Sure thing, Lord Kelvin.

You’re treating scientific uncertainty as if it means “anything is possible.” It doesn’t.

Except I’m not.

I am treating things as if we are a species who barely has enough knowledge to send a small group of individuals off of the planet, and I am stating that while humanity seems to have a fairly okay ability to do that(and barely get to the next rock over), we probably shouldn’t be speaking with the confidence as if we wrote our masters thesis on interstellar travel. The moment humans stop having tons of massive scientific discoveries about space travel every year, that’s the point that we might have a good argument that it’s impossible for someone to escape a particular planet.

At this point, we can’t even confidently say that we know what that planet is like. Hell, up until recently, they believed that planet couldn’t even support life.

I am not questioning the laws of physics.

I am questioning that humans’ understanding of them is complete.

But you go on with your bad self, with your complete assurance that nothing will ever get off of that planet. The good news is that both of us will be dead before anyone even gets to know that it’s been tried.

I love how Earthlings assume that all of the variables on other planets would be exactly the same as they are on Earth, leading them to believe they have any idea about what other species might be dealing with on other planets.

It’s cute.

You do know that they couldn’t even estimate the functionality of the heat shield of the spacecraft that just splashed down on our own planet? That they had to literally increase the angle of entry because they couldn’t accurately predict the behavior of a craft on a planet that they’ve been studying for all of recorded time?

Are the laws of physics actually a thing? Clearly. But here’s the thing: The kinds of organisms that might exist on such an object could be absolutely massive compared to us. And for us to assume that we would have an understanding of the laws of physics that would be anywhere near as great as animals that might have brains exponentially larger than ours? And hell, the energy that might be available in such environments? We don’t know what’s in space around these objects, or whether there are any kinds of characteristics which would make unconventional (to us) means feasible to get off of the planet.

For all we know, they could be scientifically a billion years ahead of us and might be able to manipulate time or matter in ways we couldn’t conceive. It hasn’t even been 100 years since humanity learned to harness nuclear power.

No, there are too many variables. Life on such planets could evolve in countless different ways, and the different characteristics of the environment, and the resources on and around the planet provide too many options for us to be wrong.

And before you respond that I am arguing against science, no, it’s actually your opinion that is arguing against science. History is filled with organisms finding unusual solutions for problems that were long deemed impossible to solve. And when people said “Well, I don’t think we have enough knowledge to make such a firm claim,” history is also full of people like you who insisted that there was no way. And history is full of people who walked into the room, picked up the rules as they wrre known to that point, and basically flipped over the game board.

You are literally the person arguing that a scientific process is impossible given environmental variables because they don’t match the laws of physics.

But you don’t understand that you are arguing not for the infallibility of those laws, but for the infallibility of our understanding:

1. of the laws as we understand them

2. of the chemical makeup and geography and resources of the planet

And all of that is not even to mention that the estimates of whether the planet itself was capable of supporting life have literally changed relatively recently because humanity developed a better understanding of science.

If I had a nickel for every time someone proudly claimed something to be impossible because it hadn’t scientifically been done yet I would be richer than Elon Musk.

Unlikely? Well, look. I’m not willing to make statements about humans’ accuracy when studying objects that far away. I will acknowledge that it’s not something that would be easy for us to accomplish given our current knowledge, but my humility can acknowledge that that seems to say more about US on this planet than it says about any kind of organism that may have developed on such a planet.

That’s just blatantly incorrect.

Humanity believes that it has the ability to estimate the intelligence of other animals.

And the way that it does so is always by measuring how well the other species imitate human behaviors.

It doesn’t take into account whether those other animals care to imitate human behavior or whether they know they’re imitating human behavior or whether they want to imitate human behavior. And it most certainly doesn’t understand how well those other animals’ intelligence applies within their own niches. You can’t test animals’ intelligence by testing how closely they behave to human beings when operating mimicking human niches and human goals.

Speaking as someone who’s autistic, I’ve done the research on that. In autistic people, there seem to be a higher number of certain specific neanderthal genes. I’m also very gifted, and work in STEM.

Neurotypical human beings are BLOODY TERRIBLE at recognizing any type of intelligence that is different than neurotypical human beings. It is ASTOUNDING how bad they are at it.

Neurotypical people can’t even recognize the intelligence of autistic people. And good luck determining our goals. Other people think I am stupid when they first interact with me, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’ll just say that revealing too much here would reveal my identity, and I’m not going to do that, but I have a list of accomplishments that I literally couldn’t imagine most neurotypical people accomplishing, and I know many other autistic people who are very intelligent. Does this discount neurotypical intelligence? No, not in the least, and it’s not intended to. But it does demonstrate that Fermi’s Law could be nothing more than humanity’s inability to identify other forms of intelligence. And hell, whether you even consider autistic people to be a different kind of intelligence, that’s not even referencing animals.

What neurotypical humanity HAS developed is not the only civilization, but the only widespread manipulation of the environment in ways that significantly distorted the environment in such a way that their presence was undeniable long after an absence. That’s not the same thing.

We make a mistake by assuming that life forms would likely be at the same scale as us. Larger planets would likely develop life forms appropriate for those planets instead of appropriate for ours.