Sure, I know he is not taken very seriously. That is his own point, too.
In the time of Carl Sagan, in the year 1986 or so, I became an anti Saganist. I realized that his million civilization in our galaxy alone is an utter bullshit. Most likely only one exists.
Every single astro-biologist or biologist would have said to a dissident like myself—you don’t understand evolution, sire, it’s mandatory!
20 years later, on this site, Rare Earth is a dominant position. Or at least—no aliens position.
On the National Geographic channel and elsewhere, you still listen “how previously unexpected number of Earth like planets will be detected”.
I am not afraid of mathematicians more than of astrobiologists. Largely unimpressed.
I’m not sure what your point is here. Yes, experts sometimes have a consensus that turns out to be wrong. If one is lucky one can even turn out to be right when the experts are wrong if one takes sufficiently many contrarian positions (although the idea that many millions of civilizations in our galaxy was a universal among both biologists and astro-biologists is definitely questionable), but in this case, the experts have really thought about these ideas a lot, and haven’t gotten anywhere.
If you prefer an example other than Wildberger, when Edward Nelson claimed to have a contradiction in PA, many serious mathematicians looked at what he had done. It isn’t like there’s some special mathematical mob which goes around suppressing these things. I literally had a lunch-time conversation a few days ago with some other mathematician where the primary topic was essentially if there is an inconsistency in ZFC where would we expect to find it and how much of math would likely be salvageable? In fact, that conversation was one of the things that lead me along to the initial question in this subthread.
I am not afraid of mathematicians more than of astrobiologists. Largely unimpressed.
Neither of these groups are groups you should be afraid of and I’m a little confused as why you think fear should be relevant.
Sure, I know he is not taken very seriously. That is his own point, too.
In the time of Carl Sagan, in the year 1986 or so, I became an anti Saganist. I realized that his million civilization in our galaxy alone is an utter bullshit. Most likely only one exists.
Every single astro-biologist or biologist would have said to a dissident like myself—you don’t understand evolution, sire, it’s mandatory!
20 years later, on this site, Rare Earth is a dominant position. Or at least—no aliens position.
On the National Geographic channel and elsewhere, you still listen “how previously unexpected number of Earth like planets will be detected”.
I am not afraid of mathematicians more than of astrobiologists. Largely unimpressed.
I’m not sure what your point is here. Yes, experts sometimes have a consensus that turns out to be wrong. If one is lucky one can even turn out to be right when the experts are wrong if one takes sufficiently many contrarian positions (although the idea that many millions of civilizations in our galaxy was a universal among both biologists and astro-biologists is definitely questionable), but in this case, the experts have really thought about these ideas a lot, and haven’t gotten anywhere.
If you prefer an example other than Wildberger, when Edward Nelson claimed to have a contradiction in PA, many serious mathematicians looked at what he had done. It isn’t like there’s some special mathematical mob which goes around suppressing these things. I literally had a lunch-time conversation a few days ago with some other mathematician where the primary topic was essentially if there is an inconsistency in ZFC where would we expect to find it and how much of math would likely be salvageable? In fact, that conversation was one of the things that lead me along to the initial question in this subthread.
Neither of these groups are groups you should be afraid of and I’m a little confused as why you think fear should be relevant.