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[Africa]

This thread just made me think of the "ethical terraforming thread." Specifically, what if a sufficiently advanced alien race came along, and viewed Earth the same way we would view a planet inhabited only by microbes and then decided it was ethical to terraform us to suit their needs?

[Bohandas]

This thread just made me think of the "ethical terraforming thread." Specifically, what if a sufficiently advanced alien race came along, and viewed Earth the same way we would view a planet inhabited only by microbes and then decided it was ethical to terraform us to suit their needs?

You know, Clark Ashton Smith (one of the other writers in H.P.Lovecraft's circle of literary correspondants) wrote a story like that called The Metamorphosis of Earth

(And now that I come to think of it, it also sounds like the setup to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as well as a lot of SubGenius prophecy)

[Sergius]

The thing is that even if there is a lot of extraterrestrial life out there, we'd be unlikely to ever locate it or encounter it except by chance, because trying to locate such life amid the vastness of the universe would be comparable to finding a specific needle in a haystack-sized pile of mass-produced needles.

This is pretty much my exact view of aliens.  Sure they probably exist, but we'll likely never find them and they will never find us.

It gets worse when you think in the fourth dimension. What are the chances that they'll exist somewhere in range and at the same time than us?

[Astral]

The main problem I have with most of these "create life with x y and z" arguments is that it only considers what kind of life we can create ourselves, that can exist on this planet. Life as we know it, if you will. We don't really know what millions of years of evolution could bring on a planet, because even a tiny change back along the line could have deemed us fit to have a third hand, or be blue. Nor do we know (aside from a few small examples) what kind of chemical reactions can go through on other planets, what anaerobic life can evolve into beyond simple bacteria, and other extremes, such as organisms that thrive on elements other than water and oxygen.

My point being is that we have a very limited worldview at the moment, and don't really know what could have happened on other planets in terms of life, regardless of whether they have space travel capabilities or not.

[GlyphGryph]

There are actually a few quite unique things about the earth that seem to have played a large role for us.

First, Ice Ages. Earth has had the great fortune of spending a good portion of its history in Ice Age, punctuated by periods of increased warming. There's been quite a bit of evidence as of late that abiogenesis requires ice, and very very cold conditions. But life like ours requires warmth.

Second, a very large moon. We're only beginning to understand the full impact of how this shaped our planet, but it is in many ways a big deal. It gives us the tides, but it also plays a yet poorly understand role in the active geology of the earth, but there's quite a bit of evidence its done an awful lot to shape our planet.

There's some other stuff too...

[Another]

This thread made me instantly remember this:

Mostly serious and the punchline is quite hard to argue against.

Considering that if some other technology-capable life would appear in our galaxy it would likely had already colonized Solar system with slow* von Neumann probe creep, I would place my bet on us being the first in our galaxy and doing just that in the following million year thus preventing any other independently evolving aliens from getting to space colonization stage. And possibly Earth is home to the first multicellular life in our galaxy - this evolutionary gap really seems like the longest one.

*"lightning fast" by evolutionary standards.

Edit: In other words my reasoning for no aliens is kind of like the anthropic principle - if they existed we wouldn't.