The Probability of Extraterrestrial Life: Part One

[Roger]

After reading a few science articles leaning toward the "belief" that life in the universe is less abundant than previously thought, it struck me just how nonsensical these science writers were in their logic. These thoughts rattled around in my head, so I decided to share them, to see what others thought.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First, we need to define and characterize what exactly life means when trying to determine how much life might exist in the universe.

Is it life as we know it? As in a carbon based humanoid. Or is it a broader aspect of life? As in allowing for non-humanoid living entities.

Second, assuming life exist that appears like us humans, we can't simply assume they developed essentially the same technologies. There is so much diversity within the universe that we can't think our human technology, and directly, our way of thinking, is a commonality of universal proportions. We must be able to run our minds outside the box, in order to understand what lays beyond human imagination. Let's face it folks, everything we think and believe aliens to be, might very well be so far off, that it is beyond out imaginings. But, again, assuming we can apply some human measure to a alien species that doesn't automatically convey to us any real understanding of them or their technologies. So for all we know, they might be human in some of their appearance, but be a mimic of a sorts in order to stay hidden.

However, if the extraterrestrials aren't humanoid, then one of our biggest concerns is the ability to identify such life as life, and even a more difficult to achieve determination, is to recognize intelligence. It could very well be that their operations and methods would be so utterly alien to us that we would pass it right up, assuming it to be some natural process rather than that actions of intelligence.

There are a lot of assumptions to hurdle over before we can properly speculate on the probability of alien life existing in our universe.

Yet, it would be the greatest irony if we overlooked alien life simply because it didn't match our perception of life.