What question(s) have no right answer?

Is it better to rent or to buy?

Are your thoughts liberal or conservative?

What is the best color?

Is there life beyond Earth?

Is Tampa nice or seedy?
 
Seattle said:
Is it better to rent or to buy?

Are your thoughts liberal or conservative?

What is the best color?

Is there life beyond Earth?

Is Tampa nice or seedy?
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The list of possibilities is endless....
 
Write4U said:
The probability for that is very high and will be answered someday as our knowledge of the universe and possible ways for the abiogenesis of life grows.
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But as of right now, is there a right or wrong answer? Is there such a thing as a non-answer answer that ever seems sufficient?
 
Write4U said:
"probably" ?
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Lol - good “answer.”

Everything is up for questioning/debate, until it isn’t. I remember a few years back on here, someone asked if 2+2 always equals 4, and the answers varied.
 
Write4U said:
The probability for that is very high and will be answered someday as our knowledge of the universe and possible ways for the abiogenesis of life grows.
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I agree but it's hard to speak in terms of probabilities with a known case of 1. It's also hard to describe that question in common meaningful terms. It's possible that life is everywhere but that it is primitive as it was on Earth for most of our history.

It's possible that it's still early and we are it. It's possible that advanced life has existed but currently we are it. It's possible that it's fairly well developed but limited to something like whales in the oceans.

What people generally are envisioning is other civilizations like the human civilizations found on Earth over the last million years or less. It's possible that isn't the way it commonly develops.

There are reasonable scenarios for almost any position you want to take on this subject.
 
Seattle said:
I agree but it's hard to speak in terms of probabilities with a known case of 1. It's also hard to describe that question in common meaningful terms. It's possible that life is everywhere but that it is primitive as it was on Earth for most of our history.
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Point taken. But according to Robert Hazen, the earth is just an average planet with "sufficient" resources "necessary" for abiogenesis. It is by no means unique in the universe.

Abiogenesis, biology
Kara Rogers is the senior editor of biomedical sciences at Encyclopædia Britannica, where she oversees a range of content from medicine and genetics to microorganisms. She joined Britannica in 2006 and...
Abiogenesis, the idea that life arose from nonlife more than 3.5 billion years ago on Earth. Abiogenesis proposes that the first life-forms generated were very simple and through a gradual process became increasingly complex. Biogenesis, in which life is derived from the reproduction of other life, was presumably preceded by abiogenesis, which became impossible once Earth’s atmosphere assumed its present composition.
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archaea; Yellowstone National Park
Archaea, such as those found at Midway Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, are primitive prokaryotes capable of thriving in extreme environments with conditions similar to those that may have existed billions of years ago on early Earth, when life is thought to have arisen from nonlife.
© Gary718 /Shutterstock.com
Although many equate abiogenesis with the archaic theory of spontaneous generation, the two ideas are quite different. According to the latter, complex life (e.g., a maggot or mouse) was thought to arise spontaneously and continually from nonliving matter. While the hypothetical process of spontaneous generation was disproved as early as the 17th century and decisively rejected in the 19th century, abiogenesis has been neither proved nor disproved.
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The Oparin-Haldane theory
In the 1920s British scientist J.B.S. Haldane and Russian biochemist Aleksandr Oparin independently set forth similar ideas concerning the conditions required for the origin of life on Earth. Both believed that organic molecules could be formed from abiogenic materials in the presence of an external energy source (e.g., ultraviolet radiation) and that the primitive atmosphere was reducing (having very low amounts of free oxygen) and contained ammonia
and water vapour, among other gases. [/quote]
Both also suspected that the first life-forms appeared in the warm, primitive ocean and were heterotrophic (obtaining preformed nutrients from the compounds in existence on early Earth) rather than autotrophic (generating food and nutrients from sunlight or inorganic materials).
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https://www.britannica.com/science/abiogenesis

The Science of Abiogenesis has advanced drastically, since these early speculations.

Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institute for Science has extensively written and presented many lectures on the subject, accompanied by much evidence, including evidence that biochemistry already happens in cosmic clouds where radiation causes the formation of complex carbon-based biomolecules.

Cosmic Carbon Chemistry: From the Interstellar Medium to the Early Earth

Abstract
Astronomical observations have shown that carbonaceous compounds in the gas and solid state, refractory and icy are ubiquitous in our and distant galaxies. Interstellar molecular clouds and circumstellar envelopes are factories of complex molecular synthesis. A surprisingly large number of molecules that are used in contemporary biochemistry on Earth are found in the interstellar medium, planetary atmospheres and surfaces, comets, asteroids and meteorites, and interplanetary dust particles.
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In this article we review the current knowledge of abundant organic material in different space environments and investigate the connection between presolar and solar system material, based on observations of interstellar dust and gas, cometary volatiles, simulation experiments, and the analysis of extraterrestrial matter. Current challenges in astrochemistry are discussed and future research directions are proposed.
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982172/
 
As the thread unfolds, therein lies the answer to my OP. :smile: A few replies and all of the answers are somewhat equally valuable, even if none of them are “right” or “wrong.”

The purpose of this thread is somewhat of an experiment to see if we decide what’s right or wrong based on our own bias towards either.
 
wegs said:
As the thread unfolds, therein lies the answer to my OP. :smile: A few replies and all of the answers are somewhat equally valuable, even if none of them are “right” or “wrong.”

The purpose of this thread is somewhat of an experiment to see if we decide what’s right or wrong based on our own bias towards either.
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Rather than right or wrong perhaps correct or incorrect accurate?

:)
 
Seattle said:
Aren't "correct or incorrect" in this case just synonyms for "right or wrong"? I don't get what point you are trying to make?
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''Right'' or ''wrong'' can be subjective, whereas ''incorrect'' or ''correct'' seem to be used when we're dealing with facts. Opinions can be based on facts, but not always. Can there be right or wrong opinions? I guess, depending on how one arrives at a certain opinion.
 
Seattle said:
Aren't "correct or incorrect" in this case just synonyms for "right or wrong"? I don't get what point you are trying to make?
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I'm thinking more along the lines of these definitions

Right
morally good, justified, or acceptable.

Correct
free from error; in accordance with fact or truth

:)
 
wegs said:
''Right'' or ''wrong'' can be subjective, whereas ''incorrect'' or ''correct'' seem to be used when we're dealing with facts. Opinions can be based on facts, but not always. Can there be right or wrong opinions? I guess, depending on how one arrives at a certain opinion.
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I think they're just synonyms.

2+2=4. That's right isn't it? Correct me if I'm wrong. :)
 
Seattle said:
I think they're just synonyms.

2+2=4. That's right isn't it? Correct me if I'm wrong. :)
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Unless we're talking about abstract algebra or something...that's correct. :wink: However, it's an equation that has somehow become the poster child of objective truth, when really it's too simplistic.
 
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