>A fundamental question is what should we adopt as the default assumption. Brian advocates the traditional choice that we are alone until proven otherwise. This obviously gives us a sense of self-importance and removes the urgency to invest funds in the search for evidence.

>But physicists like Brian do not insist that dark matter does not exist until discovered. Since we had not detected dark matter particles so far, the most conservative view should have been to assume that known matter and radiation are the only cosmic constituents. Instead, physicists invested billions of dollars in searching for specific types of dark matter particles. This was motivated by indirect evidence for the existence of dark matter, based on its gravitational influence on the dynamics of visible matter and radiation. Nevertheless, if gravity happens to be modified at low accelerations, this indirect evidence is incorrectly interpreted.

LMAO I literally made this point independently here last week, and he is absolutely both based and correct here.

Either be conservative and be skeptical of unfalsifiable things like dark matter/energy until directly observed, or be loose and embrace the possibility of things like, if not le ayyys, biosignatures on exoplanets.

But going around telling the public the universe is 96% invisible woo bullshit so your model doesn't brake while howling like a gibbon about "muh extraordinary evidence" when someone suggests a biosignature molecule is a sign of life on an exoplanet is the sort of hysterical hypocrisy that has lead to an ever steepening cliff fall in credibility for the scientific community.