Thanks for posting that Randy. That just about sums up my thoughts on the issue.

+ 1 (lazy typer here)

If you think about space travel within the confines of our own technological capabilities, then yes, it would seem impossible. As humans we have as much a hard time fathoming this phenomenon as do fish in a pond fathoming there are creatures on the surface of the pond trying to catch us. We just can't conceive of it.

But if you are a alien race that may possibly be millions of years in advance of us, its not out of the question. Space and time are inextricably connected and can't be thought of as two separate things. Perhaps these races are exploiting Einstein-Rosen bridges (wormholes to us earthling types).

Although there's no super hard evidence ( that the public knows about) , in my mind there are too many cases out there that defy earthbound logic. And as I've said before, if just one case out of 10,000 cases is true......the whole phenomenon is true.

Sphere was a great book, read it when it came out prolly a few decades ago. Haven't read Contact yet, heard its good.

cheers,
Hail to Vega

Kevs (R and C), I was so surprised pleasantly by The Battle of LA--that was a really good movie and I thought it very accurately portrayed the US military and their (somewhat ineffectual) tactics against the aliens. Until they/we kicked ass of course (spoiler alert about the most common trope in all of American cinema: the good guys win.) Of course, your Scarlett Johansson assessment is spot-on as well.

I've tried to stay out of this pretty good conversation because I've been really busy musically, but I've been a good boy and got a lot of shit done (go see my 150 Days On: Stickin' it to The Man, and also vote and comment in the only poll I've seen on this site yet). So I'm going to dip in and probably run away--apologies in advance.

Let me be The Skeptic, since y'all want to know the truth, and not just "want to believe," like me.

First off, the idea that we're some special flower that the whole (intelligent) universe wants to see/anally probe/eat/fuck/enslave/study/other, has a hell of a lot of embedded assumptions.

Let me break it down:
#1: We are not the only life in the universe
#2: We are not the only intelligent life in the universe
#3: There are intelligent aliens who possess interstellar travel
#4: Who want to visit us (for reasons that are a whole other subset of points): to study, anally probe us, to eat us, to enslave us, for our water, our resources, to breed hybrids with us to save their dying race, to raise the Last Son of Krypton, because Cylons are chasing them across all time and space, etc.
#5: Who want to visit us enough to spend the incredible amount of energy and vast time required to actually get here by all known laws of science (admittedly, we don't know a lot about a lot). And taking stuff back (resources, water, our females, whatever) is HEAVY!
#6: Who have already been here, recently or in the far past
#7: Who abducted humans for research purposes, torture, jollies, sexual kinks, procreation, pets, other.
#8: And which we have very little evidence or even serious anecdotes either way to support alien visitations
#9: Which demands a vast conspiracy stretching across generations and multiple countries and multiple political parties.
#10: Your own point, just to round us out to 10.

Points 1 and 2 are both the easiest and the hardest points to get over. I'm fairly confident we're not the only life even in our own solar system. Point #2 is a pretty big one and I could linky-link all day to those conversations (But let's give us all that one.) Here's the formula commonly used to illustrate the chances of intelligent communicative civilizations: Drake's equation: http://www.classbrain.com/artmovies/pub ... e_50.shtml

Points 4 and 5 are the most convincing to me: we have nothing unique to offer anyone that's worth the vast time and energy it takes to get here. The only "good" explanation that I buy is that the aliens would come here to annihilate us out of some religious conviction or extreme Xenophobia, regardless of whatever the resource cost. You can always lob rocks at us from the edges of the solar system if you want to wipe us out quickly and easily. But I really struggle with why anyone would come here to get our water (there's more liquid water on the moons surrounding our gas giants Jupiter and Saturn--that's a mind-blowing discovery just made recently and makes point #1 a pretty low bar! http://io9.gizmodo.com/there-may-be-mor ... 1691284432) and maybe we'd make great pets, but there are way easier ways to make food than to eat the humans.

I also buy that Predators would hunt us. That is amazingly the most convincing rationale for why anyone would come here. Think of the energy, money, and resources we spend doing the African safari hunt thing.

http://www.blastr.com/2011-12-21/astron ... vade-earth

That's just the outline of the problems, without taking them all on. I just made this list up, so I may have not thought of some other embedded assumptions with alien abductions.

Cheers! --Back to rocking, but you know I'll be back.
Baltar, Lord of the Cylons

Speaking to a meeting of the American Rocket Society in January, 1962, Dr. Sagan said:

“The earth probably has been visited by intelligent beings representing an advanced civilization from outer space," before adding that the alien visitors logically would have built and maintained a base on our moon on the side which man cannot see.

Invariably, Sagan is the one most choose to quote on the subject of aliens and evolution, but Sagan never addressed why he departed so unceremoniously from his early statements and opinions. Naturally, I take him with a grain of salt. "Contact" was okay. His description of a man-made wormhole was pretty cool, and his pessimistic assessment of why earth governments go to extreme lengths to cover up their military projects was perfect. I still liked the movie better. I thought Foster was excellent, and of course, John Hurt (my very favorite actor) was superb.

To make an argument that alien visitation is unlikely by ascribing motives to an alien race makes the argument even less credible than the argument for said visitation. However, since we are discussing motives, let me ask:

1) when you study ants, do you attempt to speak to them?
2) why do humans spend vast amounts of money and resources to study lowly forms of life, in places as diverse and fraught with peril as the dense jungles and ocean floor?
3) why is there a space program in which we spend vast amounts of money and resources to send probes into the far reaches of space?
4) We are obviously an aggressive, warlike race. We have enough firepower to destroy our planet and 100 others. If you were an alien, would you let us know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is possible to export that weaponry to your home planet?

Why should a vehicle be considered absurd? If you are hurtling your body through space toward other planets, would you need something to shield your body? Would you need a compartment to take along a pillow and blanket? Do we know for a fact that aliens do not need a blankie from time to time?

We can't know any answers. What we do know is that our own race does abduct and sexually harass many lower life forms, we almost never attempt to speak to them about it or anything else, we do attempt to explore the far reaches of space (even dead planets where we know there is no life), and we use vehicles to do so. We also spend a whole shitload of money researching interstellar propulsion systems, including anti-gravitational propulsion systems. It is statistically illogical and naive to conclude that we are the only life forms in the universe capable of intelligent, rational thought. If we are not, it also stands to reason there is more than one civilization, more than two, more than three. Your argument is that it is unlikely that aliens possess the means to traverse and navigate the cosmos, but isn't this equally assumptive as saying they do not? You all seem to agree there may be other intelligent life, but what leads you to believe they would not place a priority on interstellar exploration as we have? That seems to me far more unlikely.

I would have to think exploration and the quest for knowledge is an inherent trait of any civilization. To believe there is intelligent life which does not want to visit us as badly as we wish to visit them is actually a far more gratuitous assertion than assuming they would visit if they could.

K

Any Billy Mier thoughts? He has a crazy amount of photos and videos and books. He went in the craft too and all this mayhem. Story going for like 30 years now...

Since Sagan was invoked, and pot smokers were also mentioned, I'd just point out that he made Snoop Dogg look like an abstainer--if we're throwing out the pot smokers' testimonies. http://azarius.net/news/306/Carl_Sagans ... _cannabis/

I think it's natural to ask "Why would anyone come here?" considering the energy costs and our relative un-importance (I'm not one of the "we're a special flower" people, but hell, I have no idea! Maybe we are special!) and it's natural for humans to try to figure out the motivations of others--even if or especially if they think differently than we do. We ascribe all manner of human thoughts feelings and motivations to our pets, when most of the time they're probably thinking whatever they're licking "tastes reel good." Or not. Perhaps elephants develop deep poetry in iambic pentameter.

We're all bound by own own biases and human preconceptions and also Western-centric way of thinking. Believe it or not, people really DO think differently in different cultures. I can barely understand why my Japanese inlaws do many things and they're baffled at what seems to be "common sense" to me. I finally get that I'll never "get" aliens because I can't even "get" humans! So, I'm saying you're very right to notice that it's kind of bullshit to make arguments about an alien's motivations, but that's what we humans do. And you point out many reasons that we spend the energy to do stupid or scientific things (either one)--I'm just pointing out that these are the embedded assumptions which one has to answer to in order to get to alien abductions. I'm not saying that that burden is insurmountable or hasn't already been surmounted--just that those are them thar hills.

One more quick point: there is actually one very special, tourist-worthy thing about our planet and this time on our planet: our little world and its moon are one of the very few places in the known universe in which the sole moon can block out the entirety of the sun perfectly in an eclipse. That wasn't true for most of our own planet's history--the sun size has changed and the distance to the moon has changed, and a few million years from now, the perfect eclipses won't be so perfect.

But huge single moons like ours---we're really a double planet--are somewhat rare, and ones the exact same apparent size as the sun are not common, and it is a temporary and transient phenomenon. http://nautil.us/blog/hunting-for-eclip ... -as-earths
http://earthsky.org/space/coincidence-t ... -same-size

These guys think it's because the moon is a construct: https://indianinthemachine.wordpress.co ... -universe/

Just more out-there thinking about why aliens might come here. We've got the best view in the universe!

Hey Ben.
I'm on the fence about Billy. I've been following his case for some time, but it almost seems too fantastical. Compelling nonethless.

K-rex......I wish I was as eloquent. Great post dooder. You said everything I wanted to say, but I just can't get the point across like you do.

cheers,
K- bronto

wow. wasn't expecting that post K...excellent job. I pretty much agree with everything you said.

specifically on this point..



I could not agree more (and actually stated so in my post) - I guess what I was trying to do was point out the logical fallacies that are inherent in claims of "visitations" - they are almost universally human-centric. And, therefore - ridiculous on their face.

In Michael Crichton's words:

"The idea of doing a story about contact with superior intelligence, a time-honored theme, is that it’s very hard, if you stop and think about it. Most writers evade the issue by making the alien recognizably human. It’s 9 feet tall, with spiky teeth, and it wants to eat you. Or it’s 3 feet tall and wants to hug you. In either case, it’s human-like.

What’s more likely about first contact with an extraterrestrial is that the alien wouldn’t look human-like at all. You might not even be able to see it or detect it. And its behavior would be absolutely inexplicable."

and...


+100 to that on both accounts...I was actually berated by my friends for saying the movie was better than the book (although most just hated the movie, so...whatever).

However, the book did bring up one very important thing the movie did not...the final message from the "aliens"....which I will discuss in another post (the wine is making me eyes sleepy...)

I truly enjoy this discussion and all points that have been brought up here...

heh. One of the main points of Asimov's "Foundation" and "Robot" universe series of novels and why Earth is unique in the evolution of advanced species...which I just finished re-reading. Good point.