Aliens....Do You Believe?
- Thread starter bizarrojohnson
- Start date
Heisenberg
Well-Known Member
it's not the belief that aliens exist that is seen as kooky. Many scientists and philosophers hold that same belief. What gets someone labeled as kooky has to do with other factors.
Yes, there are likely billions of planets able support life, and that's just considering life as we know it. But what we also continue to learn is just how unlikely it would be that any of that life is visiting our planet. The distance between us and other (possible) life is so great that believing aliens could easily travel through it is hard to accept.
This is the most likely answer to the Fermi paradox, which points out the contrast between how very likely it is for life to exist elsewhere, and how little evidence we have that it does. Long-distance space travel likely has too many obstacles that aren't solvable via technology.
Other explanations include The Great Filter, which suggests there may be some sort of built-in filter to intelligence that prevents it from progressing to the point of space travel. For example, maybe war and mutual destruction is inherent to intelligent creatures, and so they wipe themselves out before they figure out interstellar exploration. Or, perhaps learning how to accomplish interstellar travel takes so many resources that civilizations burn through them and die off just trying to figure it out.
There is also the Zoo Hypothesis, which simply says that aliens are aware of us, but follow a prime directive of sorts which prevents them from interfering with us in any way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
Wilderb
Well-Known Member
Totally agree.
On the being visited by aliens, I am just saying that it can't be ruled out. If the last hundred years have taught us anything, we know what we know until we find out it's wrong. Will there be a unified theory? What things we "know" will be proven wrong.
Corso312
Well-Known Member
Even when I was 10 or 11 and the teachers would say there is only one galaxy( milky way) ..I'd ask .how do you know? ...thed get frustrated and couldn't convince me...fast forward 25 years..guess I'm not as dumb as they thought EH?
Heisenberg
Well-Known Member
Investigating phenomena and coming up short, or finding more plausible explanations, is not the same as dismissing. The scientific community has taken the idea of alien visitation seriously, but without any evidence there isn't much that can be said. Doubt is the appropriate position, so long as one is willing to let that doubt be swayed by new information.
The thing that got me started checking out alien shit was when I was a child i had a reoccurring experience where I would wake up in the middle of the night and couldn't move but my mind was awake, and I could feel a presence, I could move my eyes but that's it, on the other side of my bed room would be a humanoid figure, it would look kind of like a dull light or energy, like it had no features, just solid energy in the shape of a humanoid.
This happened to me about 7 or 8 times. Now that I'm older I think maybe sleep paralysis, but the humanoid that was always there makes me wonder. Idk tinfoil hat lol
This happened to me about 7 or 8 times. Now that I'm older I think maybe sleep paralysis, but the humanoid that was always there makes me wonder. Idk tinfoil hat lol
Corso312
Well-Known Member
Its not really something you can test, any " evidence" is confiscated by the government.. All encounters are on a extremely small % of the population..there's just too many credible people claiming to have encountered alien beings or UFO.
Heisenberg
Well-Known Member
Sleep paralysis is a creepy thing to read about. I've never experienced it, thankfully. It is a common experience and one than can be willingly induced in certain people. No reason to think it's paranormal. Interestingly, the presence that people feel changes with culture. In modern times it's often an alien or ghost. In older times, before they had a real concept of aliens, people saw sea hags and succubi.
Still, I don't think that cheapens the experience you had. If it led you to be interested these subjects then it contributed to the richness of your imagination, curiosity, and creativity. Sleep paralysis may be an error of the brain, but great art and great ingenuity often take cues from error.
Heisenberg
Well-Known Member
Well, if the government is hiding all the info, then there is much I can say about that. It's what's known as an immunized hypothesis. It cannot be falsified. It means that, no matter what, there will never be a reason to change your mind. No argument, no circumstance, no experience can ever incline you to doubt, because it can always be explained away.
It's easy to create a narrative, to construct a story that makes sense. It can be done for anything. Any belief can be immunized in this way. The problem is, it can't always be true. If every government on Earth along with everyone connected to them is hiding aliens, and every scientist on the payroll of big pharma is hiding the cure for cancer, and every employee at NASA is covering up the faked moon landing, and every doctor and researcher is hiding that vaccines cause autism, and every scientist and researcher in the ag business is covering up the harm done by GMOs, and everyone who knows who really shot Kennedy, and all the people covering up Bigfoot, and the people hiding that the Earth is flat, chemtrails, fluoride, ect, ect. It looks like just about every human on Earth is involved in some sort of cover up or another.
So they can't all be true, yet they are all the same. It's a cheap way to construct a story that always makes sense. If it starts to not make sense, we just evoke the conspiracy to make it all better.
There was a time when a lot of credible people saw leprechauns and fairies. Some of them were lying, but others were mistaken, on drugs, fooled by hoaxes, suffering from mental illness, and so on. Maybe some of them really saw leprechauns, but there is nothing wrong with doubting it. The popularity of an explanation is a terrible shortcut for determining its truth-value.
The problem with listening to stories and appealing to conspiracy is that no real investigation is occurring. It's not actual inquiry resulting from a genuine desire to find out what's going on, it's mere belief preservation. Perhaps that is good enough for you, but I personally find it less than convincing.
Corso312
Well-Known Member
That's absurd...first..not one credible person ever claimed to see a leprauchon.
I'm talking about high ranking military men who had contact and saw first hand what happens to debris from. Crashed UFO or autopsies on aliens...how do you think we moved at a glacial pace for thousands of years and went from the black n white TV to the iphone and driverless cars in 50 years?
I'm talking about high ranking military men who had contact and saw first hand what happens to debris from. Crashed UFO or autopsies on aliens...how do you think we moved at a glacial pace for thousands of years and went from the black n white TV to the iphone and driverless cars in 50 years?
Wilderb
Well-Known Member
Not exactly true. I once roared around town on St Patty's day on a chopper with 18" apes and a little leprechaun hat drunk as hell. This thing was LOUD. Let's say I'm not tall. Next few days, cops were asking everybody who the drunken Leprechaun was.
Just sayin.......
WE
Heisenberg
Well-Known Member
You seem upset with my example, yet the same logic you are using was used to support belief in leprechauns, or ghosts or Bigfoot or sea monsters. Lots of people report them and many of those people have no reason to lie. If your threshold for believing in something is simply that a lot of credible people report it, then you have to believe in all sorts of things.
I'm not saying this makes aliens visitation untrue, I'm just saying it's not very convincing. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the fact that a bunch of people report something is not extraordinary, it's actually quite common.
I don't think it's at all clear or obvious that the tech boom has occurred due to alien influence. As I said, this revelation does not arrive from serious inquiry or investigation, but mere speculation, which is easy. It's easy to say something that seems to make sense, but if figuring out the universe was as simple as just finding a story that jives with our beliefs, we wouldn't need science. Progress in technology, medicine, cosmology, ect, come from the opposite attitude. From doubting and demanding a high standard for our beliefs rather than coddling them.
It's already been pointed out in this thread that science changes its mind about things. It learns that what we thought was right is actually wrong, or at least incomplete. If science only looked to confirm what it thought rather than doubt it, we'd still believe all those wrongs things today.
If the level of proof you require is just pointing to things that seem to confirm your belief, then that's fine for you. I'm simply saying it's not good enough for me.
Corso312
Well-Known Member
I'm not upset at all, you seem pretty open minded..which is always a positive IMO... How can you debunk this?
http://www.openminds.tv/retired-usaf-officer-talks-about-aliens-and-nukes-the-ufo-cabal-and-his-abduction-experience-1190/24599
http://www.openminds.tv/retired-usaf-officer-talks-about-aliens-and-nukes-the-ufo-cabal-and-his-abduction-experience-1190/24599
Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it and eventually they will believe it - Hitler
MonkeyGrinder
Well-Known Member
I like to think, or even hope that we're not the greatest species in the universe.
On a side note if we aren't I'm pretty sure the aliens are having one hell of a chuckle of they in fact are keeping an eye on humans.
On a side note if we aren't I'm pretty sure the aliens are having one hell of a chuckle of they in fact are keeping an eye on humans.
ttystikk
Well-Known Member
Ahhhh, and here we finally arrive at a credible explanation;
1. Way too many places suitable for life in this galaxy, let alone others, for it not to exist out there. SOMEWHERE.
2. Some of it is undoubtedly far more advanced than we, again an all but statistical certainty.
3. Assuming that interstellar travel is possible, why would they come here? Intelligence gathering and threat assessment, same reasons WE'D be watching THEM if we could.
4. Combine advanced technology with a need to keep a stealthy eye on this young and dangerous species and my own theory is that they watch us from VERY far away and listen to our EM transmissions, aka Signals Intelligence, again just as we use them to spy on each other.
5. Exposing their own existence to us would leave them vulnerable to our 'interest', and we humans have a bad record when dealing with strangers on our own planet, let alone real aliens. Therefore their Prime Directive isn't non interference, it's non detection.
6. Because 4 isn't hard to do for us already, and 5 is a big imperative, my best guess is that they don't come closer than Martian orbit to us and possibly monitor us from outside our solar system. This would only be true IF they've found us at all, because we've only been broadcasting for a few hundred years and space is vast.
moving_shadow
Active Member
If we are made of the of the most common elements in the universe, then there should be other living beings in the universe like ourselves.
This is not difficult to "believe"
Whether they have actually visited out planet, I'm very sceptical about this. The universe is huge, really huge. Even if aliens developed technology to travel at the speed of light they would have to solve inter generational travel etc.
They wouldn't come here on a 2 man flying saucer.
This is not difficult to "believe"
Whether they have actually visited out planet, I'm very sceptical about this. The universe is huge, really huge. Even if aliens developed technology to travel at the speed of light they would have to solve inter generational travel etc.
They wouldn't come here on a 2 man flying saucer.
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
I suggest a fourth hypothesis.
The temporal window between being detectable and going quiet is quite possibly very short in most cases.
We have had radio transmissions head out for about 120 years (if you subscribe to the idea that there were no technical human societies before our current epoch of recorded history.) In another 120, we might have left EM data transmission for something better and safer. In fact, I imagine we will have the (already developing) technology to leave biological bodies entirely behind.Then our sensory "footprint" in this continuum goes away; problem solved.
Or we might destroy ourselves.
Or the wolves may already be under way toward our system. (I am seriously pissed with Carl Sagan for having broadcast our Nutrition Information in the direction of M13, the Hercules globular cluster. He had no right to endanger my children.)
I can find a somewhat benign explanation of Fermi's paradox, and I have presented it. However I cannot discount the idea that the Galaxy is silent because the surviving technical species have armored themselves. Were I absolute King, I'd fake a massive thermonuclear pout by EM emissions (including optical range) and then see to it that no EM emissions are allowed to escape after.
Paranoid? Yes. But the final question is paranoid enough?