80%

I think it also begs the question, "If there is 'intelligent' alien life out there then do we really want to make contact with it?"

It might be fearful as we humans, I presume, would be fearful if alien life landed here to make contact. The general human world would be in chaos and uproar if crass scientific films became reality, I think. That in itself would generate more fear with the aliens and, if they had greater technology than us could just be the end of humanity as we know it.

Do we really want to make contact?

Maybe aliens are aware of us, but they don't want to make contact?

I think it also begs the question, "If there is 'intelligent' alien life out there then do we really want to make contact with it?"

They might be fearful as we humans, I presume, would be fearful if alien life landed here to make contact. The general human world would be in chaos and uproar if crass scientific films became reality, I think. That in itself would generate more fear with the aliens and, if they had greater technology than us, that could just be the end of humanity as we know it.

Do we really want to make contact?

Maybe aliens are aware of us, but they don't want to make contact?

It could be that they just dont want to be seen, they could be studying us as some kind of isolated experiment. That statement is admittedly speculative, but it makes sense to me that eventually, given enough time, we too will arrive at a level of technology where we think we have the "seed" of existence. It will only be natural to "plant it" and see what "grows". At that time we will become "alien" to that universe and the whole cycle repeats. Its also admittedly paradoxical.

Originally posted by joe shmo
It could be that they just dont want to be seen, they could be studying us as some kind of isolated experiment. That statement is admittedly speculative, but it makes sense to me that eventually, given enough time, we too will arrive at a level of technology where we think we have the "seed" of existence. It will only be natural to "plant it" and see what ...[text shortened]... "alien" to that universe and the whole cycle repeats. Its also admittedly paradoxical.

On that basis, maybe they are from a point, singular, from another universe prior to this one, and indeed they are the generalisation of a God that created man having put the necessary elements together necessary, in order to watch us 'evolve'. 😀

Originally posted by mikelom
On that basis, maybe they are from a point, singular, from another universe prior to this one, and indeed they are the generalisation of a God that created man having put the necessary elements together necessary, in order to watch us 'evolve'. 😀

yeah, its kind of a those who are created from the model, become the creator of the model, so they are simultainiously the created and the creator...Its looks like a russian nested doll paradox, intertwined with a duality paradox.

It could be that the relative intellect between creators, and created is constant. That is to say that the creator of this universe is no more intellectual than the creator of the next universe, even though one universe is a subuniverse of the other.

Originally posted by Shallow Blue
I would dispute this. Exactly because the universe is so vast, and we've seen so little of it, and only a single planet up close - and that planet seems to be exceptional - that the chance of us being alone in the universe are neither zero, nor one, nor anything in between, but completely unknowable.

I generally agree with you that we cannot genuinely assign a probability to the existence of life elsewhere. However, I disagree that our planet is exceptional with regards to life. With regards to complex life as we know it, maybe, but not life in general.

Originally posted by joe shmo
It could be that they just dont want to be seen, they could be studying us as some kind of isolated experiment. That statement is admittedly speculative, but it makes sense to me that eventually, given enough time, we too will arrive at a level of technology where we think we have the "seed" of existence. It will only be natural to "plant it" and see what ...[text shortened]... "alien" to that universe and the whole cycle repeats. Its also admittedly paradoxical.

Why would they bother staying hidden? It's not like people try not to be detected when they study ants or something.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Why would they bother staying hidden? It's not like people try not to be detected when they study ants or something.

Yeah, that seem like a real stretch to me. And it seems to miss the point.

Intelligent alien life is either:

A) probable and frequently occurring.
B) Improbable and we're a freak occurrence, or unique product of intelligent design, and alone.

If intelligent aliens are probable, then the size of the galaxy should bear out that they're common in the milky way.

If there are many intelligent aliens in the galaxy, all with different paths of evolution and varying motives, it seems weird to conclude they'd ALL try to hide.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Why would they bother staying hidden? It's not like people try not to be detected when they study ants or something.

Bad example, people DO try to stay hidden when trying to observe plenty of wildlife
(staying in hides for example) so as not to disturb or frighten off the wildlife they are
trying to study.

It's safe to assume that if we became aware of the presence of aliens studying us it
would have a dramatic impact on our behaviour.
Thus anyone wanting to study us is likely to want to keep their presence secret so that
They can observe us behaving 'naturally' without interference.


People often say things like the difference between us and them would be the same (or
greater) as between us and ants, but that doesn't make ants a good analogy for us.

A better way of looking at it might be this...

The technological development from the 'beginning of our species' to the beginning of the
20th century is roughly the same as the development of technology during the 20th century
(in other words our total sum of knowledge and technological capability roughly doubled
between 1900 CE and 2000 CE).
However if you were to take an early human who has not yet moved out of africa, doesn't
really have a concept of clothes, and who's greatest technology is a stone hand axe, and
bring them to 1900 they would be completely and totally out of their depth, struggling to
comprehend the machines around them or identify with these pale people who cover themselves
in exotic fabrics and speak in strange and incredibly complex tongues....
Everything would appear to them to work by magic, and they would likely think they were in a
land of gods/demons/magicians.

However if you were to bring someone from 1900 to 2000 then while they would be astonished
at out technological progress, (and likely scandalised to boot) they would recognise it as technological
progress and not magic. Upon seeing an aeroplane they would likely be able to tell it was a machine
crewed and populated by people and not some great roaring monster.


The two people were moved an equal distance in terms of technology and knowledge gain.
However the ability to comprehend the world they have been brought to is not the same.

While aliens might* be technologically vastly more advanced and think and act in ways we can't even
imagine. We do have concepts of aliens and technology and underlying knowledge of physics and the universe
to use as a starting point, which the ants we observe do not have the capacity for.


*I say might because there does exist the possibility that technology eventually plateaus, that there is a limit
at which you either know effectively everything (in terms of underlying science) or beyond which further knowledge
is for some reason impossible to attain. If that is the case then depending on how far from that limit we are then
no matter how old the aliens are and how long they have existed their technology might not be to advanced for
us to identify it as technology or comprehend it.

Originally posted by WoodPush
Yeah, that seem like a real stretch to me. And it seems to miss the point.

Intelligent alien life is either:

A) probable and frequently occurring.
B) Improbable and we're a freak occurrence, or unique product of intelligent design, and alone.

If intelligent aliens are probable, then the size of the galaxy should bear out that they're common ...[text shortened]... nt paths of evolution and varying motives, it seems weird to conclude they'd ALL try to hide.

They wouldn't necessarily all need to hide, just the local ones need consider us worth
studying and keep us shielded from the rest of the galaxies inhabitants.

Also depending on the technology constraints, there are plausible scenarios where only
part's of the galaxy are inhabited, with sometimes large areas uninhabited.

Originally posted by googlefudge
They wouldn't necessarily all need to hide, just the local ones need consider us worth
studying and keep us shielded from the rest of the galaxies inhabitants.

Also depending on the technology constraints, there are plausible scenarios where only
part's of the galaxy are inhabited, with sometimes large areas uninhabited.

Then again it could easily just be a matter of one galaxy, one intelligent life form and we would in that case have to go to the Magellanic clouds or Andromeda to find another intelligent life form.

Another more likely possibility is the lifespan of a civilization, suppose a typical lifespan of an advanced civilization, for whatever reason, war, evolving into beings of light, whatever, after ten thousand years they are done. So that would be like taking a wavefront of light and having a 10,000 year wide slice of it going through the galaxy. The galaxy is over 100,000 light years across. So in that case a 10,000 ly wavefront could come and go 10 times and none of the races would have had the signals in their detectors.

There would be no signal to detect because the active lifeforms with advanced detectors would see no signal, having passed by them thousands of years in their past. If that is the case, we would be doomed trying to find another advanced civilization.

If we got some kind of faster than light space drive we may find evidence of past dead cultures but we may in fact be the only ones active in our galaxy at this point in time.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I generally agree with you that we cannot genuinely assign a probability to the existence of life elsewhere. However, I disagree that our planet is exceptional with regards to life. With regards to complex life as we know it, maybe, but not life in general.

The Earth is completely exceptional as far as we have seen.

We have seen very little.


If we want to be serious about it, we have to acknowledge both sides of the problem.

Richard

Originally posted by Shallow Blue
The Earth is completely exceptional as far as we have seen.

We have seen very little.


If we want to be serious about it, we have to acknowledge both sides of the problem.

Richard

There is a principle in science that you never assume yourself to be in a privileged location.

Ie not the centre of the solar system, no the centre of the universe, not in a special part of
the universe that has different rules. ect ect.

Apart from the fact that all the evidence suggests that actually this is a rather humdrum and ordinary
part of the galaxy (let alone universe) from a standing start assuming that this planet is exceptional
is contrary to scientific principles.

To claim that earth is extraordinary you need evidence to back it up.
What evidence we do have points the other way.

Originally posted by mikelom
I think it also begs the question, "If there is 'intelligent' alien life out there then do we really want to make contact with it?"

They might be fearful as we humans, I presume, would be fearful if alien life landed here to make contact. The general human world would be in chaos and uproar if crass scientific films became reality, I think. That in itself ...[text shortened]... ant to make contact?

Maybe aliens are aware of us, but they don't want to make contact?

It is a universal law amongst higher intelligences NOT to interfere with natural evolution until that evolution reaches a certain point.

I believe this law has been broken but by by and large it is the norm.

It is precisely because of those fear mongering movies and the fear between humans (let alone of whole other races) that they feel they would cause more problems to make contact.
(They also dont want to come to "baby-sit" us. They expect us to evolve to a certain point as a species on our own)
I am informed that this will soon change.

Originally posted by googlefudge
To claim that earth is extraordinary you need evidence to back it up.
What evidence we do have points the other way.

We've looked at the electromagnetic output from thousands of sources - millions, if you count SETI@Home. Not one of them showed the kind of pattern you would expect from an intelligent broadcast. At least, not one of them showed the kind of pattern you would get from our kind of intelligence. On that count, at least, we are exceptional.
Now, of course there could be many reasons why we don't see anyone else emitting the kind of radio trash we are (wrong time, wrong place, wrong kind of communication, completely different idea about what constitutes a "signal"... and I'm sure the pros can think up dozens more). Nevertheless, our planet seems to be completely average in almost all respects, and still manages to be the only radio-broadcasting planet we can find.
It basically boils down to this. We've found a lot of stars like ours. We've even found planets like ours. We've never found any indication that there is life there, or anywhere. There's life here. That's exceptional, right there.

Richard