That's another thing, we've only been here for the shortest time and we expect aliens to have taken an interest in us already? Humans have been here for absolutely fuck-all time in cosmic terms. Any other civilisations in this galaxy (if there are any) could just as well be hundreds of millions of years in our past or in our future. And even if we are here at exactly the right time to meet up, unless they are extremely nearby it would still take thousands of years just to send a radio message. If we manage to keep our civilisation going for a few million years, then maybe we could be justified in wondering when the aliens will be showing up.

UFO truthers will say, oh, they have technology that's beyond our knowledge of physics, they can go faster than light/time travel (same thing) or whatever else I want them to be able to do. Do they take the trouble to understand what Einstein had to say about this, and why Relativity is a thing? No they don't.

I don't reject that unlikely things are possible. But it's one of those "what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence" things.

I don’t believe aliens have visited earth, but I expect my favorite metal bands to believe that aliens have visited the earth.

“No, I don’t think aliens have visited the earth” = thing Matt Pike had better not say if he wants me to keep listening to those Sleep records.

Wood Goblin wrote: Sat Jul 29, 2023 8:42 am I don’t believe aliens have visited earth, but I expect my favorite metal bands to believe that aliens have visited the earth.

“No, I don’t think aliens have visited the earth” = thing Matt Pike had better not say if he wants me to keep listening to those Sleep records.

Does it add to your appreciation for Blink-182?

Given the vastness of the universe, there’s no reason for me to assume there aren’t at least tens of thousands of civilizations spread across the universe at any given time. To believe that we are the sole harborers of sentience is simply human arrogance. Whether or not any of them have the will or way to visit us, that’s a different story. Would we not visit them if we could figure out a way?

Anthony Flack wrote: Fri Jul 28, 2023 10:12 pm That's another thing, we've only been here for the shortest time and we expect aliens to have taken an interest in us already?

Why not? If they are looking for life elsewhere they would probably discover us by accident. Or they could find us while exploring for some other purpose. Don't see why the timespan would matter that much. Similarly for this point:

Humans have been here for absolutely fuck-all time in cosmic terms.

I don't know that we are able to judge the significance of time in cosmic terms. The only reference we really have is ourselves. Advancement and complexification either in terms of biological evolution or cultural development is hardly the most efficient and goal-oriented. So I don't know that we can judge the amount of time something "should" take.

Apologies for anyone who remembers me making this point earlier: You have to consider that we're remote in four dimensions. It's not only the vastness of physical space, it's the vastness of cosmic time. There could have been, or will be intelligent life within a handful of light years but when you look at intelligent life on Earth's infinitesimally tiny slice of the universe's timeline the idea that another planet's intelligent life might arise simultaneously is almost more remote than the likelihood that they'd bend physics far enough to reach us. "When" seems as powerful a question as "if" and"where". The more my liberal arts brain learns about space, the more remote our physical and temporal neighborhood feels.

re: UFO sightings. Definitely need to investigate it more, but from the reports I've seen, there is often so scant and unclear information that they could be referring to a host of different phenomena, and happen to be put under the "UFO" heading because that's what's closest at hand.

Then there are the occasional ones though, that are more interesting. One I think I heard on Over the Edge, was a guy who reported seeing one close-up. He described a metal disk - not very big, maybe 10x the size of a dinner plate - perfectly suspended in air while stationary, then whizzing with amazing smoothness and precision to a different location, where it once again stopped, and so on.

That's a clear and detailed description, and also doesn't sounds like anything familiar, even from storybooks. It's like the guy himself had trouble grokking what he saw.

Then there are the reports of encounters with aliens, with imo belong to an entirely different order of things.

losthighway wrote: Sat Jul 29, 2023 10:49 amThe more my liberal arts brain learns about space, the more remote our physical and temporal neighborhood feels.

Well, to engage *my* liberal arts brain in this, it's only as remote as you imagine.

Which is what I say to those who go "oh in the grand scheme of things we are so insignificant". What grand scheme bro? The grand scheme of your own head. You're just imagining yourself as God, looking down at tiny humans.

Many atheists get stuck on that too. "wow it sucks that things have no meaning since the author of meaning no longer exists...".

If there is a civilization out there more advanced than our own, including methods for space travel and monitoring for other civilizations, it seems plausible that they could find us and have visited already.

I’m guessing Earth stands out pretty clearly as being unique.

It’s more likely for Aleister Crowley to have contacted aliens through telepathic means then it is for them to have found us through conventional scientific ones.