(Oct 25, 2016 06:10 PM)Yazata Wrote: This raises one of the same philosophical issues that Leigha raised in the inference to the best explanation thread. If there are only a handful of competing hypotheses to explain some observations, and all the hypothesis but one seem to be eliminated, then the remaining one would be the best of that bunch. But that doesn't mean that it's the best in general, that it's the best of all possible explanations. The problem is that there may be all kinds of additional hypotheses that nobody has even considered that might better explain the observations.
So I'm inclined to think that these astronomers are probably reaching when they conclude that the periodic signals come from ETIs. They should be saying that the cause of the periodic signals is currently unknown. They can't be sure that the set of hypotheses that they considered and rejected was an exhaustive set that included all possible explanations for the signals.
Which raises the question, how can SETI researchers ever be sure that they have excluded all possible alternative explanations and really are detecting ETI's?
Agree very much with your explanation here, and it points to that phrase ''people see, what they want to see.'' (and thus, feel ''that'' is the ''best'' explanation)