Given that we have little concrete information, it is apparent that the whole ETI question is really a personal estimation of chances, given imperfect knowledge.

   If it were a gamble, what odds would you place on the objective existence of highly intelligent technology using extraterrestrials in our galaxy at this time?  And, what % of your total wealth would you stake on it? (For pretend!!!)

   I'm in for 1:1 and 75% (I'd need something to live on on the slim chance I was wrong!! But I am never wrong--.But if I was to have an instance of wrongness, well...).

Never tell me the odds!

Well odds are a funny thing.  With 100 billion or so stars in our galaxy it would seem the odds are in favour of ET needing to phone home once in awhile.  Carl Sagan would have agreed.

Others look at it this way.  If I am in Las Vegas pulling the handle, or pushing the button more likely today,of that one arm bandit of a machine it should pay out the $100,000 top prize at least once out of the millions of pulls per month, but it doesn't. Why?  Because the brutal fact of the matter is that the odds of a winning trio of sevens showing up is the same million to one shot every time the handle is pulled.  It is the same with every solar system that is formed, except the odds against life beginning, surviving the millions for years to develop into intellegence, then surviving long enough to achieve advanced technology are untold billions to one every single time.

The odds of having even two intellegent species evolving at a parallel rate so they could communicate with one another before one went extinct or decided to give up the search for others is, excuse the pun, astronomical.

Now, does that mean it is impossible? No. Highly improbable? Yes.

But, as you say there is no way of really knowing and God knows I have been wrong so very many times he gave me my dear wife to point it out to me, repeatedly.  So put me down for a buck, just in case that galactic lottery turns up.

L

  God can be cruel.

  Your dollar is registered in the cyberspace great ETI give-a-way.

  So far:  75% of my total wealth, and your $1.

  Live on the edge.

Hi Cyberpatzer,

 I'm with Leo on this 100%. I'm a betting man myself and will bet half of my modest $50k a year city worker salary, minus $5k for tithes to my Church of course, and give Leo the other half to bet against you. How much are you putting in the pot?

 -Mr. Jackson

       I'd rather not say.  Not because it is a ton, or I'm embarrassed, but that I find it sort of crass.

    If you were to win, you would not go hungry!

  O.k.your reasons are sound.  I guess this is why the argument has gone on for so long.  I, however, put a great store on unknowns.  Not because that is all I've got, but becuase they are real factors.  Our own rate of technological development is alarming.  In the last 250 years, we have developed the steam engine, combustion engine, cars, aricraft, jets, rockets, interplanetary probes, computers, and a host of other important technologies.  In fact, human productivity in the last 100 years probably exceeds, per capita, that of all previous generations since homo sapiens emerged as a distinct species.  There is every reason to believe that this rate of expansion will more or less continue in the next 100 years. 

    By extrapolation, if other civiliations should advance just a few hundred years beyond us, what technologies would they create?  What problems will they be able to solve?  How would this effect survival chances?  My belief is that 'free' energy, populations controls, innovations in medicine and biotechnology would allow survival of many of these ET civs.  They would, in fact, become near immortal, at least in an abstract sense, through genetic engineering, robotics, and computer technology.

  In short, I suspect there is a survival tipping point--one that we are apparently bellying up to--that, once passed, would allow many thousands to hundreds of thousands of years of sustainable existence.  This would throw a real wrench into your otherwise reasonable calculations.  I'm betting on that wrench.

   Not every civilization, I would imagine,  needs to broil to death like chicken on a spit, or poison its environment, or radiate itself in nuclear holocaust, or consume every last resource, or reproduce itself into instability.  Only in this century have we faced these possibilities.

   I guess what we are really betting on is hope for humanity.

   I have hope.

cyberpatzer : I bet even. < .0000000001% of my total wealth, for the existance. Boy that was a hard choice.

Even, meaning 50/50??

  And the cyber kitty gladly accepts your .000099999 cents!!

Greetings,

    Well as to there being other life - 100 %. Intelligent life perhaps 1 %. Lastly intelligent life that also are space travellers - .01% Not that I'm pessimistic by nature but, there you are.

   The SETI program has been what- going for 20 years. So far nothing to report. All the signals we humans generate would dissepate 2 light years away from  Earth. So  the star Vega would never receive the old television stuff from the 1936 Olympics as prescribed in Sagan's fictional book Contact. But I did really enjoy the book and  movie.

   I would like to think some intelligent life would take some interest in us here on Earth. It would help the human psyche to know that we can make it past our trible phases. And I think we can even completely on our own without the space aliens.

  Time and patience...

  I bet you a dollar you don't find it as strange as the japanese do!!

Polariser:

All this is in the realm of speculation. We Europeans find it strange that Americans cannot speculate without the hope of making a buck !

Polariser, congratulations!  I wasn't aware that you had been elected spokesperson for all of Europe.

Mister was counting on your good nature, I'm sure.

The deck here is stacked.  If someone bets for the affirmative case and then ETI is discovered, he will demand payment.  If someone bets for the negative case, finding nothing will win him no money because his opponent will always want more search time.