Phylogenetic bracketing, with parsimony, is a useful tool in these cases.

we’d probably still be sitting in caves, throwing shit at each other

Oy! I must have been hasty when I finalized editing this last night. Replace 4 orders of magnitude range for “10,000 orders of magnitude range” and so on.

Wegener was the pariah of the geology community for proposing continental drift.

The US Navy is not experts on astrobiology. And due to the value of our universal speed limit (light speed in vacuum), stars are widely spread and inaccessible (and even if they could be visited - we don’t know that yet - they would be uneconomical to visit).

A personal opinion on sillyness notwithstanding, the peer reviwed publications such as the one described in the article are multitudinous. That shows the experts find the topic useful and based on enough information to do work.

Like Sandberg I didn’t love the new Whitmire study for reasons that he mention, but unlike him I loved the 2015 Dayal study. The latter did look back further than Sun is old and even saw some indications the “fundamental metallicity relation” that tracks the entire formation history of galaxies works over many mergers.

“For all we know there is metallic based molten life forms living in the mantal of this planet. “

You might want to check local building codes. They’re probably not OK with “I piled up some garbage and plastered over it, so now that’s a wall.”

last thing anyone gives a shit about right now is how people celebrate their imaginary sky friend

Yet you are decrying peer review?

Wow you literally have no idea what you’re talking about huh? And indeed Crick and Watson should not have been taken seriously and in fact were not taken seriously until other scientists had taken a very thorough look at their work. Further, their theory was wrong. It wasn’t until Franklin’s photographs showed they…

The way to address the message is to peer review it, which Wolfram seems to be trying to avoid for some reason.

Discrediting a theory, solely based on the fact that Wolfram doesn’t submit his work for peer review, is the opposite of what science stands for

Eh. Most animals given the chance will spread their populations out as resources become scarce in one area, if able. We definitely have a disproportionate impact on the environment compared to most other species, but our spreading out isn't very unique except how we comparatively excel at it.

Every species is invasive. To make a comparison, wolves would spread everywhere if there was food everywhere. The “balance” you’re talking about is driven by scarcity - once there aren’t enough deer, etc, then wolves slow down, their population growth slows or declines slightly, and things balance out when there is a…

It would, if you consider massively human-modified ecosystems as ecosystems. However, these have highly-reduced biodiversity and are unstable to begin with.

First, thank you for the structured and argumented answer, which do warrant an also (a bit) lengthy response.

Why do you think you need “Religion” to do that? Lots of charities out there that have nothing to do with religion at all. If Religion disappeared tomorrow it doesn’t mean that over night we would all become self absorbed assholes, it just means we wouldn’t look to a fairy tale to tell us to be good to people and do…

Hmm now I am to be derided because I express my lack of understanding of why some people were behaving weirdly?