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UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

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Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#11

Post by [deleted] »

dogma1138 wrote: post #9
ladzoppelin wrote: post #2

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_phenomenon What is crazy is that if the people in this movie are not lying, then every person on earth should be trying to solve this mystery. It would take crazy technology and time for anything to travel from another galaxy and be able to handle this environment without slowly studying and incorporating our DNA into theirs over a period of time.(60 years is nothing when you thin…

> (The difference between the intelligence of Albert Einstein and an ant is far less than Albert Einstein and some living thing which is able to make it to earth and live here undetected for 60/? years ) Eh? That’s a really weird way of looking at intelligence. By all accounts of you pluck baby from 10,000 BCE and raise it today it wouldn’t be any different than an average person today. Now one can argue that aliens…

[deleted]

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#12

Post by atweiden »

As Stephen Hawkings and Neil deGrasse Tyson have quipped, in Earth’s history, any time a more technologically advanced civilization has come across a less technologically advanced civilization, it has never ended well for the less technologically advanced civilization.

Any hypothetical which places a group of extraterrestrials capable of interstellar travel on Earth is fundamentally a catastrophe. It’s a lot like discussing an imminent asteroidal impact.

There is absolutely no reason to believe any human-extraterrestrial contact would end well for humanity. If anything, I’d expect it to be like playing a chess game against an AGI where the loser gets “terminated”.

Anyway, the basic human need to expediently file away all low likelihood ideas into the deep recesses of the brain, never to be examined; the proliferation of general con artistry rooted in financial desperation; and the immense social stigma attached to the pursuit keep people from contemplating the potential of extraterrestrial intelligence. None of those are an especially good reason.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#13

Post by aspaceman »

dogma1138 wrote: post #9
ladzoppelin wrote: post #2

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_phenomenon What is crazy is that if the people in this movie are not lying, then every person on earth should be trying to solve this mystery. It would take crazy technology and time for anything to travel from another galaxy and be able to handle this environment without slowly studying and incorporating our DNA into theirs over a period of time.(60 years is nothing when you thin…

> (The difference between the intelligence of Albert Einstein and an ant is far less than Albert Einstein and some living thing which is able to make it to earth and live here undetected for 60/? years ) Eh? That’s a really weird way of looking at intelligence. By all accounts of you pluck baby from 10,000 BCE and raise it today it wouldn’t be any different than an average person today. Now one can argue that aliens…

Yeah ancient folks were still smart. Engineers and scientists of all sorts still. I think people often give way too much weight to intelligence, and not enough to just tools.

Give a dude in 1000 a voltmeter and things get crazy.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#14

Post by noodles_nomore »

UFOs shouldn't be synonymous with alien intelligence. If anything evolved to travel through the universe, wouldn't it be logical to assume that it originated from a place where this ability was necessary for survival, e.g. the edge of a black hole? Such a life form could be quite different from our rock-bound existence. They might be closer to fish than to us.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#15

Post by zhdc1 »

atweiden wrote: post #12

As Stephen Hawkings and Neil deGrasse Tyson have quipped, in Earth’s history, any time a more technologically advanced civilization has come across a less technologically advanced civilization, it has never ended well for the less technologically advanced civilization. Any hypothetical which places a group of extraterrestrials capable of interstellar travel on Earth is fundamentally a catastrophe. It’s a lot like dis…

> ...any time a more technologically advanced civilization has come across a less technologically advanced civilization, it has never ended well for the less technologically advanced civilization.

This assumes resource competition, which isn't a guarantee. Colonialism was driven by the need for open markets, resources, and vanity satisfaction from a declining class of European elites.

It's very likely that we don't have anything that a technologically advanced civilization would actually need. In this case, the situation would be more akin to Amazon coexisting with brick and mortar coffee shops, and less like Netflix competing with video rental shops.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#16

Post by [deleted] »

atweiden wrote: post #12

As Stephen Hawkings and Neil deGrasse Tyson have quipped, in Earth’s history, any time a more technologically advanced civilization has come across a less technologically advanced civilization, it has never ended well for the less technologically advanced civilization. Any hypothetical which places a group of extraterrestrials capable of interstellar travel on Earth is fundamentally a catastrophe. It’s a lot like dis…

[deleted]

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#17

Post by Sharlin »

Pyramus wrote: post #5

The author's explanations of UFOs: (A) Honest mistakes (B) New Govt. Tech (C) Hoaxes & Lies (D) Aliens, Etc. It seems an obvious oversight to me that unexplained physical phenomena are missing, e.g. weather/atmospheric effects that are extremely rare and wait to be discovered. In terms of likelihood the complementary event is "we have discovered all existing weather/atmospheric effects" which has probability zero. Th…

Unknown or poorly understood physical phenomena are included in (A): "…and natural phenomena that we now poorly understand."

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#18

Post by smcl »

atweiden wrote: post #12

As Stephen Hawkings and Neil deGrasse Tyson have quipped, in Earth’s history, any time a more technologically advanced civilization has come across a less technologically advanced civilization, it has never ended well for the less technologically advanced civilization. Any hypothetical which places a group of extraterrestrials capable of interstellar travel on Earth is fundamentally a catastrophe. It’s a lot like dis…

I have one counter-example for you - North Sentinel Island. This is a small island in the Indian Ocean where people live who are completely isolated from the rest of the world and as such are probably the least technologically advanced civilization on earth. They're able to remain this way because it's generally been agreed that we should leave them alone (you can't go within 5 nm, of the island) but India does try to keep an eye on them from afar, presumably in case some catastrophic event occurs that would otherwise result in their demise.

So while I agree that the most likely outcome of a technologically more advanced alien civilization encountering us would be a pretty nasty one ... there's a remote possibility that we would instead be a curiousity to them and that they might treat us as we now treat the Sentinelese.

Note: there has been contact between the Sentinelese and the outside world, some peaceful (I found something about Indian expeditions in the early 90s) some a little less so (the British kidnapping six islanders). But it didn't result in their extinction or being colonized, and they remain isolated.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#19

Post by admissionsguy »

dogma1138 wrote: post #9
ladzoppelin wrote: post #2

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_phenomenon What is crazy is that if the people in this movie are not lying, then every person on earth should be trying to solve this mystery. It would take crazy technology and time for anything to travel from another galaxy and be able to handle this environment without slowly studying and incorporating our DNA into theirs over a period of time.(60 years is nothing when you thin…

> (The difference between the intelligence of Albert Einstein and an ant is far less than Albert Einstein and some living thing which is able to make it to earth and live here undetected for 60/? years ) Eh? That’s a really weird way of looking at intelligence. By all accounts of you pluck baby from 10,000 BCE and raise it today it wouldn’t be any different than an average person today. Now one can argue that aliens…

The aliens might also be less intelligent than humans, but more advanced technologically due to the lead time or just higher cooperativity. "Dumb aliens" could be a refreshing premise for a sci-fi story.. although it lies on the same continuum as any ant-like intelligent collective, so it's nothing new after all.

Re: UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

#20

Post by Fiahil »

ThalesX wrote: post #10

tl;dr; just a story of how I saw a UFO when I was young, nothing actionable... I feel somewhat bad for sharing life stories on a technical forum, but here it goes. As a young boy, 5-ish, I was sleeping with my mother and father in the room, and my grandmother rushes in, all pale, shouting something which directly translates to "Flying body! Flying body!". I distinctly remember having nightmares afterward with flying…

Like this ? https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/marvelcinematicuniverse/im...
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