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Comment by ropiwqefjnpoa | Hacker News Reader

IDK, what would be the motive to hide that?

I don't think Levin is making the claim that NASA knows that there is life on Mars and that there is a conspiracy to cover it up. They both are looking at the same results and (honestly) coming to different conclusions.

Part of this is that it's expensive to do experiments on Mars, and space is limited. Each experiment you choose to do excludes you from doing others, so NASA has evaluated the evidence and doesn't think its the most efficient thing to pursue right now. Levin is trying to convince folks that the evidence is sufficient to warrant pursuing further experiments that would clarify what is going on here.

Less robotic missions, less money for JPL. More maned missions, more money for Houston Mission Control. I remember reading an article long ago about how none of the robotic missions to Mars can actually detect life and how strange and contrary to the rhetoric that fact is. When you look at it in terms of funding, it all makes sense.

To hide the lizard peoples secret base

Please stop posting unsubstantive comments here.

Not that I think there's a conspiracy, I don't think one has to try very hard to imagine reasons why the powers that be would suppress such discoveries.

Consider for instance how many US citizens are still religious today, and largely govern their lives according to religious beliefs. Consider how the current president has deliberately weakened the separation of church and state by making it legal for churches to be political - pastors of tax-exempt churches can now outright advise congregation on who to vote for.

Discovery of life elsewhere threatens the foundation of a lot of religious dogma.

People always claim this, but I'm not convinced. We've had a million scientific discoveries that for all practical purposes disprove a lot of religious claims. People seem to either just adapt their beliefs, ie. things move from literal to symbolic, or people simply choose not to believe or consider the facts despite clear evidence. I don't think simple facts or evidence will ever seriously threaten religious dogma for at least some portion of the population.

I agree that it will, for some portion, but that portion is ever diminishing.

An irrefutable discovery of complex alien life on another planet would, in my opinion, undoubtedly accelerate that rate of diminishment.

In the mean time, many people use the absence of any such discovery, as proof that earth is inexplicably unique so some magic creator deliberately blessed us to be here on this sacred planet.

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