Do you believe in aliens?

Originally posted by Bardock42
"If we apply the same ratio on Earth to the whole galaxy, we have 10 stars with at least one planet harboring intelligent life."

This is completely arbitrary though...

EDIT: Huh. Just found this: http://mic.com/articles/132055/scientists-figured-out-where-aliens-might-be-hiding-and-how-we-could-talk-to-them?utm_source=aol&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=partner#.aqPU2gjEa

Seems a whole party could be going on just outside our galaxy.

Originally posted by Mindship
Pretty much any *estimation* of intelligent alien life is going to have arbitrary elements, and my 2-cents worth does seemingly address the Fermi paradox.

EDIT: Huh. Just found this: http://mic.com/articles/132055/scientists-figured-out-where-aliens-might-be-hiding-and-how-we-could-talk-to-them?utm_source=aol&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=partner#.aqPU2gjEa

Seems a whole party could be going on just outside our galaxy.

Yeah, I totally agree. My gripe was mostly with using the same ratio of species to intelligent life on earth for the ratio of planets without life to planets with in the universe.

It's fine to use the number, but the explanation doesn't give it any more validity. It would be equally valid to say "My house has four steps at the entrance so I take the ratio of lifeless planets to planets with life as 4 to 1)

I don't think "believe" would be the correct term for my position. I think that, given the diversity of life on this planet and the extremes of environment in which life can exist here, it stands to reason that the conditions necessary to support life are also present elsewhere in the universe besides this planet, so there is a likelihood of life elsewhere as well, whether sentient or otherwise.

Originally posted by MF DELPH
I don't think "believe" would be the correct term for my position. I think that, given the diversity of life on this planet and the extremes of environment in which life can exist here, it stands to reason that the conditions necessary to support life are also present elsewhere in the universe besides this planet, so there is a likelihood of life elsewhere as well, whether sentient or otherwise.

Recently I stumbled upon this:

http://quake.stanford.edu/~bai/finetuning.pdf

Taeil Albert Ba from Stanford claims:

"Einstein once said,“What really interests me is whether God
had any choice in the creation of
the world. This is a fundamental question.” Compared to this
question, all other questions seem
trivial. Yes, God would have had many choices if He had wanted
to create a barren universe.
However, in order to create a universe where life is possible
, with the same set of natural laws as
ours, it seems that He had only limited choices. According to
recent findings, the values of physical
constants should have been fine-tuned to make the emergence of life in the universe possible."

It stands to reason that conditins seen of Earth are actually almost perfectly tuned to support life, and that the universe is much more harsh to life.

On the other hand, the sheer vastness of space and number of possibilities render it probable that there is/was an intelligent life somewhere.

I think it's funny to see God as some dude arranging physical laws as if he was changing a radio tunner.

Originally posted by Bentley
I think it's funny to see God as some dude arranging physical laws as if he was changing a radio tunner.

Originally posted by Bardock42
It would be equally valid to say "My house has four steps at the entrance so I take the ratio of lifeless planets to planets with life as 4 to 1)

Originally posted by Bentley
I think that any race intelligent enough to master space travel will figure out that mass suicide is better than the territorial effort that is continued existence. That's why we never meet them.

I think any race so advanced would have also master things like happiness and suffering, and would probably be very happy in their continued existence.

One thing I always found curious is some people indeed seem to feel aliens would be more enlightened then humans. That they'd see us and our wars and consider us barbaric. People have suggested they don't like the fact we have nuclear weapons because we just can't be trusted.

But for me I rather think that while biology might differ, there will always be certain traits ingrained in intelligent life. I think you'd always have things like war. I also think it's pretty much guaranteed that if a species can travel vast interstellar distances they most assuredly have weapons of mass destruction on a scale we can't even imagine.

Some sightings have even reported multiple crafts of different origin, with one kind apparently discharging some kind of energy weapon at the other. There was also a strange occurrence over Nuremberg, Germany in 1561:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1561_celestial_phenomenon_over_Nuremberg

Here is a picture in a paper from the time that was drawn by a witness, I'm not saying this is aliens I don't wtf it is:

Originally posted by Surtur
One thing I always found curious is some people indeed seem to feel aliens would be more enlightened then humans. That they'd see us and our wars and consider us barbaric. People have suggested they don't like the fact we have nuclear weapons because we just can't be trusted.

But for me I rather think that while biology might differ, there will always be certain traits ingrained in intelligent life. I think you'd always have things like war. I also think it's pretty much guaranteed that if a species can travel vast interstellar distances they most assuredly have weapons of mass destruction on a scale we can't even imagine.

Pretty much any intelligence is going to grow from a less-intelligent form in a competitive environment. Which means fighting.

Aliens won't necessarily still do war, but they'll know the concept.

I mean, if you look at our history, the levels of violence have varied... but it's also technology based. Small tribes can afford to nigh constantly be in conflict with each other because their fighting is so low-casualty. Big nations with machinegun, even with their larger sizes, are hurt more by wars. And once you have nukes... well, you spend a lot more effort making sure your conflicts don't reach that level.

I do think aliens may be more 'enlightened,' but not from being inherently so, that's probably balderdash. But simply from technology and necessity, much as it is with us.

And even if they're peaceful, they sure as heck will know *how* to throw down. Quite possibly with tools-originally-intended-for-non-weapon-purposes-but-that-make-nukes-look-weak.

[Some sightings have even reported multiple crafts of different origin, with one kind apparently discharging some kind of energy weapon at the other. There was also a strange occurrence over Nuremberg, Germany in 1561:

More specifically, people have reporting multiple *somethings*, without much concrete data on them.

No, much less intelligent life, if we even are to be considered that ourselves.

Alien sightings on Earth are a joke. Most of the time the people doing the seeing are people who are easily deceived or see what they want to see. So many sightings, the alien ships must not be advance enough to hide from Bobby and Tom. Make you wonder why they come to Earth if they don't want to be seen yet they know humans see them. Not very consistent aliens, we can easily debunk intelligent aliens visiting Earth.

I'm not going to consider aliens as part of the equation that is the universe. There is no evidence for them and no reason to believe they exist.

Originally posted by Bardock42
What's your preferred answer to the Fermi Paradox then?

The is no one answer. It is probably a combination of many different answers:

1. Interstellar travel is not really possible or feasible. This theory, while negative, posits that it is simply not possible to develop technology like FTL travel or worm hole travel.
2. All intelligent life will develop some sort of Prime Directive once they obtain interstellar travel. And the probability of not having a Prime Directive is much lower than having one. This is a version of the Zoo hypothesis and can possibly be contradicted. But this seems like a strong candidate because that's also how humans would treat nascent civilizations if we found them. We may be seen as "stone age" lifeforms to any species capable of reasonably fast interstellar travel. Meaning, we just aren't worthy enough to be contacted by intelligent life, just yet.
3. We have been contacted/visited by multiple species of intelligent life and some of this intelligent life is from the future and some from the past (meaning, we are not restricted by their physical origins: they may have temporal origins, as well). There seems to be a large amount of solid evidence for this and not just in recent history: in human civilization for quite some time.
4. Communications are not in the form of Radio signals (or similar EM communication methods). They use other, undetectable methods for communication.
5. Technological singularities occur very quickly once true AI is born. AI, once it develops, eventually starts to behave the same way no matter which civilization gives birth to it (it could actually be a yet to be discovered natural law of the universe implying that true AI and even intelligent life will always behave in a certain way, if given enough time and if that civilization passes a threshold of intelligence (barring any civilization destroying natural disasters)).
6. As technology advances for a civilization, they don't turn outward, they turn inward into virtualized universes. They can simulate the universe to such a degree as to create almost to very exact duplicate virtual universes in simulations which completely forgoes the need to travel to other locations.

Originally posted by Surtur
For me I think they exist and I believe there is a solid chance that some sightings of UFO's have been legit. The government itself when it studied thousands of cases admitted that there was a very small percentage that science couldn't explain.

This is my theory as well...government cover up, to some extent.

Originally posted by dadudemon
The is no one answer. It is probably a combination of many different answers:

1. Interstellar travel is not really possible or feasible. This theory, while negative, posits that it is simply not possible to develop technology like FTL travel or worm hole travel.
2. All intelligent life will develop some sort of Prime Directive once they obtain interstellar travel. And the probability of not having a Prime Directive is much lower than having one. This is a version of the Zoo hypothesis and can possibly be contradicted. But this seems like a strong candidate because that's also how humans would treat nascent civilizations if we found them. We may be seen as "stone age" lifeforms to any species capable of reasonably fast interstellar travel. Meaning, we just aren't worthy enough to be contacted by intelligent life, just yet.
3. We have been contacted/visited by multiple species of intelligent life and some of this intelligent life is from the future and some from the past (meaning, we are not restricted by their physical origins: they may have temporal origins, as well). There seems to be a large amount of solid evidence for this and not just in recent history: in human civilization for quite some time.
4. Communications are not in the form of Radio signals (or similar EM communication methods). They use other, undetectable methods for communication.
5. Technological singularities occur very quickly once true AI is born. AI, once it develops, eventually starts to behave the same way no matter which civilization gives birth to it (it could actually be a yet to be discovered natural law of the universe implying that true AI and even intelligent life will always behave in a certain way, if given enough time and if that civilization passes a threshold of intelligence (barring any civilization destroying natural disasters)).
6. As technology advances for a civilization, they don't turn outward, they turn inward into virtualized universes. They can simulate the universe to such a degree as to create almost to very exact duplicate virtual universes in simulations which completely forgoes the need to travel to other locations.

Again, which ones do you think are correct?

Originally posted by Bardock42
Again, which ones do you think are correct?

Originally posted by dadudemon
[Again]The is no one answer. It is probably a combination of many different answers:

But obviously some of these are contradictory. So I'm not asking what are possible answers to the Fermi Paradox (I knew those already), I am asking which ones you think is the most likely to be the answer.

Originally posted by Bardock42
But obviously some of these are contradictory. So I'm not asking what are possible answers to the Fermi Paradox (I knew those already), I am asking which ones you think is the most likely to be the answer.

I like all of them as being correct answers: even the ones that contradict. Obviously, that's why I listed them. Since there are clearly far more answers out there than just my list, you should have deduced that.

Cool, cool, so you think the contradictory ones are equally likely, that makes sense..

Originally posted by Van Hohenheim
No, much less intelligent life, if we even are to be considered that ourselves.

Alien sightings on Earth are a joke. Most of the time the people doing the seeing are people who are easily deceived or see what they want to see. So many sightings, the alien ships must not be advance enough to hide from Bobby and Tom. Make you wonder why they come to Earth if they don't want to be seen yet they know humans see them. Not very consistent aliens, we can easily debunk intelligent aliens visiting Earth.

I'm not going to consider aliens as part of the equation that is the universe. There is no evidence for them and no reason to believe they exist.

If it was just crazy people with zero credibility who made these sightings you would have a point, but that just isn't the case. Police officers, people who pilot commercial airplanes, military personnel, etc. There have been numerous sightings at military bases, especially ones that contained any kind of nuclear weapons. Sometimes it was random inexperienced soldiers seeing it. Other times it was experienced generals seeing these things. Also keep in mind reporting that kind of stuff in the military can potentially hurt your career. Or heck in any law enforcement agency as well. Actually, it can even hurt the careers of airline pilots if they actually report these things.

Also the fact people have been able to see the UFO's doesn't mean they aren't advanced. It could just mean the beings in the craft weren't concerned about a couple of people seeing them? Especially if they had any idea the way things were on this planet...they would know the people would be dismissed exactly like what you have just done.

So the problem is we have only been able to debunk about 98% of the sightings.

What if there were no planets other than Earth capable of sustaining life? The Earth is in the exact correct spot. Not too far from the Sun, and not too close. Space is sooo frigging vast that all it would take is a slight distance difference than our own from or to a star, and poof no life can exist. Fluke? Oh yeah and I don't believe in aliens unless they come from Earth.