Aliens and Ghosts.. (1 Viewer)

[Jeff Gatie]

But Brian, if you are seeking out intelligent life, you don't bypass every intelligently designed, artificially lighted, massively structured, obviously inhabited city and town in order to dissect an obviously dumb, four legged creature by the side of a road, stomp fractals into a cornfield or kamikaze your spaceship into a desert. I mean, at least land on the Great Wall of China or Tokyo airport or some other engineering marvel that can be seen from vast distances. How hard is it to follow the lights on I95 and pick out a dozen or so cities all the way up and down the coast for their visiting (or dining, if they wish) pleasure?

 

[RobertR]

There are so many unknowns involved with the question of extraterrestrial life that it seems all but impossible to gauge the probability of it existing:

Does life elsewhere HAVE to be based on terrestrial biochemistry?

If it does, HOW closely would conditions elsewhere have to match those on earth for there to be life?

How difficult is it for intelligence to evolve?

Is interstellar travel possible even for a VERY advanced race?

There are just too many ifs built upon ifs built upon ifs…

 

[BrianW]

BTW - There are radio waves emanating from Mars, and some analysts even think there's compelling evidence that the radio waves may originate at the behest of an intelligent species.

 

[Holadem]

Pathfinder?

 

[Brad Porter]

True. But there are no cows, cornfields, or hillbilly anuses, so what's the point of going there?

Brad

 

[BrianW]

Brad, there's a joke in here somewhere about Uranus, but I don't see the point of going there, either.

 

[MarkHastings]

I've been to Uranus, but I've never been to me. :frowning:

 

[Holadem]

Exactly .

A common joke back home is how upon closer look, the sum of the stuff required by a priest for an incantation often amounts to the ingredients of a good meal (2 lives chickens, this and that herb, some spices etc...).

Dave, I truly hope you don't find this condescending, I am just relating my (non)experiences, as you have.

--
H

 

[BrianW]

Jeff, I agree with you. (Well, except for the kamikaze part. That sounds fun!) I'm not trying to explain why alien visitors would do such inexplicable things. I'm just emphasizing that our very average sun in a very average part of the galaxy is a particularly likely place for others -- if they're out there -- to find life. In fact, if I had to guess, I'd say that the chances that aliens would find intelligent life in our solar system is in the high 80s.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Here's a doozy: what's the probability aliens out there are thinking the exact same thing we are?

 

[BrianW]

In addition to the things Robert points out, and in addition to the astronomical distances involved, there's the problem of temporal distance as well. Civilizations that would be happy to visit (or eat) us may have already come and gone. There may yet be civilizations to come who would happily seeks us out, but we'll be completely gone by the time they learn to throw rocks. The Universe is not only big; it's old. and it may get a heck of a lot older before any two civilizations in one galaxy even exist simultaneously, much less have the opportunity to meet.

Besides, even if there is intelligent life in our galaxy right now with the brains to think the same kind of thoughts I'm capable of thinking, I'd still say that the odds are pretty much zero that they're thinking of Paris Hilton.

 

[Bryan X]

Dome, who's this Dome you speak of?

 

[Will_B]

Oh Jeff, I was trying to respond to your best points, and was sparing you any discomfort that may arise from noting that much of the stereotype material you presented is not based upon anything.

The clandestine part sounds true enough; alien encounters - as far as I am aware - do seem to occur at night, mostly. I guess I've read of some that took place when people were traveling or otherwise would not be missed. Though one could always speculate that tourists would be more likely to be victims of date-rape drugs, I suppose.

But as for the rest...

Regarding circles and cows, the association between aliens and crop circles and cattle mutilations, as far as I know, is not based upon anything; no one has ever seen an alien making a crop circle or an alien applying steak sauce to a cow. Alien encounters are, to me, situations where people are seeing actual beings that they feel are aliens. That every other strange things in the world gets blamed on aliens does not seem reasonable to me.

Regarding crashing into deserts, I've never seen any proof that such things ever happened. Though I once read a great fiction book called Majestic that put forth the idea (for the purpose of the narrative) that the famous crash was not an accident at all, but was an intentional way of letting mankind become aware that we were not alone. If such crashes never took place, then I'd be tempted to say that the fixation on them by some people is because people want some kind of tangible proof, some kind of artifact, from an experience which by all personal accounts do not leave behind any material proof. That's also the reason why I think people take fake ufo pictures.

Regarding "hicks", I am not aware of any study that indicates that people from the country have these experiences more than people from the suburbs and city. If you look back on any recent studies conducted at universities, they seem to draw on people who live around the universities, not on people from the sticks. And if you look at books that describe groups of people, they tend to be from the suburbs or city (though that could simply be because authors would work with people who live nearby). Everything one can read skews towards people who are not hicks, so why the "hick" association? Probably just a way of implying that people with better educations are expected to decide that alien encounters are hallucinations. A kind of call out to class distinctions. "Don't be a hick - don't believe that alien in your room was an alien."

Regarding quasi-sexual anal probes, despite the humor potential, the fact is we use asses for plenty of things ourselves, starting when we take our babies' temperatures. It is as reasonable a way to assess (no pun intended) aspects of someone's health as any other, I expect. On men, I've read speculation that such probes could be an electroejaculator (to cause muscles to constrict, releasing semen) like people use in animal husbandry. But if women also report it, I imagine it seems more likely it would involve a health check-up.

Regarding the quasi-sexualnes of alien encounters in general, that's really what I find most fascinating about reported alien encounters. The beings are said to resemble people (bipedal), and are said to be trying to create offspring through some kind of tinkering with men's semen or women's eggs. If they weren't similar enough to us to attempt this, I suppose there wouldn't be an air of quasi-sexualness around the encounters. We don't get turned on when we splice genes from jellyfish into corn fields. But this seems a bit closer. Maybe that's the reason aliens would seek out other life? And our life in particular? Because we're similar to them? Similar enough, anyway?

 

[MarkHastings]

Perhaps there are aliens here, but our brains can not sense (by sight, touch, sounds, etc.) them.

 

[mark alan]

In regards to aliens

Scientists have estimated that there are 70 sextillion stars in the universe. Even if only 1 in a trillion stars have planets in the right location, that would mean that 70 billion stars have the potential for having life. I would bet that the actual fraction is probably between 1 in a million and 1 in a billion, so the 70 billion potentially habitable planets is probably an extremely low ball number. The chances of their being life on other planets is probably 100%

Of course, with 70 sextillion stars to choose from, the chances of someone deciding to visit ours is vanishingly small.

I would give just about anything to ride around in the Enterprise for a few years and check out the local scenery.

 

[Will_B]

I'd agree. My own feeling is that an altered state of consciousness is needed to encounter them. Not a drug state, I mean one of the states close to sleep. Which maybe would explain why people perceive them mostly at night. In daytime we're probably blissfully unaware.

But that's just an idea.

 

[MarkHastings]

Our brains are most definitely WAY too small to understand and even experience everything in the universe. There has got to be phenomenons and lifeforms out there that are far beyond what our brains can comprehend and 'experience'.

I mean, why must we assume that aliens would have physical bodies like ourselves? Perhaps 'aliens' are just forms of energy that we can't see...this could be the reasons behind all of these odd 'supernatural' experiences...

Damn it! Now I'm starting to sound like a scientologist.

 

[Chu Gai]

Sure, that's sleep paralysis. Prior to people talking about being abducted by aliens the big thing was demonic possessions.

 

[Radioman970]

*opens door* *turns fan on ultra blow*

 

[Jeff Gatie]

As a person who has sleep paralysis about once every three nights, I can attest to it being exactly as they say in the "aliens froze me and I could see and feel but not move" encounters. It's funny, because after I read up on it, it no longer frightens me and I can actually will myself out of it. When I wake up in this state, I just lay there telling myself that I'm in between the sleep and awake state and just give it a few minutes. Before I knew what it was, it scared me pretty good.

Great point though; until aliens became part of the culture (Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and other early science fiction onward), aliens did not exist and everything was blamed on demonic possession or witchcraft. Funny how those spaceships and little green men never really entered the world until someone thought them up (aside from the old Leonard Nimoy In Search Of series which tried to claim Ezekiel's "wheel in the sky" was somehow a spaceship).