify this ot that action?&quot;.]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[WedAMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from wtinasky]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1735817]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[[I've never seen another shirt like the one I am wearing right now. Is it reasonable to assume the manufacturer only made one because I have no evidence to the contrary? - Scott]

No, but it should nudge you in that direction. 

Say you reach into a bag of M&amp;M's and pull out a brown M&amp;M. Is that evidence that the bag contains no red ones? What if you repeat 100 times and get a brown every time? Obviously the answer changes from &quot;probably not&quot; to &quot;almost certainly&quot; somewhere between 1 and 100, but at no time is the answer either a definite yes or no. The proper quantitative treatment requires stuff like the estimation of prior probabilities which can get quite complicated.  Google up 'Bayesian Statistics' if you're interested.]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[TuePMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from WATYF1]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1735816]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[[A hypothesis that can't be tested should be ignored.]

...says the guy who accepts a scientific theory that rests upon hypotheses that haven't (or even can't) be tested.

WATYF]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[TuePMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from Raskolnikov]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1735797]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[The people who followed Columbus to the new world seemed to fall into approximately three categories: Those who wanted to rape the Americas of silver and gold, the settlers who wanted to emigrate, and the priests who wanted to convert the natives to Catholicism.

On a galactic scale, we are not seeing alien settlers, probably because DNA has a relatively short shelf life.  And unless they're being real sneaky, we're not aware of alien miners stripping precious metals from our solar system.

However, information is cheap to broadcast across the galaxy and there are probably more effective ways of sending info than we've even dreamed of.  Who's to say that the planets mentioned in Scientology and Mormonism aren't based on true planets that actually exist?  Why wouldn't alien priests 50 light years away try to save some souls?  Couldn't they be just as nutty as us?

]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[TuePMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from Raskolnikov]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1735795]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[What if it's much easier to seed other planets than we realize?  What if you can shoot scalpel-like nano-lasers at far-off interplanetary gas clouds to create Earth-like DNA, then use another laser to push the finished product in a certain direction?

Say that many other civilizations have done this at some point.  They may or may not have expected these life seeds to terraform other worlds, but they definitely expected them to evolve.  Therefore, there's the expectation that their progeny will be &quot;fit&quot; and will survive.  Taking this expectation a step further, why not include a genetic capability to kill off any existing life they find, sort of like giving smallpox-infected blankets to the Indians?

So then eons later, what you'd have in any given galaxy is an all-out life seed war.  Entire planets could be shedding spores, while evolving sophisticated immune systems to guard against enemy alien life seeds, arriving either accidentally or by intelligent means.  

Maybe billions of years ago the Earth was populated by happy, shiny silicon people, but then a carbon-based alien life seed managed to penetrate the planetary immune system and establish itself like a weed, going on to wipe out the native silicons.  The oxygen-rich atmosphere we enjoy today may be an engineered immune system against a counterattack.

On the other hand, maybe the war is going on slowly in front of our eyes, decendents of seeds from an Animal planet battling seeds from a Plant planet.


]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[TuePMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from Minder9]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1735770]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[I could buy into your Alien theory except for the timing issues.  If we subscribe to the big bang theory, all conditions supporting life, wherever these conditions happen to be, came into being about the same time.  Life may then have occurred at its own pace in various places, and followed its own evolutionary path.  The Aliens had to start somewhere, after these common events. Perhaps their evolutionary path was fast tracked and they became sentient and cooperative much earlier than we mere earthlings have managed to.  As old as earth might be â€“ billions of years most likely, humans have only begun to figure things out and cooperate with each other in sophisticated societies for the last 13000 years or so.  I seriously doubt that other civilizations could make much faster progress than we have to that point.  After that, if they are lucky enough, as we were, to have the right people in the right places at the right times to develop the right building blocks of language, writing, physics, electricity, mechanics, energy, and the right mix of natural resources â€¦yada yada yada â€“ they might have made considerable progress toward space travel, and beaten us to it by a few thousand years, but probably not before our own historical record began to be written.  Even if they beat us by a couple of hundred years that would be pretty significant given our own boundless desire to succumb to the opportunities to kill each other and get sidetracked with all sorts of non-relevant, non-space travel activities.  But, would that extra couple of thousand years be enough to plant their seeds and  have them take root, grow and flourish into the wonderful examples of life, society, and progress that we have become?  I donâ€™t think so. I donâ€™t think this theory works for the remote spread of societiesâ€¦life perhaps, but not mature social organisms. There just hasnâ€™t been enough time.]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[TuePMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from RayKremer]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1735767]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[I agree completely with the statement &quot;evolution is a fact, having met all of the tests of science&quot;. However Scott also said this: &quot;I realize that the alien hypothesis simply pushes back the question of how the original alien life forms came into being.&quot;

A lot of &quot;evolution and big bang, therefore atheism&quot; folks ignore the fact that as much as you can explain how one thing led to another thing by its own devices, you cannot explain where the FIRST thing came from with science. You either have to leave it as unexplained or put in something that functions outside of science and natural laws.]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[TuePMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from smokefoot]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1735749]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[A hypothesis that can't be tested should be ignored.  The computer simulation probably can't be tested, and the alien seeding theory can't be tested until we have interplanetary probes (to see more examples).

The alien seeding would have to have been done before 3.5 billion years ago, which makes it less likely that there were alien civilizations to do it (there were far fewer heavy elements back then to make planets).

Alien seeding done to a planet with existing life would probably be eaten pretty quickly, though maybe some of the weird bacteria we have are survivors of earlier attempts at seeding.

If your theory is true, then maybe we periodically get seeding attempts being made, and they could be detected.
]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from Nydhogg]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1735741]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Scott,

Re: your response to my earlier post.

How droll.

You are incorrect, sir.  Perhaps your understanding of Occam's Razor (and philosophy in general) is as lacking as the paragraph in question.

Nydhogg

[I wonder why there aren't more rich philosophers.  -- Scott]
]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from FransV]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1735739]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[Thank you, Scott.  
I've been having a rather dull day and I needed one of these again just to remind me I shouldn't take people as seriously as they take themselves (or myself either!)]]></description>
<pubDate><![CDATA[TuePMCDTE_Rthth]]></pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from befuddled123]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1735737]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[We humans have no reason to feel special because of evolution.  Biologist E.O. Wilson said: &quot;If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.&quot;  I believe that we'll eventually recognize that the existence of life is unavoidable outcome of the fundamental physical and chemical laws of the universe in which we live.  That we're here to contemplate that fact is a case of observer bias.
]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Comment  from servenvolley]]></title>
<link><![CDATA[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/1735736]]></link>
<description><![CDATA[I still see God as the most likely creator. Evolution fits into God's creation like software into a computer. Everytime I hear scientists speak about life and evolution they do it in the context of a computer programmer or an engineer. 
If that's the angle from which we speak then it seems to me that our creator has to stand outside of space and time to be a viable answer.
When I look at the universe, whether inward through a microscope or outward through a telescope, I see beauty, symetry and logic. It all seems designed for further investigation. If so then maybe whoever was doing the creating started from the outside and use a preconceived blueprint.]]></description>
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