Are We Alone?

Ken Taylor
Are we alone in the universe?

Josh Landy
Or is the cosmos teeming with life?

Ken Taylor
What difference would it make if we found the answer?

Josh Landy
Welcome to Philosophy Talk the program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except you’re intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor.

Josh Landy
And I’m Josh Landy, we’re here at the studios of KALW San Francisco.

Ken Taylor
Continuing conversations that begin at philosophers corner on the Stanford campus, where I teach philosophy and Josh directs the philosophy and literature initiative.

Josh Landy
Today, we’re asking, Are we alone? It’s the eighth and final episode in our series, a philosophical guide to the cosmos.

Ken Taylor
Josh, I can’t believe that we just can’t be alone. We can’t be look, some people estimate that there may be as many as 100 billion planets or even more in the Milky Way. So there just has to be life out there somewhere maybe even intelligent life.

Josh Landy
Maybe, maybe not. We’re never going to know either way. I mean, look, the universe is enormous. And given that and the laws of physics, it’s a pretty sure bet at isn’t about to ring your doorbell any day, sir.

Ken Taylor
Well, maybe not. But I think you’re way too hung up on the limits of current technology.

Josh Landy
So you’re imagining warp drive, like in Star Trek,

Ken Taylor
or I don’t know, maybe maybe jumps through hyperspace like, like in Star Wars. That’s cool. That stuff’s not real can not now, probably not ever tell that to early humans who gazed out over a vast ocean and imagine unknown realms that they might someday reach? Or? Or do the first people who looked longingly to the sky with dreams of flight? I mean, who’s the sage as we’ll never find evidence of life on other worlds.

Josh Landy
Now, even if we could find evidence, why should we care? Oh,

Ken Taylor
come on, what what? Well, look, it

Josh Landy
would have no practical significance. I’ve got no objection to you letting your imagination run wild. I mean, look, I’m a literature guy I love made up stories that I’m just saying, don’t lose sight of what really mattered. And that would be that would be life here on Earth. We’ve got a ton of work to do. We’ve got diseases to cure social rungs, to write an environment to say,

Ken Taylor
Hey, Josh, I look look, I’m going to grant all that but even those Ozo practical problems require an unrestrained imagination and that’s what we’re talking about here.

Josh Landy
Okay, but spending great sums of money. And that’s also what we’re talking about on the tiny hope there might be life out there somewhere. Life we almost certainly will never meet even if it does exist. That seems scandalous.

Ken Taylor
Oh, come on, Josh. The discovery of alien life any kind of LAIV microbes, my story or little green men, especially little green men would be one of the most impactful discoveries in the history of humankind right up there with component is right up there. With Darwin, it would change everything,

Josh Landy
everything, even the color of my couch.

Ken Taylor
Well, okay, maybe not the color of your couch, okay, I grant you that. But it would definitely alter our understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe. Just think of Christianity. Take one example. It teaches us that we are made in the image and likeness of God, that we’re central also central to the divine plan. But if it turns out that the universe is teeming with intelligent life, well, then we’re just big players in the great scheme of things after all, Josh

Josh Landy
Yeah, but we know that already. I mean, we already know that we have it one small planet around around one insignificant star, one galaxy in a universe that contains untold numbers of other galaxies and stars and, and yeah, sure planets to and you,

Ken Taylor
you’re not seriously tried to tell me that you’re not even the least bit curious about all those other planets

Josh Landy
a little bit, but I just can’t see why it’s worth spending the resources it would take to find out about them. I mean, whether we’re all alone in the universe, or whether it’s as crowded with life as you hope human beings are still going to live and love and fight and die just the same as we always have done. Yeah,

Ken Taylor
just but come on. Just suppose that evolution has had a million different chances on a million different planets to do its thing and to design intelligent life. We met, blow your mind when you want to know how humans compared to other intelligent life forms, like whether we’re at the pinnacle or the a deer of all that evolution.

Josh Landy
That’s the question Can I mean look, suppose someday we do manage to make contact with advanced aliens. Think about it from their points of view. After all their efforts to reach us all the excitement and wonder about the possible wisdom they might gain. All they end up with is… Do you really want to be around to witness their cosmic disappointment?

Ken Taylor
Well, you can’t be there. But I do love the way you’re thinking about this.

Josh Landy
Now. Well, don’t get too carried away. I still doubt this kind of thing will ever actually happen but, but I am willing to concede that this too. It is an important and long standing one. And you and I aren’t going to settle it right this minute. Well, and

Ken Taylor
you know, for some earthlings, dreams of alien encounters are more than just thought experiments. So we sent our non alien roving philosophical reporter, Holly J. mcdee. To talk to some of those seekers. She files this report.

Holly McDede
People have considered life outside Earth for 1000s of years. Greek philosophers as far back as the third century BC believed in parallel universes. Author Katie Haney remembers making contact with extraterrestrials as an eight year old growing up in Minnesota sorta

Katie Haney
I do have this memory of having seen a UFO that I’m not at all sure is a real memory and may very well be a dream.

Holly McDede
She watched the sky for signs of aliens and yearned for proof they were out there

Katie Haney
I would tell my dad like I wanted to see a UFO or wanted you know there to be something confirmed so badly he would a make fun of me and be say, you know, it’s never gone well for the existing civilization someplace when another civilization comes to visit them.

Speaker 1
Dakota Captain Archer. Go ahead. We’re not alone down here. We’re on our way.

Holly McDede
But even if we’re all alone, Haney certainly isn’t the only one who believes UFO sightings may be connected to outside galaxies. In the late 1940s, some kind of flying object crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. By the late 70s. Area 51 would become the subject of conspiracy theories. Alien soon invaded popular culture with films like Star Wars et Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And by the 90s. The X Files they call

Fox Mulder
me spooky, spooky molder and the key figure in an ongoing government charade, a plot to conceal the truth about the existence of extraterrestrials.

Holly McDede
Flash forward a few decades later. In December 2017, The New York Times published a report detailing how the Defense Department had spent about $22 million over five years on a program keeping tabs on on identified aerial phenomena. report also says the Pentagon was storing metal alloys from those UFOs in Las Vegas.

Katie Haney
I was like I told you so like everyone who made fun of me for this. You’re wrong, and it’s now in the paper of record.

Holly McDede
But people didn’t freak out as much as Haney expected. The Pentagon’s UFO program was swallowed into the breaking news black hole.

Katie Haney
It just feels low, maybe on some people’s list of pressing concerns because it’s literally about life outside of Earth. And, you know, maybe people are like I’ve got enough to worry about on this planet, let alone other ones.

Holly McDede
Unlike the Roswell days, the possibility of extraterrestrial life no longer grabs headlines. It’s practically mainstream science.

Tom Barclay
NASA has a goal to answer the question, Are We Alone?

Holly McDede
Tom Barclay is a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, you know,

Tom Barclay
a government agency, which could are often thought of as fairly conservative and stayed, can have this goal of answering the question if there’s life beyond our solar system,

Holly McDede
Barkley studies exoplanets, planets that orbit a star outside our solar system, astronomers have now identified roughly 3500 exoplanets,

Tom Barclay
we’ve just launched the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite known as tests, one,

Paul Davies
zero. Lift off the SpaceX Falcon nine carrying tests, a planet hunting spacecraft that will search for new worlds beyond our solar system.

Tom Barclay
Test is gonna do a survey of the nearest and brightest stars, looking for planets around them.

Holly McDede
He expects to find extraterrestrials before the end of his lifetime. Some don’t buy it, but people at least take the claim seriously now, even

Tom Barclay
a decade ago, you know, if someone asked you what you’re interested in, and you said, searching for life, or searching for aliens, or searching for ET, people would frown at you. You’d kind of get dismissed. People would summon people to even get angry at you because you’re not doing real science. Now that’s God.

Holly McDede
As for UFOs he’s skeptical the government is hiding details about flying objects piloted by aliens,

Tom Barclay
primarily because nobody can keep a secret.

Katie Haney
I just have a hard time believing that so many people who’ve seen things could all be wrong.

Holly McDede
And that’s where Katie Haney the writer and Thomas Barkley the scientist part ways America’s flying saucer phase maybe fizzling out but Haney is okay with that.

Katie Haney
You know I say that I want proof but I’m not sure that I actually do I might prefer to have this special thing that only some people believe in and kind of keep it as my fun personal research hobby then to have it be just common mainstream accepted science.

Holly McDede
So in some ways, feeling somewhat alone among earthlings isn’t all that bad when it seems like aliens are closer to home

E.T.
E… T… home… phone.

Holly McDede
For Philosophy Talk, I’m Holly CIMIC. Dede,

Ken Taylor
thanks for that interview with et Holly and tumor of the history of the search for extraterrestrial life. I’m Ken Taylor, and with me is my Stanford colleague, Josh Landy. And today we’re asking about life beyond Earth, are we alone in the universe,

Josh Landy
we’re joined now by Paul Davies, professor of physics at Arizona State University. And he’s the author of the eerie silence renewing our search for alien intelligence. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Paul.

Paul Davies
Thank you for inviting me.

Ken Taylor
So Paul, let me let’s start, I want to know how you first got interested in the search for life out there crop circles, Illuminati, we were abducted, or was it something else?

Paul Davies
Oh, it goes way back to my youth. So I grew up in London in the UK, in the post war years, and a deep cultural experience that anybody of my age that lived in Britain, at that time, would appreciate was a TV series called quite a mess. Oh, yes. And it left a very deep impression on a lot of people. It was very scary. And there were two or three series in the end. And it was all about, you know, the menace from space. It terrified me, but also fascinated me. And so from a very young age, I was interested in the stars in the possibility of life beyond Earth. And in my teens, there was a lot of this UFO stuff, which you’ve just been discussing on your program, the so called Flying Saucers. And I became really fascinated, so fascinated, I actually investigated a few of the cases. And I got to know Allen Hynek, who was the US Air Force project Bluebook. Consultant astronomer.

Josh Landy
So in these conversations did, what did you end up deciding? So you know, we’re gonna get to the philosophical issues in a minute, but I just want to ask you, you know, in all these in all your investigations, did you did you end up thinking that it’s likely there’s intelligent life out there?

Paul Davies
Well, you see, over the years, I have changed my mind. So I started out thinking that these reports were pretty sensational. There were so many of them. But then when I began investigating my own, and I found that I could explain the reports quite easily, including some movie films that I had no difficulty in identifying what the objects were, I became more skeptical. And then I became, once I became a scientist, my interest was much more in the real science. So that’s, that’s

Ken Taylor
great. Let’s focus on that question. Really briefly, just from a scientific perspective, forget about the UFO sightings and all that it was scientific perspective. What’s our current best thought as a scientist of whether there’s intelligent life or any kind of life out there somewhere or not? What if you had to just like place a bet? On the basis of your scientific knowledge? Where would you place the bet? Briefly, people,

Paul Davies
people ask me this all the time. And it’s impossible to place a best bet, because we have no way of computing the odds that there is any life out there. The big sticking point is the transition from non life to life. We don’t know how it happened. And if you don’t know what the mechanism was, you can’t estimate the odds. It’s just completely unknown.

Ken Taylor
You don’t have any kind of like what philosophers call subjective probability. I mean, there’s the objective probability, but you don’t have any like degree of belief one way or the other. I

Josh Landy
mean, I know the odds of random particles forming DNA, something like 10 to the 40 years, but

Ken Taylor
that’s like it. I’m just wondering if you’d have any degree of belief that I mean, I think there must be. But that’s just the degree of belief, you don’t have any degree of belief.

Paul Davies
Well, now hold on, hold on hold. See. I’m a scientist. And so belief doesn’t come into it. I go on the evidence. And you can only deal with numbers. You’re asking me for a probability, when you have some idea of what these numbers represent? We because we don’t know. Let me just say that if life forms just by the random shuffling of molecules that I guess it was just Josh just said that the odds are stupendously far again. So the only way that life is gonna pop up readily on earth like planets is if there’s some deep principle of physics or chemistry or something that coaxes matter into life against those rods. Now, if there is such a principle, we haven’t found it. Okay, we’ll

Ken Taylor
take this up in much greater detail as we go along. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re asking what the existence of other life in the universe would mean for us Earthlings. Our guest is Paul Davies from Arizona State University.

Josh Landy
You care whether we are alone in the universe with the discovery that there are untold numbers of inhabited planets in our galaxy blow your mind? Would it leave you cold? Or would it depress you by revealing the cosmic insignificance of all things human

Ken Taylor
probing the allure of alien life? Plus your calls and emails? When Philosophy Talk it continues?

If there is a star man who’d like to come to meet us, would that really blow your mind? I’m Ken Taylor. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything

Josh Landy
except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy. And we’re asking what life among the stars would mean for life here on Earth. Our guest is Paul Davies from Arizona State University, author of The eerie silence.

Ken Taylor
Now, Paul, earlier, Josh and I were having a little debate, I claim that the discovery of alien life any kind of life, from microbes to mice, to Little Green Men, and maybe especially little green men, would be one of the most significant discoveries in all of human history right up there with Newton’s discovery of gravity. Copernicus Darwin, it would be way, way up there, Josh seemed to believe it would be of no great practical significance. However, it ranked in the pan of these discoveries. What do you think?

Paul Davies
Well, I think I’m with you, I think it would be one of the greatest discoveries of all time, not necessarily, because there will be any practical things flowing from it. Or that there will be sort of instant disruption. But because over the decades and the centuries, it would seep into the way we see ourselves and our place in nature. And I think the comparison with, say Copernicus or Darwin is entirely apt. At the time, it didn’t really change the price of beer. But you know, over the years, I mean, it colors, everything we think about ourselves and what we’re doing. Okay, let’s

Ken Taylor
explore that a little bit. Let me take me. I mean, Josh kind of said in the opening, and he’s kind of right about that, that, you know, in a way cosmology has already done its work on us, it’s already shown us that, contrary to what the ancients thought, we’re not at the center of the universe. We’re one planet around one star and a galaxy that’s teeming with stars. And now we know probably teeming with planets in a universe that’s teeming with Galaxy. So we already know, we’re kind of small potatoes, then what would the discovery add of life? You know, microbial life, animal, plant, live animal? What would the Discovery of Life add to that?

Paul Davies
I’ve got a particular point of view here, which seems to be out of step with a lot of my colleagues that because we, we don’t know, the chances that non life will turn into life. And that if you just do it by the rods, it looks like it’s very unlikely. If it transpires that life does pop up readily, all around the universe. If it’s teeming with it, then that, to me suggests a deeper life principle, something that’s embedded in the great cosmic scheme of things in a very fundamental way. If life is just life on Earth is just a freak, then that somehow robs our own existence of significance. Whereas if we are players in a great cosmic drama, and not just an aberration, then that would make me feel at home in the universe. So Wayman.

Ken Taylor
So you kind of inverting what a lot of people think. I mean, Josh gave us the idea. Look, we already know we’re just a small thing and the non significant life wouldn’t Discovery of Life, you were saying, another discovery that the life teams with universe means that the universe just like, creates life, and we’re part of this great cosmic creation of all the different possible life forms that life that the universe could create. And that’s kind of a guy,

Paul Davies
right? That’s right. Yeah, yeah. Because you see, people used to think that life was a miracle, the origin of life was some sort of divine intervention. If you don’t believe that, and most people I know, don’t they think it was a natural process? Then it’s down to? Is this a very likely natural process embedded in the grand law like schema of the universe? Or is he just a freak, and if it’s a freak, then just means that we’re nothing special. Whereas if we’re part of this great March of, you know, from matter to life to mind, then that’s very deeply inspiring. In my view,

Ken Taylor
it is deeply inspiring, because I was thinking about this in one way, a lifeless universe or life in which only US exists, especially only us as conscious beings exist, would be like a waste of a universe. Because you think of it you could think of the emergence of conscious Is this from the natural processes of the universe as the universe organizing itself to contemplate itself? And if it did that, in every corner of its being or many, many corners of it being, it’s like the universe is evolving to be conscious of itself. And that sounds really cool and uplifting.

Josh Landy
I mean, that was Schopenhauer, his view and the view of some other philosophers, right, that the universe is the mirror of the will, allowing it to see itself, right. So the, but maybe still, okay, so let’s look, I was given kind of hard time earlier, I would be my mind would be totally blown if it turned out there was into extraterrestrial intelligence. But why not say this? The Universe needs some beings as a kind of mirror right, in order to see itself but why us? I mean, why why many planets filled with life? Why Why isn’t wonder why isn’t enough that there are, you know, Klingons, for example, through whom the universe can see itself?

Paul Davies
Right. I mean, I don’t think there’s anything special about about Homo sapiens, and maybe not even about DNA. He, I think, if there is life, throughout the universe, may well have different chemical forms. And certainly, by the time you get to intelligent life, or cultural civilizations, or whatever you want to call it, then there will be a lot of variety. And I don’t think there’s anything special about human beings,

Josh Landy
it doesn’t. I agree with both of you that it will be extraordinarily exciting and inspiring. But I also think, wouldn’t it also perhaps change the way we think about Darwinism? Wouldn’t that inflict me I wouldn’t have discovered if you’re right, would not affect the way we think about

Paul Davies
Yes, yes. That’s exactly right. So there is a sort of subtext that runs through the whole of the SETI program, which is what philosophers called teleology that there is evolution towards some sort of end goal, some final state, and this belief that matter is sort of striving to become living and living matter once it gets going and striving to become intelligent. That’s very against the general view of Darwinism. So if you’re a hard nosed Darwinists, he would say, just because there’s microbes on a planet doesn’t mean if you come back a few billion years later, there’ll be radio telescopes. So if we,

Josh Landy
we get teleology back. I think

Ken Taylor
that’s too quick. You guys are hard to nose Darwin, this, I think I am anyway, I don’t think evolution has a direction. But it’s true. And the question is, I mean, one of the things that fascinates me, I agree, I agree with Paul that we don’t, I understand, I’m bowing to Paul’s authority. And I know other people say that we don’t know how life emerges. But we do know how, once it emerges, it walks through the space of possibilities through random mutation and selection. And, and it would be cool, it would be utterly cool. Given a million or a billion trials of this thing on a different planet, our our understanding of the possibilities of evolution would radically change how frequently does it walk this way rather than that, but that doesn’t mean we’d have to abandon Darwinism. Even if we saw that across all this configuration space. There were lots of ones in which intelligent life emerged, some in which it got snuffed out quit, you know, I mean, that wouldn’t change that wouldn’t have to challenge Darwinism. What do you think? Well,

Paul Davies
I tell you the way that I like to put this so if we imagine other planets with life, there are certain things that have evolved many times independently on Earth, like eyes, for example, or wings. These things have obvious utility, and we would expect to see them occurring elsewhere. But then you can take the other extreme, like the elephant’s trunk, and you think, well, would we expect to see trunk like, beings elsewhere? And you’d say now, that’s just a quirk. And so then, when it comes to intelligence, is that more wing like? Or is it more trunk like, and the truth is on earth, when we look at true intelligence, by which I mean, radio telescope, building type intelligence, it’s evolved only once, even though there have been many, many opportunities for it to happen. And so it looks like the emergence of intelligence is going to be pretty unusual. And so if you believe that there’s going to be a lot of intelligence out there in the universe, then you have to believe that there is more to it than just a random walk through the possibility space,

Ken Taylor
right. But these are, as they say, empirical questions. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re talking about the question, Are we alone? And we’d love to have you join this conversation. Gail from Berkeley’s on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk. Gail, what’s your comment or question?

Speaker 2
Well, I think we’ve taken a slightly different direction. But my question was, we’re looking for a needle in a haystack of space, but that’s multiplied by a needle in the haystack of time. Yes. So it seems highly unlikely that we’re going to find it You think

Ken Taylor
that’s a really good point, we are looking to coordinated needles in the haystack. Paul, what doesn’t that make this problem even harder?

Paul Davies
Yes. When a lot of people think about, for example, we’re talking about UFOs, earlier, and alien visitation and so on. Somehow all of this is couched in this tiny sliver of history during which humans have been on this planet people were talking about was Earth visited, you know, 2000 years ago? Well, it’s been here four and a half billion years, and there were planets around long before Earth even existed. If there was going to be some alien visitation, there’s absolutely no reason that they should show up just at the time that we start getting interested in.

Josh Landy
Yeah, that’s actually an issue. I’ve been thinking, you know, we’re very interested in now, in the notion of aliens, you think? I mean, is it a coincidence? We think there’s something about the modern world that makes, you know, could could the whole question of alien life be a repository for our modern fears conceals way

Ken Taylor
back, though, it goes way back in the history of thinking about this stuff? The Greek Atomists. Right. Right. Yeah. But anyway, what do you think, Bo?

Paul Davies
Yeah, so it’s certainly true that in ancient Greece, they came up with a sound, reason why we might not be alone. And that is that if atoms can come together in the particular combination of living things here on Earth, and if there are atoms scattered throughout an infinite universe, it’s gonna happen somewhere else as well. And so that was a sort of general argument. But I think, what is going on here, and the reason for the deep fascination that people have about beings from space or out there in space, it, it is one of these fundamental things that, that humans have a fear of, but a fascination with the unknown. And in the past, all this was couched in the language of ghosts and spirits and demons, and, and so forth. And if you read these ancient texts, about visitation, that was this was visitation by these, these other sorts of beings. But But now we’ve got this technological overlay, and we describe it in terms of spacecraft. And

Ken Taylor
pod is the agreement. Well, there’s something else though about now. I think, and this is addressed to you as a scientist, I mean, when I was I have been interested in this stuff. My whole life since I was a kid, I just find it really fascinating. I remember that there was a time when people were wondering whether planetary formation was a odd thing, or was or was ubiquitous, it seems that now it’s pretty clear that the galaxies, planets are formed. I don’t know if ubiquitously but pretty regularly. And once you start thinking about how many opportunities there are for planets to be formed, it becomes like the question just becomes like, Okay, how many life bearing planets, you know, how many planets such that they’re not burning to a crisp or non Frigidly code? Or they’re out there? That just seems like a natural question. At this moment.

Paul Davies
There’s no doubt that there’s a stupendous amount of real estate out there on which life might emerge, which which could host life, at least as we know it. But although those numbers seem big, and I’ll give you the number within the volume of the universe that we can, in principle access, it’s probably about 10 to the 23 power 23. That’s one followed by 23 zeros, not a very big number. But now weighed against that are the odds that molecules will shuffle themselves into some sort of living thing. And the odds against that a much, much bigger numbers. And so if there’s only say, a one in a trillion, trillion chance that any given Earth like planet is going to spawn life, then that 10 to the power 23 You know, is already beaten so we could be the only only planet in the entire universe that we can see. That would have life on it. I hope that’s not not the case. I’d love to believe the universe is teeming with life. But the scientist in me urges caution.

Ken Taylor
Judith from Oakland on the line. Welcome to philosophy doc. Judith, what’s your comment your question?

Speaker 3
Hi, my comment is just that ever since I was a kid and Catholic school convinced that you know, God on His throne would be there when we died. And we could ask questions. My question was always going to be is there life on other planets? I think it would be totally cool if we discovered it, but my fear is that we would react to the other no better than we react to others of our own species. And I would hope that by the time we encounter we would have developed more openness and curiosity

Ken Taylor
right, and they might react to us that way. They might have more power. So Paul, what do you think of that? Are we ready to meet et as a et ready to meet us,

Paul Davies
I take the point of view that the chances of a physical encounter between us and an alien species is so small, it’s not worth worrying about. However, we may gain evidence that we’re not alone from signs of alien technology doesn’t have to be a message, like the traditional SETI don’t have to have somebody beaming messages at us. It may be we can stumble across something. And it may not be radio may be some sort of physical structure or something that we we don’t know what it is. And we’re not in contact with that civilization. But we can say that we have overwhelming evidence of non human technology out there in the universe. And so we will clearly we are not alone. But beyond that, we can’t say very much so I don’t think we’re ever going to be faced with that. Sort of Christopher Columbus moment. All the little green men on the White House lawn, I just don’t think that that’s a realistic scenario.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk we thinking about intelligent life beyond our planet, with Paul Davies from Arizona State University.

Josh Landy
In our final segment, we’ll ask how much effort we should put into trying to find out whether there is life out there? Should we invest more of our resources into the search for extraterrestrial life, or use them trying to improve life down here on this planet? The only one that we know to be inhabited?

Ken Taylor
Is the search for life worth the effort. When Philosophy Talk continues.

Speaker 4
The Flying Saucer just didn’t care to stay. said it’s too peculiar here head it’s all the stratosphere and Quick Lift flew away.

Ken Taylor
What would intelligent beings from beyond our solar system think of life here on Earth? I’m Ken Taylor. And this is Philosophy Talk the program that questions everything except

Josh Landy
your intelligence. I’m Josh lavvy. Our guest is Paul Davies from Arizona State University. And we’re thinking about what it would mean if we weren’t alone in the universe.

Ken Taylor
And we’ve got a caller Anthony on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk. And he from San Francisco. What’s your comment or question?

Speaker 2
Couple of questions. One is, why do so many scientists who otherwise understand quantitative reasoning, let their enthusiasm for the possibility of extraterrestrial life become a certainty that it must exist? And the other question is, why are we so fascinated with life outside of earth, when we’re simultaneously extinguishing so much life here on Earth? Many species that we haven’t even understood yet.

Ken Taylor
Thanks for the question. And I didn’t hear Paul, I didn’t hear you say expressing any certainty I don’t you expressing a great deal of caution. And

Paul Davies
yeah, I’m with the call of there. Because during my career, I’ve explained how I was a great enthusiasm for all this stuff. Back in the 60s when I was a student, and you might as well have professed an interest in looking for theories. Everybody thought this was crackpot stuff. There’s no possibility of there being any life beyond Earth. The standard view was summed up I think, by Francis Crick, who said that life seems almost a miracle, so many of the conditions necessary for you to get going. That was the view. And then 20 years later, the pendulum had swung, and everybody’s falling over themselves to say the universe is so vast, there has to be life out there somewhere. There’s nothing special about life, it’s teeming with it. This extraordinary certainty, has taken over from the extraordinary skepticism. Because I’m a contrarian sort of fellow. I’ve swung the other way.

Ken Taylor
Like a pretty pleasant fellow.

Josh Landy
For the good. Anthony raised an interesting question about the species here on Earth. I mean, the philosopher Godfrey Smith has this lovely book about the octopus. And he says the you know, the octopus may be the closest we’ll ever get to meeting extra in a different form at least of consciousness, right? It’s not obviously not alien life. But it’s evolved through a very different route. Could could you get some of the results you’re interested in, in just by exploring other species here on earth?

Paul Davies
Well, people do and there’s a long tradition within the SETI community of looking for example, at dolphins and attempts to communicate with dolphins and, and to understand other languages. Not only can we communicate, but Can we somehow quantify the information exchange and so there is that interest in it. But the cola was Peverley right? You know, we’re destroying species like crazy here. Yet we’ve got this fascination for for life elsewhere.

Ken Taylor
I want to say something though, I wanted to Something I think you’ll agree with me. I think Josh agrees with me. It’s not so much this certainty that there must be, but I just think, Gosh, this is like one of the grandest experiments imaginable. That is, if we could find if we could, if this search for extra planet extra terrestrial planets gives us a bunch of earth like planets, they’re in the Goldilocks zones. And if we could determine which and how many of them have life or had life, it’s just one of the grandest laboratories ever imaginable. And I think human curiosity wants to be satisfied. And I don’t want to lose that, uh, yeah, we want to solve practical problems and all that stuff. But the thing that really, really drives human being is driven all kinds of things. He’s just bare curiosity, unrestrained curiosity. And and, and the universe in a galaxy gives us this amazing set of laboratories to see how rare life is. And we don’t just have to do a priori speculation. I mean, don’t you think that’s right, there’s something deeply, you know, gripping?

Paul Davies
Why do you have to convince me I’ve made a career in science, because I’m deeply fascinated by the universe in all its manifestations, the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the origin of consciousness, these are things that have fascinated me since I was a child, and they still fascinate me. So I think if we can’t devote some small fraction of our resources to exploring these grand questions, then it says something very bad about the human spirit, I believe we should be doing it. And in terms of the resources deployed, and people often say, Should we be wasting money on this stuff? Well, the first thing to find out is that when it comes to SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, almost all of that is privately funded. This isn’t there’s no taxpayer dollars. But

Ken Taylor
suppose suppose that you did have to convince a congress or something to fund more of this, because you thought, you know, you’re hot on the trail of these great discoveries. What would you what would you say to convince the general public and their representatives to invest more? I mean, give me your, your, your killer argument?

Paul Davies
Well, you see, I was appeal to people’s higher sensibilities that human beings are curious about their world. We have the great world religions, we build cathedrals and things like that. You think, Well, you know, what, what does that do for the GDP and what it’s a complete waste of resources. And yet it people find it uplifting an important part of their lives. And I see the quest for answering the question, Are We Alone, as falling into the same category that you look back through through history and you think, take something like Stonehenge, the huge resources that were devoted to building this thing, and it had no practical significance at all? So I think I would appeal to that it’s to innate, not just curiosity, but wanting to position ourselves in a greater scheme of things. So it’s, it’s, it’s a quasi religious quest. I have to be honest about that.

Ken Taylor
I got you. We got another Paul. Paul in Oakland is on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk. Paul, what’s your comment your question?

Speaker 2
Good morning. Well, I think it’s fine and fun to poke around for life elsewhere. But I think it’s morally held together for the sake of our day to day behavior to assume that we’re, we’re the whole ballgame. And this is where evolution has taken life. And taken hold.

Josh Landy
Why so why is it morally preferable?

Speaker 2
Because it is a precious nice toy. It’s not like we can throw this away. In any sense whatsoever. It should motivate us. I like to sell should motivate us to take care of ourselves. Take care of business.

Josh Landy
There’s no There’s no planet B.

Ken Taylor
Thanks for the Thanks for the comment. But I think Paul’s right about that. Yeah, that is we life is precious. Yeah. It’s also fragile. I mean, a planet is a fragile thing. A meteor, you know, how many times a the, in the history of the Earth, the life has been is almost wiped clean. And evolution has had to restart. I think it’s like five or six mass extinctions. So yeah, life is precious and human life is precious could be gone in an instant. But I don’t think that changes the importance of the search for extraterrestrial life. But what do you think, this ball?

Paul Davies
Yeah, I entirely agree that we’ve got to look after our planet. If we could be certain that this was the only one with life, then maybe people would feel they should do that. But of course, we you can’t prove a negative we might search for a million years and not find anything but that doesn’t prove that we’re alone. So I think we have to look after our planet. I’m strongly in support of that. But that doesn’t prevent us from being fascinated by the questions we’ve been talking about.

Josh Landy
I agree. I just wanna come back. Something you were saying a moment ago about it being kind of Religious quest I really liked your way of thinking about this because you know, a lot of people think that if there were extraterrestrial life that would pose a problem for certain forms of enchantment. Right? It would mean so Kepler had that line. But how could How could everything be for human beings sake if there were other worlds but but couldn’t we see, turn that on its head and say that, you know, the discovery of extra terrestrial life and intelligence which form a kind of new a secular form of Wonder of mystery of Revelation, it would be totally enchanted.

Ken Taylor
What about God gave His only begotten Son, you know, his only begotten son? What about that?

Josh Landy
So it might be a problem. What do you think, Paul? Is it a problem for particular religious beliefs?

Paul Davies
Yes, I think it’s a problem, particularly for Christians. And I keep putting this out there. I’ve been to meetings at the Vatican. I know a lot of Jesuit astronomers, I love to debate this point with them. That there’s a lot of slippery thinking around this. And the best way of summarizing it is that Christianity is a religion, which is based on salvation, that the architect of the universe took on human flesh to save humankind. And you might say, well, who’s included in that? Is that the What about the Neanderthals or the Denisovans. And then you come on to the, you know, the octopuses or the dolphins do, they get to be saved, and now it’s a species specific religion, which has always been problematic, I think. And now, particularly as we understand what the notion of species means, you know, just how many base pair changes to your DNA can happen, before you fall out of the category of those that can be saved, you know, just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. And back in the already in the 16th and 17th centuries, theologians Christian theologians grappled with this idea that if there are advanced alien beings, that that are not just maybe scientifically or technologically more advanced than us, but in some sense, spiritually to these would be like saintly beings, are they not to be saved?

Ken Taylor
Maybe they don’t need service. Or they maybe they stayed in their garden of Eden and then wonder,

Paul Davies
where the only floor does.

Josh Landy
Or my favorite move in this debate, or God incarnate himself, in a Vulcan right in a cling on,

Ken Taylor
gave his only begotten humans. Right?

Josh Landy
Exactly.

Paul Davies
Right. But but it but it really takes on a type of absurd aspect if this is repeated all around the universe. So I think this is

Josh Landy
maybe but like, wouldn’t live in it say, look, it’s it’s even, it’s even better if God you know, if some life is good, more life is better. It’s for the greater glory of God if there’s life. Right.

Paul Davies
Right. Right. And, and I don’t think it’s a problem really, for the other world religions except the they were all I mean, the great world, not the modern ones, but the great world religions, were all put together at a time when people didn’t have a full understanding of the nature of the Earth or the universe or the nature of life. You know, in the pre scientific era, we see it very differently now, and, and I feel that the time has come to move on, that we can respect those the scriptures and religious traditions, but we really need to design something uplifting for the modern age, ferret that thoroughly scientific, but caters for people’s yearning to feel they belong to something bigger than themselves.

Ken Taylor
So Paul, and I know I’m going to thank you for joining this has been a really otherworldly uplifting, inspiring conversation. You’ve

Paul Davies
been a great guest. Well, it’s been my pleasure. Thank you.

Ken Taylor
I guess it’s been Paul Davies, professor of physics at Arizona State University, author of The eerie silence renewing our search for alien intelligence. So Josh, got the last closing thought,

Josh Landy
Well, look, I mean, look, I was giving you a hard time earlier, but I would, my mind would be completely blown. I think it would be enchanting, assuming that things went well, obviously. I don’t mean shouting not disenchanted. I also think, you know, it would give us an opportunity to think of ourselves as connected with other human beings in a profound way rather than insisting always on our differences. I belong to this nation or whatever it is. We’re you know, we’re together in

Ken Taylor
exactly the planetary that’s like in Star Trek, you can’t be Star Trek, you can’t be part of the Federation, if you don’t have planetary governance exact right. If you’re still a divided tribal people, you can’t be part of the Federation. So yeah, I agree. It would be really enchanting. It would change the nature of religion, it would it would say it’s not a waste, the universe is not wasted, because there’s all these conscious beings to contemplate it and when one goes out of existence, another comes along, so it would be a glory

Josh Landy
and maybe there’s an inbuilt purpose and in Dr. Jang chat a

Ken Taylor
little bit this conversation continues at philosophers corner at our online community of thinkers where our motto is coated toe Ergo Blago, I think therefore I blog. You can also become a partner in that community by visiting our website, Philosophy Talk dot o RG

Josh Landy
and if you You have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d love to hear from you. Send it to us comments at Philosophy Talk, and we may feature it on the blog. Now a man who regularly breaks the speed of light or at least the speed of sound, it’s Ian Scholes, The 62nd philosopher.

Ian Shoales
inshore science may take the fifth of our life beyond our saddle or but in pop culture has been a done deal for ages the spiteful of space aliens used to be occupied by Gods ghosts fairy folk by demons. Then came the 20th century mansplaining experts through Darwin, Freud and Marx at us but the whole world went kablooey economic collapse the baby steps of globalism and two world wars coincided with the spread of radio, movies magazines and paperback books. Put them in your pocket gather your name was dread and go Amazing Stories magazines published Isaac Asimov’s first story but a 1943 also gave birth to the Alien Encounter testimonial. author Richard shaver was working at a factory when his welding gun gave him the ability to read people’s minds okay. He learned that a race of highly evolved entities once lived here in massive caverns then left Earth for another world being behind their disease to generate cannibal offspring called the DeRose. Basically, they were more locks if you remember them. The DeRose also like to taunt humans like Gremlins and a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Anyway, the Darrow stories were regarded as fact by the kind of people who are looking to believe in this kind of thing. Then after World War Two, which freaked people out in ways we’re still dealing with. A pilot saw a UFO and describe the way it flew was being like a saucer skipping over water. This misunderstanding gave us flying saucers and suddenly entered the realm then new now long familiar of things the government doesn’t want us to know about. The 50s gave us two different alien scenarios and one aliens were tall blonde Nordic visitors who wanted to give us the secrets of the universe. Angels released what they were with spaceships instead of wings. They had all the secrets to give us space travel eternal youth sturdy, stylish, well fitting shoes, but we had to prove our worth by getting rid of atomic bombs did we know and the other scenario aliens were out to get us invading us taking over our bodies little green men coming after us with ray guns like Marvin the Martian and Daffy Duck cartoons. Then a couple of New Hampshire Betty and Barney Hill had an encounter with aliens that they forgot and then remembered under hypnosis, not green but little green men. They’re called scores of graves kidnapping us testing us. The most famous abductee was Whitley Strieber and his book communion and what she does not claim that as abductors were actually aliens, but come on they totally were this all climax to the X Files which included a little gray humanoids but then muddy the waters with the clones, bees cover ups and conspiracies until the audience got so confused. They stopped watching. Or maybe that was just me. In the meantime, different aliens proliferated aliens a trip acity means that killed us in the jungle aliens had had epic battles and galaxies far far away. Aliens have recently fallen off the pop radar except for Star Wars. The DC and Marvel franchises focus on superheroes beating each other up over imagined slights. And in the actual world, the government released all kinds of UFO documents in 2013 the government even acknowledged the existence of area 51 long believed to be the place where he reversed engineered flying saucers to learn the secrets of noiseless hovering with so much government transparency, aliens are leaving us alone replaced by robots and they’re not coming from the future to kill us like Terminator. No, we’re inventing girl robots and then falling in love with him with her in her with Ava and ex Mokena with joy in Blade Runner 2049 with Maria and Metropolis. Oh wait that was in another country and besides the winches dead I gotta go.

Ken Taylor
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of K LW local public radio San Francisco and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University. Copyright 2018. Our executive producers are David Demarest and Matt Martin. The senior producer is Devin Strela vich Laura McGuire is our Director of Research. Cindy Prince Boehm is our Director of Marketing.

Josh Landy
Thanks also to mark Haslett Corolla crepe Meyer Emily King Angela Johnston call and

Ken Taylor
support for Philosophy Talk comes in various groups at Stanford University, and from the partners that our online community of thinkers support for this episode comes from the Templeton Foundation.

Josh Landy
The views expressed or mis expressed in this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or other

Ken Taylor
funders, not even when they’re true and reasonable.

Josh Landy
The conversation continues on our websites philosophy, talk dot o RG or YouTube and become a partner in our community of thinkers. I’m Josh Landy.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank

Josh Landy
you for listening and thank you for thinking

Ken Taylor
agent monster. But his thoughts. Agent molder believes we are not alone.