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Have we already been visited by aliens?

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Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#191

Post by bsder »

lo_fye wrote: post #158

Many people have seen them so near that there's no possible way it's a misidentification. For example, standing in the same room, indoors, in their homes... or outside in groups with many other corroborating witnesses (Google "Ariel School Zimbabwe mass sighting"). They're not all lying. In fact, if even just 1 is true, then yes we are being visited by aliens.

The problem is that in the past you had corroborating evidence for gods, demons, angels, witches, etc. until "aliens" became the socially acceptable "unexplained thing."

If those "interpretations" weren't correct, there is very little evidence that "aliens" is a correct interpretation and that future generations won't have a different one.

In addition, the one thing that we now know scientifically is that "first hand observation" is notoriously unreliable.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#192

Post by sli »

anamexis wrote: post #182
Joeri wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, but my sister always says I’m not open-minded because I won’t read all her antivaxer info. If we give all ideas equal credence, better ideas will not win out.

I think antivax claims have been given equal credence, they've just been found false.

A better example is that equal time is frequently given to both sides of the climate change debate despite the actually numbers showing that calling it a "debate" is journalistic laziness. Equal credence would mean the deniers only get about 3% of the allotted time to make their crackpot case, because that's the closest they come to being a "side" in this non-debate against the other 93% that also have 100% of the data and research.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#193

Post by johnisgood »

jwally wrote: post #178
johnisgood wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. Even PubMed is ridden with ridiculous stuff. PubMed! To give you an example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3068791/ Thankfully we can do our own research, see by whom it has been cited, in what journal it has been published, and so forth. You can easily tell that this is quite an unimportant and incredible one. Of course you could tell it yourself after having read it that it is nonsense.

Are there any guides / heuristics on how a layperson can evaluate technical literature? For example my mother-in-law is starting to micro-dose lithium and cited this article as evidence: https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2020/12/lithium-and-a... Which cites 19 medical journals. The website itself reeks of bullshit, but how can I tell if the journals it cites are valid or just woo?

I am currently working on redesigning the entire academic publishing system which is not an easy task and since because I am alone, it may take an entire lifetime of mine, and it is on hold sadly. I wish someone could take it up with me. I was "squatting" on a domain which is about to expire because I cannot even pay for it. :/ I have no time to work on the design itself, let alone the implementation, because I have to survive on shitty money. I did work on the design quite a lot a year ago when I could afford it, but it has been a while. It would be quite easy to filter out nonsensical articles the way it would work in my case, among other features. I cannot really talk about it on here.

That said, there are lots of "may" in the article. As to why someone is telling you this, well, in this case it is to sell you their products. She could consult a doctor about it. What form is the lithium in? How much of the product (which they sell) is actual lithium? Should look at the studies mentioned where they say "may", so that you would actually have something to base your beliefs on, because "may" is not a claim of "will", and "may" is not "evidence", it is just speculation; they are merchants of hope. The article also does not go very in depth with the comparisons of dose. How much lithium do people get daily and from which sources? Might it turn out that micro-dosing is actually a mere 1/10th of what people already get normally in a day? Keep also in mind, that some regions have lithium in their tap water already. Plus, people believe the news too, because it sounds believable, but this is not about technical literature alone. People do need to get educated about how to critically comb articles.

By the way: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11838882/

> Lithium is commonly found in drinking water and various foods, with dietary intake estimated at 0.6 to 3.1 milligrams per day in the United States in 1985. Lithium supplements are sold as pills, liquid capsules, solutions, and syrups of lithium orotate or lithium aspartate.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#194

Post by sli »

gfodor wrote: post #170
gfxgirl wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Paradoxes are paradoxes precisely because they fail to disprove two contradictory claims. For the Fermi paradox, the paradox is that the immensity of the universe leading to life seems obvious, yet the complete absence of that life around us seems to show it's not there. So it disproves nothing, but actually highlights the difficulty of disproving either claim given the other.

I never much liked this being called a paradox since it has so many built in assumptions, most of them centered around any given, theoretical alien civilization resembling a human civilization in any way. It's a limitation of what we know for sure, since there's certainly no rule that civilization elsewhere should resemble civilization on Earth. That's an acceptable limitation, it's difficult to notice things you don't know you should notice, but it's a limitation nonetheless.

Of course, it's also possible for civilizations to be so far away that we will like never detect them due to the inverse square law. They could even be in parts of the universe we can't observe.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#195

Post by jwally »

deeeeplearning wrote: post #183
jwally wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any guides / heuristics on how a layperson can evaluate technical literature? For example my mother-in-law is starting to micro-dose lithium and cited this article as evidence: https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2020/12/lithium-and-a... Which cites 19 medical journals. The website itself reeks of bullshit, but how can I tell if the journals it cites are valid or just woo?

Looking at the Impact Factor of a Journal can help but it's not perfect. For example Nature and Science, generally considered the most prestigious journals in the world, have impact factors around 1000 and smaller but still quality niche Physics journals might be in the low hundreds. The bottom line is that as a Layperson it would be extremely difficult to vet the validity of any given paper let alone whole journals.…

Bookmarking that. Thank you!

I think I was starting to draw that conclusion.

If a claim is in the Lancet, NEMJ, Nature, etc; its probably pretty credible.

If a claim is in another journal; it shouldn't have much bearing on my decision (positive or negative) since I don't have the expertise to evaluate it.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#196

Post by jwally »

johnisgood wrote: post #193
jwally wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any guides / heuristics on how a layperson can evaluate technical literature? For example my mother-in-law is starting to micro-dose lithium and cited this article as evidence: https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2020/12/lithium-and-a... Which cites 19 medical journals. The website itself reeks of bullshit, but how can I tell if the journals it cites are valid or just woo?

I am currently working on redesigning the entire academic publishing system which is not an easy task and since because I am alone, it may take an entire lifetime of mine, and it is on hold sadly. I wish someone could take it up with me. I was "squatting" on a domain which is about to expire because I cannot even pay for it. :/ I have no time to work on the design itself, let alone the implementation, because I have…

This is great info. Thanks for this.

With sites like this, it feels like the citations are a form of DDOS or EULA boilerplating where they could demand naming rights to your first born because they know you won't read it.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#198

Post by flukus »

bierjunge wrote: post #31
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…

S03E04 for everybody who want's to watch it. Star Trek and especially TNG is one of the best SciFi series made. The technological point of view is very interesting, but the philosophical issues are even more intriguing and up to date.

It's a shame modern Trek has pretty much abandoned these plots. Trek at it's best is a series of sci-fi novellas, like black mirror with a recurring cast, not the action adventure it's become. Even Picard which was great only really had one concept like this for the entire series arc.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#199

Post by cpuguy83 »

7thaccount wrote: post #166
cpuguy83 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ideals behind the Prime Directive were from Vulcan influence. The theory behind it is they tried to do exactly that and it led to disaster in every case.

A lot of scifi shows have been influenced by this. In Stargate SG-1 (spoilers): The Tollan civilization were humans taken from earth millennia ago that developed science faster than us and ended up being one of the most advanced races in the galaxy. They gave a source of limitless energy to more primitive aliens on a nearby planet in their solar system (think Mars versus Earth) and those aliens weaponized it and blew…

Just watched that one a few days ago!

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#200

Post by asdff »

jwally wrote: post #178
johnisgood wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. Even PubMed is ridden with ridiculous stuff. PubMed! To give you an example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3068791/ Thankfully we can do our own research, see by whom it has been cited, in what journal it has been published, and so forth. You can easily tell that this is quite an unimportant and incredible one. Of course you could tell it yourself after having read it that it is nonsense.

Are there any guides / heuristics on how a layperson can evaluate technical literature? For example my mother-in-law is starting to micro-dose lithium and cited this article as evidence: https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2020/12/lithium-and-a... Which cites 19 medical journals. The website itself reeks of bullshit, but how can I tell if the journals it cites are valid or just woo?

A good measure is to see if there is consensus in the literature. Do other papers report something similar? Is this paper widely cited and/or results accepted in more recent papers?

But to begin with, the article you cite is not a proper peer reviewed article. It's merely a webpage on a private website. It's not indexed on pubmed. No one has cited it, nor will they.

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