Our Place in the Stars

How realistic is the SpaceX dream to get to Mars? What does the latest scientific ...

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How realistic is the SpaceX dream to get to Mars? What does the latest scientific literature have to say about supernovae? Is there intelligent life in the universe? Today, Sarah and David are joined by Atlantic staff writer Marina Koren for a deep dive into all things space. Hear everything there is to know about the space race between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, colliding black holes, and other crazy interstellar phenomena.

But today’s episode would be incomplete without its requisite dose of legal nerdery. Tune in to hear David and Sarah break down the legality of Trump’s latest executive actions and offer some insights on the D.C. circuit’s decision regarding the House Judiciary Committee and former White House counsel Don McGahn.

Show Notes:

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  1. Avatar photo
    David

    Thank you. Space is just too cool for only one podcast need a second and possibly a third.

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    Tracie

    I stand corrected from my prior post. My fav part of this pod was min ~16.00 through 20.00, where DF (mostly) and Sarah explained that train wreck of a "Memorandum" that we know as Trump's proposed payroll tax holiday.

    As someone who filled out my tax forms for HR w/ the express intent for my employer to withhold *more* so as to hide it from me til tax return time, DF's example of $400/month now vs $2000 missing from a paycheck in December really illustrated that well how impractical it is. Story problems always make more sense when you plug some real numbers in.

    Also appreciated Sarah's "Memorandum" vs "Order" distinction. Crazy that something so pedestrian sounding as a "memorandum" requires proof of legality and a statement of financial impact, whereas something as grand sounding as a "Presidential Order" requires only, a memo in the record.

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    Old guy named Bill (OGNB)

    I continue to enjoy these special-topic August podcasts. Thank you for them!

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    Jonathan Crymes

    Utterly shocked at David’s passing dismissal of “Independence Day.” Not only because it’s the archetypal international blockbuster, and in fact a trailblazer in that regard. But because it’s so similar in scope, subject matter, and tone to all the eye candy spectaculars that David praises the rest of the time. Mr. French, please find an internally coherent standard for pop culture analysis or else admit yourself a naysaying conman who hates the good and loves the bad for the thrill of argument.

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      David French staff-badge Staff

      Have you seen Independence Day lately? It doesn't age well. Not good!

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    Jay

    Thanks for the (almost) total break from the legal drudgery. Up with space!

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    DougAz

    So you want to see the Sunrise on the Moon? You can. And Sunset as well. Do you want to experience in real time, the celestial movements? Watch the moons of Jupiter cross in front and go behind the beautiful planet? Watch shadows cast by our Moons crater rims and mountains, inch across its surface?

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    I recommend these computer telescopes from the well established Celestron. They use an altitude-azimuth setup and self align in minutes by pointing at 3 stars. Much easier than the Equatorial tracking mounts that are harder to align. These are lightweight and portable to escape into a darker country sky.

    https://starizona.com/store/manufacturers/celestron/nexstar-6-se

    https://starizona.com/store/manufacturers/celestron/nexstar-8-se

    You can immerse you and your family with the Heavens in several ways. This website will tell you pretty easily where to see 100s of overhead satellites, comets, ISS...

    https://www.heavens-above.com/main.aspx?lat=38.5802&lng=-94.6491&loc=Unnamed&alt=0&tz=CST

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    Ethan Cordray

    I hate to comment on the boring McGahn stuff, but: the only real alternative to having Congress sue the executive branch to enforce their prerogatives is to go ahead and give Congress their own SWAT teams and power to imprison and punish uncooperative executive branch officials.

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    John Bowling

    It's funny that in an age when people are so bold to voice their moral outrage over controversial political opinions where nearly half the country takes the opposite stance, people are still incredibly shy about broaching the alien subject. Marina Koren was a great guest, but completely punted on the UFO question, asking "Well, what do you think?"

    We aren't afraid, almost to a fault, of seeming like a moral degenerate to nearly half the country, but we're still afraid someone might think us irrational. Yet the alien question clearly represents an enduring and pervasive human interest for nearly all of post-enlightenment humanity. Having already established my reputation for irrationality here, I'll boldly go where no rational person has gone before.

    On the UFO question there are just a limited number of options, depending on the sort of metaphysical furniture in your worldview.

    (1) UFOs could be intelligent, extra-terrestrial phenomena.
    (2) UFOs could be natural, extra-terrestrial phenomena.
    (3) UFOs could be natural, terrestrial phenomena.
    (4) UFOs could be intelligent, terrestrial phenomena.
    (5) UFOS could be intelligent, interdimensional phenomena. (Like Flatland)
    (6) UFOS could be non-intelligent, interdimensional phenomena.
    (7) UFOs could be supernatural phenomena.

    But it's not just one's over all worldview that will make certain options, like 4, possible. It will also effect the plausibility assigned to each possibility.

    Regarding (1). From a naturalistic perspective, what makes (1) almost certainly false goes in part to what Marina Koren says when she is asked about alien life in the universe. She says something like "on a purely statistical level" she's confident that there must be life elsewhere in the universe. But I was surprised to hear her say this because that gets things exactly backwards, from what I've heard. From a purely statistical consideration, it's extremely *unlikely* that there is life elsewhere in the universe. That seems counter-intuitive when one merely has the idea of the immensity of space without considering the fragility of life and the narrow range in which a life-permitting universe, not to say a life-permitting planet might occur. Thus, when we consider things from a purely statistical or mathematical model, it's extremely unlikely that *we* exist, let alone that life exists elsewhere in the universe. (The anthropic principle is often misunderstood to challenge this claim - it doesn't. The AP is saying "given that we're here..." but the point I'm making, and others frequently make, is whether if one described a universe like this one should expect to find any intelligent life, given such a description.)

    When one adds to this implausibility the further implausibility of *intelligent* life elsewhere in the universe *being capable of traveling to earth*, the plausibility of (1) being true becomes almost nil. That is, even if we assume that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, the difficulties of interstellar travel, given all that we know about the laws of physics, means UFOs as intelligent alien spacecraft can be ruled out with an almost certainty. There simply isn't enough time. Again, that is on the assumption of naturalism where we assume that life begins and then evolves by chance.

    I won't bother going through 2-7 in detail here. Obviously 7 is ruled out ex hypothesi, 4 is extremely unlikely for the same reasons Jonah Goldberg mentions that conspiracy theories are unlikely, and 2, 3, and 6 are merely a shrug where we don't really no what exactly what we are talking about.

    From non-naturalist worldviews, we have those which are not significantly different from naturalism (e.g., Penrose Platonism... or just classical Platonism) and those which take seriously the question of intelligent non-natural life or explicitly affirm the existence of intelligent non-natural life (theism, polytheism, pantheism, panentheism, etc.). For those which are not significantly different from naturalism, things play out basically as I've described for naturalism. I'll just focus on theistic worldviews here to keep this shorter and because most people who hold to non-naturalism fall into this category.

    I think 2, 3, and 6 come out basically the same, which is that we don't really know what sort of thing we're talking about. Obviously 7 is now an open possibility in these worldviews and there is now a higher prior plausibility to 1 and 5. The plausibility of 4 might come out even lower if, like David, you affirm Total Depravity!

    I'm always surprised to hear how many Christians and non-Christians think 1 must be ruled out given Christianity. In fact, 1 is actually much more plausible given Christianity, insofar as one doesn't have to deal with the statistical implausibilities to advanced intelligent life arising or developing.

    But I know the option everyone is most interested in, given the recent news cycle of demon sperm, 7. While demon sperm has little plausibility in Christian theism (where traditionally angels and demons are believed to be non-sexual beings due to certain Bible passages I won't get into), the idea that UFOs could be demonic deception is fairly popular among some Christians. While I'm sure that sounds crazy to non-Christians and especially to naturalists, it's an option that has reasons for being taken seriously for those who already affirm a Christian worldview.

    To briefly lay out the rationale. There are three broad "types" of supernatural beings which exist: God, good supernatural beings ("angels"), and bad supernatural beings ("demons"). It's hard to think of plausible reasons God or angels might have for manifesting UFO like phenomena, but it's fairly easy to think of plausible reasons demons might have for manifesting UFO like phenomena (e.g., a "Childhood's End" like scenario).

    Personally, my concern is that *if* it turned out that UFOs were the product of intelligent life, Christians would be too quick to dismiss options 1 and 5. But I don't think we have to worry too much about that, because if UFOs were 1 or 5 then the aliens probably Nope!-ed the hell out of here when they saw our political disputes... and David's pop-culture takes.

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      Tracie

      "(5) UFOS could be intelligent, interdimensional phenomena. (Like Flatland)"

      Flatland was a fun little book.

      You might find this interesting:
      https://www.skeptic.com/science-salon/sarah-scoles-they-are-already-here-ufo-culture-why-we-see-flying-saucers/

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        John Bowling

        Thanks for the link. Shermer isn't usually worth listening to, but I went ahead and listened to the portion where he and Scoles discuss the Nimitz.

        Scoles theory is that the object, which is described as hovering by the pilot, was actually a NASA scramjet that was being tested two days later - but actually it was the same day because "people could easily mix up their dates." Shermer also suggest that the fact that the video was leaked earlier than the 2017 NYT article "would kind of indicate to me, you know, maybe somebody faked it or doctored it or something like that..."

        Sorry, but this is the sort of credulity in search of an explanation that makes Shermer not worth one's time. Scoles theory is weak as it doesn't actually account for the pilot's testimony and coordinating the dates with NASA and the Navy could easily be done... unless Scoles' theory is that the both NASA and the Navy didn't keep any records (beyond the footage) and mixed up their dates.

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          Tracie

          Why do you think you find UFO's so interesting?

          I'm not prone to believe in alien visitors, so not really interested in parsing it. Whatever you think of Shermer, he has some great guests and he lets them talk.

          As someone more fascinated by terrestrial events generally, I have to wonder if people with a strong interest in UFOs are people really into outerspace, but somehow don't find that to be *enough.* Personally, I've experienced enough weirdness on planet earth, not really looking for alien sources.

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            John Bowling

            Humans are social creatures. Most humans would, if isolated and ignorant on an island, wonder if there were others out there like themselves and in what ways different. . . . Well, provided such humans had the luxury of taking a break form the difficult task of survival apart from society and muse.

            I don't know that it's correct to say I find them "so" interesting. I'm just sounding off on something mentioned in the podcast. My initial thought was just that there are three possibilities on the topic, depending on one's worldview and as I wrote my comment I thought of 4 more.

            . . . And now some more reasons occur to me as to why people would be interested to know if there were aliens that visited the planet: presumably they're much more technologically advanced. Who wouldn't be curious to know not just something so crude as to whether they could give us some advanced technology, but also the mere fact, sans any contact, would present a hopeful prospect for our own scientific advancement. From a sociological perspective, who wouldn't want to know how they've organized their societies? Presumably that degree of technological process is indicative of an effective economy and a well-ordered social structure (in a Rawlsian sense). From a philosophical and theological perspective, who wouldn't want to know something about their beliefs? Even assuming that an alien has no epistemic advantage when it comes to addressing fundamental questions (a safe assumption, I think), philosophy has always been heavily invested in the belief that dialogue with others plays an important role in the pursuit of truth. If we think diversity of sex and race is important in our institutions, then perhaps much more so between intelligent species? And so on and so forth....

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      Ethan Cordray

      Because Christians believe (to speak broadly of a normal Christian belief) that non-divine, non-human intelligent beings exist, it shouldn't be much of a stretch to believe that non-divine, non-human intelligent beings could exist within our natural physical universe.

      Furthermore, it's not unknown for Christians to believe in supernatural intelligent beings that do not fall neatly into the categories of angel or demon, such as nature spirits, faeries, or human ghosts (it also being noted that the "angel" and "demon" categories themselves are not necessarily unified, referring more to the moral status of those beings rather than labeling species. For example, traditional Christian teachings have identified quite a wide variety of different types of angels, presumably with quite different properties and capabilities; "angel" itself is a job title, rather than a species name.).

      I'd also say that "intelligent, interdimensional phenomena" and "supernatural phenomena" are really different ways of saying the same thing, since "interdimensional" is typically little more than a sci-fi version of saying "supernatural."

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        John Bowling

        I agree with your nuance regarding supernatural intelligent beings, this is why I put the terms angels and demons in quotes. And yeah, extra-terrestrial life fits comfortably within a Christian worldview. But I've talked to some Christians and a lot of non-Christians who think that alien life would actually undermine Christianity. As best I can tell, this goes back to the mistaken notion that the Bible teaches humans and the earth are "special," in the sense of one-of-a-kind in the universe... but the Bible doesn't teach that. (C. S. Lewis didn't seem to recognize any problem that needed to be addressed when he wrote his Space Trilogy.)

        As for interdimensional and supernatural--while maybe it's possible to conceive of the "spiritual" realm as just a higher dimension, it's not necessary. These can be entirely distinct, as I think is clear from the story Flatland, which I referenced in my original post. We might be like those living on Flatland and those "above" us wouldn't have to be God or other supernatural beings, but like humans in respect to being natural beings.

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  9. John R

    I know Marina based her belief in there being other intelligent life in the universe based on statistical probability. I used to think this myself. There is a school of belief that probability analysis may lead to the opposite conclusion. See the Fermi paradox. It's not egotistical to think we're alone.... its lonely to think we're alone.

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    Rev Snow

    Any argument that a deferral of payroll tax is an attack on social security needs to be laughed out of the room. Don't pretend the payroll tax holiday (not deferral!) of 2011-12 didn't happen. More than $200 billion in taxes not delayed, but never collected at all! And in hindsight for economic justifications not even in the same arena as what is happening now.

    Still a bad bad idea for many reasons, but fear that Dems will cry about attacks on Social Security? They will do that no matter what the facts are. Always have.

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      Tracie

      What I think not enough people understand is that social security checks come from current, or at least, recent taxes. It's not like drawing on savings.

      I'm sure you understand that, but many people don't.

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