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Aliens and the Enlightenment

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Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#51

Post by krapp »

orourke wrote: post #49

What’s most fascinating to me is the certainly with which they believed that other worlds were inhabited. Horace Walpole, for example, even abandoning his faith over the theological difficulties it presented. Hundreds of years later, however, we’re left with the Fermi Paradox.

The Fermi Paradox doesn't demonstrate that other worlds aren't inhabited, just that our assumptions about infinite exponential growth and resource consumption and the inevitability of interstellar civilizations emerging as a function of intelligent life may not apply.

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#52

Post by krapp »

hellectronic wrote: post #46
datadeft wrote: post #7

I think the Sumerian clay tablets (that is the bible is partially based of) reveal a lot more about the origins of human civilizations.

The Bible is hardly based on the clay tables. Genesis, the first book of Moses, tells the story of the flood, which the Sumerian refer to as Gilgamesh.

AFAIK the Epic of Gilgamesh predates the Bible by thousands of years.

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#53

Post by itsanaccount »

the_af wrote: post #32
itsanaccount wrote: post #30

I wonder how much articles like this are popping up as the hive mind of humanity becomes aware of the phenomenon that exceeds our physics watching us as years of government suppression finally cracks. Watching Lue Elizondo going on the daily show with his clinical understatement being met by the interviewer yelling "you're talking about fucking aliens man!" Its been wild to me to see people start to grapple with the…

Almost all (all?) ideas in the article are philosophical arguments from Enlightenment thinkers. I wouldn't call this "evidence" for the existence or absence of aliens. What evidence is there of aliens that people are starting to grapple with?

Sticking strictly to easily verifiable events I would point to this:

https://apnews.com/article/ufos-uaps-congress-whistleblower-...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/former-intel-official-o...

https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/navy-officer-support...

https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sch...

The problem here is that rebuttals like this: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/analysis-whistleblower...

>>> As a scientist, I’m trained to be skeptical, and I know that most UFO sightings have mundane explanations. Visual evidence is also notoriously difficult to interpret, and even the dramatic Navy videos have been debunked.

And that's allowed to convince people this is all nonsense, there's no evidence, just hearsay. The problem is the two pilots who went before congress to testify about the 2004 Nimitz videos released to the NYT in 2017 said they were dealing with these contacts for 2 weeks. A US carrier battle group with full adversarial radar (AN/SPY-1) was tracking an anonymous highspeed phenomena during exercises but all that was ever released were a pair of gun camera videos.

Wheres the radar data?

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#54

Post by the_af »

itsanaccount wrote: post #53
the_af wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all (all?) ideas in the article are philosophical arguments from Enlightenment thinkers. I wouldn't call this "evidence" for the existence or absence of aliens. What evidence is there of aliens that people are starting to grapple with?

Sticking strictly to easily verifiable events I would point to this: https://apnews.com/article/ufos-uaps-congress-whistleblower-... https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/former-intel-official-o... https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/navy-officer-support... https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sch... The problem here is that rebuttals like this: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/analysis-wh…

I'm sorry, I don't find that compelling. I assumed there was tons of evidence from your initial comment, when in fact it's mostly the controversial declaration of a single person (David Grusch) which amounts to... hearsay and evidence he cannot produce.

You said:

> Its been wild to me to see people start to grapple with the evidence

But there is no evidence. There is a single person claiming there is evidence but that it's suppressed and he cannot provide it, and that "the government" has killed to suppress this evidence.

I'm sorry... this has all the hallmarks of a (bad) conspiracy theory.

> Wheres the radar data?

Before we jump to conclusions about aliens, let's remember that "UFO" doesn't mean extraterrestrial intelligence, and also, that we must do an effort to explain any phenomenon in ordinary terms before reaching for the extraordinary of ETs visiting our planet.

Even "I cannot explain this particular phenomenon" is not a free pass for ETs. "Secret weapons program" is still more likely, and that's just one possible explanation.

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#55

Post by hellectronic »

krapp wrote: post #52
hellectronic wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bible is hardly based on the clay tables. Genesis, the first book of Moses, tells the story of the flood, which the Sumerian refer to as Gilgamesh.

AFAIK the Epic of Gilgamesh predates the Bible by thousands of years.

yes it's an old story

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#56

Post by snakeyjake »

orourke wrote: post #49

What’s most fascinating to me is the certainly with which they believed that other worlds were inhabited. Horace Walpole, for example, even abandoning his faith over the theological difficulties it presented. Hundreds of years later, however, we’re left with the Fermi Paradox.

>Hundreds of years later, however, we’re left with the Fermi Paradox.

The only paradox about the Fermi Paradox is why so many people who claim to be educated take it seriously.

Faster-than-light travel is impossible.

There aren't galaxy-spanning civilizations because creating a galaxy-spanning civilization is impossible. You cannot have a civilization where it takes 106,000 years for a message to traverse it.

If there are multi-stellar civilizations it is impossible to detect them at present. If humans lived on an earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, we would not be able to detect them at all, even with every single radio telescope on earth acting as a giant interferometer.

I assert that any intelligence that has mastered the mass-energy equivalence skills needed for interstellar travel (again, at slow-ass speeds) no longer cares about planets or biological life anyways. They would park off the ends of masses that are radiating energy and harvest it to turn into endless expanses of fantastical constructions that make planets look like jokes.

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#57

Post by itsanaccount »

the_af wrote: post #54
itsanaccount wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sticking strictly to easily verifiable events I would point to this: https://apnews.com/article/ufos-uaps-congress-whistleblower-... https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/former-intel-official-o... https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/navy-officer-support... https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sch... The problem here is that rebuttals like this: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/analysis-wh…

I'm sorry, I don't find that compelling. I assumed there was tons of evidence from your initial comment, when in fact it's mostly the controversial declaration of a single person (David Grusch) which amounts to... hearsay and evidence he cannot produce. You said: > Its been wild to me to see people start to grapple with the evidence But there is no evidence. There is a single person claiming there is evidence but tha…

Thank you for your long explanation. Without your elucidating comments, I never could have imagined that multiple (its hardly a single person or you didn't bother to look at the very short set of links) accounts of trans-medium high acceleration UAPs didn't directly mean extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Thank you for your quick beacon of reason vs my wild speculation while reading accounts of the last 5 years. I'm glad we can easily offhandedly establish this sounds like a conspiracy.

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#58

Post by datadeft »

hellectronic wrote: post #46
datadeft wrote: post #7

I think the Sumerian clay tablets (that is the bible is partially based of) reveal a lot more about the origins of human civilizations.

The Bible is hardly based on the clay tables. Genesis, the first book of Moses, tells the story of the flood, which the Sumerian refer to as Gilgamesh.

I think there is more than just the Gilgamesh story. Don't the clay tablets mention that the first man was created by a god?

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/hxqchw/co...

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#59

Post by the_af »

itsanaccount wrote: post #57
the_af wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, I don't find that compelling. I assumed there was tons of evidence from your initial comment, when in fact it's mostly the controversial declaration of a single person (David Grusch) which amounts to... hearsay and evidence he cannot produce. You said: > Its been wild to me to see people start to grapple with the evidence But there is no evidence. There is a single person claiming there is evidence but tha…

Thank you for your long explanation. Without your elucidating comments, I never could have imagined that multiple (its hardly a single person or you didn't bother to look at the very short set of links) accounts of trans-medium high acceleration UAPs didn't directly mean extra-terrestrial intelligence. Thank you for your quick beacon of reason vs my wild speculation while reading accounts of the last 5 years. I'm gla…

I'm sorry, but I didn't explain anything except that your links are unconvincing and can be traced back to a single person, or people discussing what this single person said, and not a single shred of evidence.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, of the sort you first claimed people are coming to terms with.

Unfortunately, there's nothing of that sort in any of your links.

Re: Aliens and the Enlightenment

#60

Post by robinzfc »

itsanaccount wrote: post #53
the_af wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all (all?) ideas in the article are philosophical arguments from Enlightenment thinkers. I wouldn't call this "evidence" for the existence or absence of aliens. What evidence is there of aliens that people are starting to grapple with?

Sticking strictly to easily verifiable events I would point to this: https://apnews.com/article/ufos-uaps-congress-whistleblower-... https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/former-intel-official-o... https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/navy-officer-support... https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sch... The problem here is that rebuttals like this: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/analysis-wh…

According to Christopher Mellon the radar data and deck logs from USS Nimitz and Princeton from the time of 2004 incident are "missing", see https://youtu.be/UdIhhYkMG2Y?t=1330 .
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