The Law of Parsimony Supports the Existence of Intelligent Extraterrestrials

"Where ever there is smoke, there is a smoke maker." --? Pro's argument is that the most likely explanation of crop circles in that they are made by extraterrestrials. In getting to that conclusion Pro mistakes an alleged "Law of Parsimony" with "more probable." All of the evidence for crop circles could be the products of hoaxes. Doug and Dave stomped out hundreds of crop circles in England, mystifying "science," before demonstrating their dumb-as-dirt techniques for the BBC. Before Doug and Dave came forward with their wires, hats, and boards, "science could not explain" how the the stalks were bent and not broken, and so forth. Nothing of substance has changed. It is far more probable that crop circles are hoaxes, or, if you would, works of art -- they are, I think, clever and attractive-- rather than the products of extraterrestrials who have bested the speed of light to travel across the galaxy to stomp wheat and make YouTube videos. Pro shifts grounds and claims that even if crop circles have other explanations, there is probably intelligent extraterrestrial life in the universe. I'm inclined to agree that there is ET life, but that conclusion has nothing whatsoever to do with an alleged Law of Parsimony. I challenged Pro to say whether his Law of Parsimony favors the existence of Tasmanian devils or of unicorns. Is the world simpler or more complex with or without these creatures? Pro did not respond. The reason, of course, is that the question has nothing to do with parsimony. It is at most a matter of probabilities, not parsimony. The evidence Pro presented in Round 3 is well within the means of hoax technology. The admittedly fake video of lights making crop circles that I presented in Round 2 is more convincing than Pro's video claimed to be authentic. The "genuine" alien artifacts found in crop circles are destined to fetch a good price on eBay. If I had been asked to authenticate them, I would have taken them to a metal sculptor, not a metallurgists. They are made of ordinary metals, so that reveals nothing. There is nothing magical about varying the components of a bronze alloy. What is interesting is that they appear from the video to be crude castings. A sculptor could say how they were made. I would be interesting to know that beings from an advanced civilization were still making sand castings. The physicist who analyzed the crop circles may have been doing his best, but he didn't think it through. He deduced that the circular patterns had characteristics matching a point source of electromagnetic radiation. That contradicts the idea that the patterns were created by a beam as claimed, and it contradicts the observation of the grasses being swirled rather than radially splayed. There is also no explanation as to how electromagnetism pushes grass over. EM ordinarily cooks things, like a microwave oven. An alternative explanation is that the people stomping out the pattern naturally work faster near as they get to larger radii. The moral is that if you want to detect a fraud, send a magician to investigate, not a scientist. Mother nature is mysterious, but she never lies. Scientists tend to go in with the assumption that there is no hanky-panky going on. Magicians are not so generous. The magician Randi has had an offer for many years of $1 million to anyone who can perform a paranormal act under controlled conditions. http://www.randi.org... No one has ever collected. Now to the YouTube video of the guy with a Hungarian accent from the Pleiades. The Pleiades are a near star cluster, about 440 light-years distant. So Pleiadians would only have to travel 440 years at the speed of light to stomp wheat fields and make YouTube videos. http://en.wikipedia.org...(star_cluster). However, the Pleiades are a very young star cluster, about 115 million years old. That's not enough time for planets to cool off, and four billion years or so short of the time needed for intelligent life to evolve, assuming life evolves according to the common assumptions used in the Drake Equation. Give the evidence at hand, it is far more likely that the speaker on the YouTube video came from Budapest than from the Pleiades. The Drake Equation allows calculation of the number of intelligent civilizations in the universe. The answer depends upon the numbers put into the equation as values of the many parameters. Thus the Drake Equation does not provide any answers at all, it only neatly formulates the question. Pro is incorrect in asserting that the Drake Equation makes ET life highly probable. What the numbers ought to be put into the equation is controversial. One biologist argues that the probabilities are must lower than supposed, http://www.abc.net.au... There is book devoted to arguing that the numbers are very small: "Since intelligent life took a long time to develop on Earth, some believe it will take just as long on other worlds. The paleontologist Peter Ward and the astronomer Donald Brownlee expressed this belief in their book, "Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe." Intelligent life on Earth, they say, is due to a long chain of events that greatly relied on happenstance. The odds of such a chain of events occurring on other worlds seem to be impossible. Thus, as the title of their book indicates, they believe that simple, microbial life may be common in the universe, but complex life will be rare. They certainly don't expect to find very many advanced alien civilizations out there." http://www.astrobio.net... I don't know what the numbers in the Drake Equation ought to be, although I'm inclined to think that even with very small probabilities, multiplying by 100 billion galaxies each having 100 billion stars is likely to produce at least one other intelligent civilization. That is not the subject of the debate, however. The subject is whether the alleged "Law of Parsimony" leads to the conclusion that there is extraterrestrial life. If you go to Las Vegas and win at keno, that is not a demonstration of the Law of Parsimony, that's only a result of the laws of probability. Drake's Equation does not even give the odds of extraterrestrial life, it gives you the odds after you give it a dozen or so assumptions. Thus if we consider Drake's Equation independent of crop circles Pro is wrong on two accounts. Drake's Equation is not an expression of parsimony. Parsimony favors the simpler of two things, and Drakes Equation is one thing. Second, Drake's Equation says extraterrestrial civilizations are probable or not only after assumptions have been plugged into it. Put in optimistic numbers and you get an optimistic outcome. Put in pessimistic numbers, and the equation yield pessimism. There is no agreement on the numbers, so the probabilities are not determined. The resolution is negated.