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Have we already been visited by aliens?

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Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#101

Post by mrlala »

wait_a_minute wrote: post #39
mrbonner wrote: post #17

I just started to watch the 1993 series Star Trek new generation. The show has some interesting ideas regarding advanced civilizations vs the primitive ones. One of which is called the prime directive prohibiting any star fleet from intervening with the evolution of primitive people. In one of the episodes “who watches the watcher” the USS enterprise travels to planet Minkita 2 for a rescue mission and encounters a p…

That's one of the biggest problems I have with Star Trek. If we were literally gods by comparison to some fledgling species, the only ethical approach would be to elevate them and cure their diseases and advance their knowledge as quickly as humanly possible.

Aren't there some amazon tribes that have basically had no contact with the modern world? By your logic, we are under an ethical obligation to go in and "modernize them".

So, you have an example right in front of you.. it's no longer hypothetical.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#102

Post by GoblinSlayer »

wait_a_minute wrote: post #39
mrbonner wrote: post #17

I just started to watch the 1993 series Star Trek new generation. The show has some interesting ideas regarding advanced civilizations vs the primitive ones. One of which is called the prime directive prohibiting any star fleet from intervening with the evolution of primitive people. In one of the episodes “who watches the watcher” the USS enterprise travels to planet Minkita 2 for a rescue mission and encounters a p…

That's one of the biggest problems I have with Star Trek. If we were literally gods by comparison to some fledgling species, the only ethical approach would be to elevate them and cure their diseases and advance their knowledge as quickly as humanly possible.

Already done for indians. Impossibility of FTL travel just saved all life in universe from you.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#103

Post by y-c-o-m-b »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #35

> Loeb, though, explicitly rejects the Sagan standard—“It is not obvious to me why extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” he observes—and flips its logic on its head: “Extraordinary conservatism keeps us extraordinarily ignorant.” So long as there’s a chance that 1I/2017 U1 is an alien probe, we’d be fools not to pursue the idea. “If we acknowledge that ‘Oumuamua is plausibly of extraterrestrial-techno…

> If we assume that Oumuamua is an alien construct, what "new vistas of exploration for evidence and discovery" open up that we are not already pursuing?

I think what he's trying to convey is that thinking of this object under the assumption of "aliens" pushes us to develop experimental technology to prove it. This could then lead to future advances (whether intentional or accidental) potentially helping us detect alien technology where we otherwise wouldn't be able to had we not begun that pursuit. He's looking at it from a very long-term perspective.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#104

Post by sterlind »

xattt wrote: post #96
eloff wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very common in science. New theories are usually rejected and ridiculed until/if they develop enough evidence behind them to sway people. Some careers are destroyed. Some scientists are only vindicated posthumously. The process can take many decades. Scientists, like most humans, are not that open-minded and are subject to the same group-think blind spots. I think if we could get better at being open-minded a…

The most recent event that comes to my mind is the lead up to the discovery of H. pylori causing gastric ulcers.

Tectonic plates was another big one.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#105

Post by mtts »

gfxgirl wrote: post #90
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be a giant mismatch about what side is open minded. People who think its most likely aliens think it’s closed minded to assign that low probability, presumably because we’re this tiny corner of the universe. People who think it’s most likely not aliens Think it’s closed minded to assign everything else low probability, presumably because aliens are a tiny corner of everything else. Is it a misapplicati…

I thought the idea that there are gazillions of advanced aliens has been pretty much disproven by the fermi paradox. If there are gazillion, at least one out of all the diversity out there should have already colonized the entire galaxy and evidence should be plentiful.

According to the Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin the Fermi paradox is solved by the certainty that if an alien civilization announces its presence to the rest of the universe, one of the gazillions of other advanced alien civilizations is sure to destroy it. So they keep quiet.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#106

Post by eloff »

xattt wrote: post #96
eloff wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very common in science. New theories are usually rejected and ridiculed until/if they develop enough evidence behind them to sway people. Some careers are destroyed. Some scientists are only vindicated posthumously. The process can take many decades. Scientists, like most humans, are not that open-minded and are subject to the same group-think blind spots. I think if we could get better at being open-minded a…

The most recent event that comes to my mind is the lead up to the discovery of H. pylori causing gastric ulcers.

Yeah that's a good one.

Another is recommending trans-fat based margarine over butter. That was counter-productive health advice that took decades to reverse - even although the evidence it was based on was extremely flimsy.

Once the group-think machine gets going in a direction, it has a tremendous amount of inertia.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#107

Post by blueblisters »

cgriswald wrote: post #61
Xcelerate wrote: post #41

Tangential to the article, but I’m not sure why more isn’t mentioned about what I consider to be the most likely reason we haven’t been visited by aliens: they probably exist somewhere due to the sheer size of the universe, but the speed of light is indeed the fundamental limit to classical information transfer as our current understanding of physics predicts, and therefore we are simply too far away from any sort of…

The solution to distance isn’t energy; it’s time. Even at speeds much lower than the speed of light, a civilization could have spread across or explored the Milky Way in a few millions of years. These needn’t have been biological creatures. Von Neumann probes, “Genesis” machines, or just flinging rocks with sensors on them to tour the stars would do the trick.

What would motivate a civilization to undertake such an experiment? A probe a 50,000 light years away would take 50,000 years to send back any meaningful information. Unless alien life-spans are significantly longer than humans, I would think this would probably not be funded by their science department.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#108

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

gfxgirl wrote: post #90
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be a giant mismatch about what side is open minded. People who think its most likely aliens think it’s closed minded to assign that low probability, presumably because we’re this tiny corner of the universe. People who think it’s most likely not aliens Think it’s closed minded to assign everything else low probability, presumably because aliens are a tiny corner of everything else. Is it a misapplicati…

I thought the idea that there are gazillions of advanced aliens has been pretty much disproven by the fermi paradox. If there are gazillion, at least one out of all the diversity out there should have already colonized the entire galaxy and evidence should be plentiful.

There’s a nice analysis of the Fermi paradox out there somewhere that takes into account uncertainties in each of the parameters. As you multiply them together, the uncertainties compound each other. The end result is a big old who knows, rather than a paradox. Our observations are compatible with a really wide variety of realities, many of which include lots of aliens and many of which don’t.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#109

Post by GoblinSlayer »

mrbonner wrote: post #17

I just started to watch the 1993 series Star Trek new generation. The show has some interesting ideas regarding advanced civilizations vs the primitive ones. One of which is called the prime directive prohibiting any star fleet from intervening with the evolution of primitive people. In one of the episodes “who watches the watcher” the USS enterprise travels to planet Minkita 2 for a rescue mission and encounters a p…

Don't people in Star Trek have our culture? But our culture is that of a primitive civilization, which means they are primitive too.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#110

Post by wait_a_minute »

rmah wrote: post #85
cbozeman wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a race of ultra-advanced aliens were to give us technology that keeps us not only alive indefinitely, but robust and healthy, without disease. Just that one piece of technology. Not even weird weapons like antimatter bombs, etc. Do you think humanity would suddenly come together in understanding and peace to explore the stars and advance ourselves... or do you think people who already have enormous wealth and…

Well no, but people would be robust and healthy, without disease. And IMO, that's a positive even if all our other failings are still there.

And it would certainly be an improved platform for us to build upon and advance even more.
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