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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

#41

Post by adrianN »

zhdc1 wrote: post #15
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 h…

We have a planet that is quite suitable for carbon based life forms. Those might be worth something to interstellar intelligences.

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

#42

Post by antibuddy »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #37
pacman2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an argument that the mind of people changed a few thousand years ago, part as a cultural phenomenon, part as a genetic selection process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in... (the genetic selection process is mentioned in the book, the wiki abstract puts more focus on a cultural development)

That's a fascinating theory, but also quite a wild claim which seems to be hard to falsify ? (And the link with the matter at hand is even more tenuous, since it's only partially genetic.) It's a bit like if you were saying that you couldn't teach a prehistoric child to read (but even more exaggerated) ?

Everything so far ago is at least hard to prove/falsify, however this is true either way. I think every possible scenario (prehistorics being of more, less or equal potential) is at least plausible. At least it's easy to come up with arguments for each of these cases (and a hidden one being of different brain specialization).

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

#43

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

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 think you're saying "how do we know that aliens aren't already here? Because we are still here".

If so, good point.

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

#44

Post by KSteffensen »

mbnull wrote: post #32
DrBazza wrote: post #7

UFOs exist. Alien spaceships do not. Occam's Razor. Also, having the technology to fly light years through interstellar space, means that you should surely be able to construct a craft that doesn't crash on Earth (Roswell), or waste your time flying for years to dip into the atmosphere, do a little light show and fly off, or harassing a farmer in the middle of nowhere vs landing in Central Park. The gimbal video and…

Occam's Razor postulates that the simple solution is often the right one. That does not mean it's always so. For the longest time Occam's Razor would have favored a flat earth, before we knew better. Alien intelligence would also be alien enough if it wasn't interstellar. Interplanetary, inter-dimensional or subterranean would be alien by my standard, too. The Videos might have been plausibly explained, but i would a…

Medieval people did not think the Earth was flat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth

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

#45

Post by yosito »

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…

It really depends if the two civilizations are competing for resources. In that case, the less advanced civilization is obviously going to have a bad time. There were cases in human history where human civilizations connected for exploration, trade and research and weren't competing for resources. Not all of those ended badly. Many of those that did end badly, ended badly because of disease. In the case of alien life, the risk of communicable disease would likely be low since any alien life would probably be a significantly different species that microbes would have a hard time jumping between.

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

#46

Post by devoutsalsa »

admissionsguy wrote: post #19
dogma1138 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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.

Isaac Arthur made a video titled “Stupid Aliens”:

https://youtu.be/yXWe8g0zziw

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

#47

Post by [deleted] »

suby wrote: post #29
admissionsguy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a cool idea. I'd bet that it's unlikely for a sufficiently intelligent species (say one capable of creating machines to cross interstellar distances) to stay dumb, though. Humanity is fast approaching the point where we can edit our genes or otherwise select for intelligence. Even the idea of creating non-human super intelligent agents of some sort is arguably within reach over the course of the next few hundred…

[deleted]

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

#48

Post by mbnull »

KSteffensen wrote: post #44
mbnull wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Occam's Razor postulates that the simple solution is often the right one. That does not mean it's always so. For the longest time Occam's Razor would have favored a flat earth, before we knew better. Alien intelligence would also be alien enough if it wasn't interstellar. Interplanetary, inter-dimensional or subterranean would be alien by my standard, too. The Videos might have been plausibly explained, but i would a…

Medieval people did not think the Earth was flat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth

Medieval people certainly believed that. The linked wikipedia page does not say otherwise. It states that "European scholars and educated people during the Middle Ages believed the Earth to be flat". Most people in Medieval times were not scholars or educated. Furthermore I haven't even said anything about Medieval times.

There are other examples like rocks falling from the sky or the earth- or solar-centric cosmos, if you prefer.

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

#49

Post by cnity »

DrBazza wrote: post #7

UFOs exist. Alien spaceships do not. Occam's Razor. Also, having the technology to fly light years through interstellar space, means that you should surely be able to construct a craft that doesn't crash on Earth (Roswell), or waste your time flying for years to dip into the atmosphere, do a little light show and fly off, or harassing a farmer in the middle of nowhere vs landing in Central Park. The gimbal video and…

Maybe not the silver flying saucers claimed to have been seen hovering over barns in the mid-west, but I recommend reading Extraterrestrial for a fascinating argument for Oumuamua's likelihood in being an extraterrestrial object.

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

#50

Post by simion314 »

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…

What is paradoxical is that decades ago we had many pcitures in newspapers with UFOs or Jesus/Mary apparitions (and here in Romania there were newspaper focused only on paranormal stories vampires,ghosts, witches etc) but today when is easy to create proofs with your phone the number of this encounters decreased instead of increasing.

Btw my father has a similar story to tell (but with a small ball of light that moved around the home and garden) so IMO there are some natural phenomena that we do not understand well and manifest as spherical lights,

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