Extraterrestrial Beings and Their Absence

10 posts

Byssus

Absence? They are already here.

Stubby

I didn't come from no monkey alien

Bob Dylan Roof

There are no aliens, just as there are no time travelers. The universe is cold and dead. u mad reddit gaytheists

Theo

Well, why do we show interest in everything, including savage tribes of Guyana? For exactly the same reason. Learning about others you learn about yourself.

On topic, until we understand what makes organic matter sentient, there's no reliable way to estimate whether there are more sentient species in the galaxy.
Mike
Star Trek is simply multicultural ideology projected into outer space, with a few oddities thrown in to keep the shows "alien". Like a lot of science fiction, it's more about the authors' mentality and human concerns than about what might actually be out there.

It seems difficult to imagine any species evolving intelligence without developing a curiosity about its environment. Even a civilization that consciously preferred to be left alone within its home star system would find it prudent to find out what's out there, given the technology and resources to do so. And likely not all civilizations would withdrawn; most would probably be aggressive and expansionist.
Mike
If the galaxy were relatively crowded with intelligent extraterrestrials (say one alien civilization per one million stars--that would amount to over 100 million alien civilizations in this galaxy alone), then presumably at least some of those would be using technologies (e.g. radio broadasting) that we could detect. If we are not seeing signals, then the simplest explanation is that there are no signals and therefore no aliens.
Angocachi
The guy has two solid arguments.
1. We don't all see aliens or their ships as universially or as readily as we see any other common thing that exists.
2. We don't see things in space, whether radio waves or sun harvesting and so on.

1. The average chimpanzee is not witness to humans. That we have such limited contact with them we can hardly be sure they exist could be a mere symptom of our primitive state. It's also possible that they limit their contact with us. Myth suggests that dieties were prohibited from unauthorized interaction with man, so not to spoil him with tech and knowledge, etc. This is the Book of Enoch in a nutshell, and is a common theme in other cultures where humans and gods are forbidden too much interaction.
2. He assumes they wouldn't have surpassed our or even bypassed our means of energy and communication. They might not even use radio, ever. Even those that do might only use it briefly, and so we couldn't have found it in the short time we've looked. Not to mention, noisy species might get exterminated or soon learn to shut the fuck up and become invisible. It could be very dangerous, and Earth is the only one young and stupid enough to declare its defenseless little self to the galaxy with blasts of radio waves. They might be listening to us thinking, 'Earth's about to get eaten by the Alpha Civilization, we better stay quiet and watch.' .. We're a yelping fawn in a wilderness of predators.
Mike

This is the worst junk-science article that I've seen in a while, but this sort of stuff is not entirely unusual -- even in scientific journals -- given scientists' quasi-religious, irrepressibly exuberant belief in a universe full of life.

Invisible probes from unknown civilizations? Again the simplest explanation is that if we are not seeing something, then it doesn't exist. To hypothesize probes "so hi-tech we probably can't detect them" with no supporting evidence is to indulge in fantasy not science. The details of mathematical assumptions used to model fleets of invisible probes exploring the galaxy are not important. This silliness does not advance science.
Mike
I understand your stance, but I consider the question of deities and related beings as they have manifested themselves in the world's religious literature to be separate from the current discussion, which is focused on life in our physical universe outside our solar system. Even if the Book of Enoch were to be taken as an accurate record of happenings in human history, it is not clear that the angels referenced therein should be considered physical lifeforms from our universe rather than sentient beings from a non-physical realm, or something else. If these things are from some star in our universe, we'd need to know which one to point our telescopes at, and we'd need to see some proof, in order for the Book of Enoch to be useful for this discussion.

Yes, to the extent that alien civilizations exist, we should pipe down for the sake of planetary safety. I will add another post about this theme...
Angocachi
The Book of Enoch alone is about as much evidence as Alf, that ET's have been here. It could be total fiction. What stands as proof is that many different civilizations tell very similar accounts of physical dieties descending from the heavens, interacting with, civilizing, and sexing humans. If it were one tradition it could be fiction, but it's not. They don't refer to these beings as metaphysical, but so physical that they are mistaken for human and often breed with humans, producing offspring.
The obvious implication is that man is himself a branch of some alien species, created and directed almost surgically by that father race.

The only possible physical evidence we could find, in such a scenario, other than the accounts which form the basis of our world religions and mythos, is technological marvels before their time. Or example, finding proof that the Egyptians grasped aviation, or that a primitive African tribe knew a star that couldn't have been observed before modern times. That's what ancient astronaut folks compile, and they've quite a pile. Short of that we'd need their bodily remains... and we might.

Man has been making the transition from 'these superior beings are gods' to 'there are no gods' to 'these gods are superior beings'.