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The Truth is Out There...
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psmith2.0
Mr. Vieira
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Tennessee
 
2008-10-21, 14:10

Quote:
Originally Posted by Moogs View Post
Agree pretty much. All of our thoughts about this stuff are colored by our experiences with movies, books, etc which always assume we're the peons. If there is some group out there the truth is probably somewhere between us being the peons and being the technological leaders. I don't think we're the only life out there by a long-shot, maybe not even the only intelligent life, but the distances are so vast that it would take any civilization a very long time to develop the technology to travel astronomical distances within a pragmatic span of time... even aliens will die sometime, one assumes... entropy is the one enemy we'll all have in common.
That's what I believe. There could be (and probably is) a race of beings similar to us out there somewhere (or several somewheres, for that matter). And, like us, they don't have the ability to fly wherever the hell they want either. It took everything we had (and almost a decade) to send a few guys to the moon (which is "just down street" cosmically speaking), and we haven't gone back.

If we were zipping around in other solar systems and galaxies, bending time and space to our will (where I could take off this morning, snap a few pics of the crab nebulae and be back home tonight for dinner), then maybe. But they're probably in the same boat. They might just be exploring the outer reaches of their systems via unmanned probes and telescopes, totally unaware we even exist.

Wouldn't that be a hoot? All this time, we're both out there and never aware of the other's presence. Kinda like that John Cusack movie where he loved that girl, but she didn't know and he was around her all the time, but she wasn't aware that he was and then he made his love known because she was going away somewhere (that's pretty much all of his movies, now that I think about it).

But still. It's similar.

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Swox
OK Mr. Sunshine!
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Toronto
 
2008-10-21, 14:39

Apparently it's very probable that there is life on other planets. But I seriously doubt that there is another civilization out there with the technology to travel the vast distances necessary to get here. And even if they did, we're assuming that they'd come here pretty quickly, which isn't likely the case. Maybe they have tones of cool stuff to investigate closer to home, maybe they don't want to meet alien species like our scientists do... etc.

I think that ghosts and alien abductions are likely part of some sort of weird mechanism in our minds, based on a deep sense of parochialism. I think one of the easy ways to tell the difference between "spiritual experiences" and delusions is whether they reduce one's self-sense (former), or are self-aggrandizing (latter). Alien abduction stories, like paranoid fantasies induced by psychosis or drugs, are typically completely narcissistic fabrications, IMO. Yeah, aliens travelled billions of light-years to use your genetic material to create a new master race... right....

Do not be oppressed by the forces of ignorance and delusion! But rise up now with resolve and courage! Entranced by ignorance, from beginningless time until now, You have had more than enough time to sleep. So do not slumber any longer, but strive after virtue with body, speech, and mind!
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BlueRabbit
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: San Francisco, CA
 
2008-10-21, 14:40

Here's a nice video of John Hodgman (a.k.a. PC) giving a talk about aliens and all sorts of random yet related things. Yes, they're definitely out there.
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curiousuburb
Antimatter Man
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
 
2008-10-21, 14:46

Maybe the Universe if full of intelligent species and the only reason we haven't been invited to join the club is because we can't master the secret 'hand'shake.


All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand.
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Moogs
Hates the Infotainment
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: NSA Archives
 
2008-10-21, 14:57

They have rev2 of the Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring.

"Don't... forget... to... drink... more.... Tang??"

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709
¡Damned!
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
 
2008-10-21, 15:09

Quote:
Originally Posted by Maciej View Post
Yeah, I can buy that. But if they're altruistic enough for that I think maybe they would have faith that humanity will outgrow our gross disregard of nature's balance.
Maybe. But, truly, why?

Have we, as a species ever done that?

No. Not really. We stifle thought for profit. We exchange thoughtfulness and creativity for rent money. We believe in things that don't exist and wage wars on their invisible behalf.

We are not good. And therein lies the crux. Maybe another hundred to five hundred years we'll get over ourselves and start thinking about our place in a universal sense, but, seriously, look around you. Is what we are now good enough for stellar ambassadors?

No, of course. Not even remotely close.

With all our self-serving ideas of "They have to like us!" and "Why wouldn't they like us?" you only have to look at the human race. A fucking stupid species that given the chance would wipe opposing views from the planet.

We are ignorant and angry. There's no two ways to say anything else but those truths.

So it goes.
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Windswept
On Pacific time
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Moderator's Pub
 
2008-10-21, 15:45

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kickaha View Post
My grandfather was stationed at Ft. Worth TX in the USAF in 1947.

He was picked to go to a ranch outside Roswell, NM.

He flew a few cargo flights to Wright Field, OH.

He refused to speak about it.

He subsequently entered USAF Intel.

He died without telling me a goddamned thing.
Holy mackerel!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Moogs View Post
...even aliens will die sometime...
Years ago, I saw some kind of documentary that showed film of one of the Roswell aliens (dead, of course) lying on a table, iirc, in a room in a hangar. I also saw a documentary back then that showed film of President Kennedy lying on a table after the assassination, covered up to his chest by a sheet. This was after he had been transported away from the Dallas hospital and back to DC. Though he was lying on his back, the film had a shot that also showed the back of his head and the exit wound. (I 'guess' it was an exit wound.) I've never seen either of these two documentaries or those particular shots ever again. Sometimes I wonder how I could have seen them, but I know that I did. Very strange.

Quote:
Originally Posted by artesc View Post
yeah, sorry if i was a bit snarky. xoxoxo I don't want to be the asshole that everyone hates on 'nova!


my head doesn't hurt now!


Quote:
Originally Posted by 709 View Post
Maybe. But, truly, why?

Have we, as a species ever done that?

No. Not really. We stifle thought for profit. We exchange thoughtfulness and creativity for rent money. We believe in things that don't exist and wage wars on their invisible behalf.

We are not good. And therein lies the crux. Maybe another hundred to five hundred years we'll get over ourselves and start thinking about our place in a universal sense, but, seriously, look around you. Is what we are now good enough for stellar ambassadors?

No, of course. Not even remotely close.

With all our self-serving ideas of "They have to like us!" and "Why wouldn't they like us?" you only have to look at the human race. A fucking stupid species that given the chance would wipe opposing views from the planet.

We are ignorant and angry. There's no two ways to say anything else but those truths.
Hmm. I need to consider my reply. Part of my reply might be that men might be like that, but women aren't so much, you know? Would you agree with that at all, 709?
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709
¡Damned!
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
 
2008-10-21, 16:02

Quote:
Originally Posted by Windswept View Post
Hmm. I need to consider my reply. Part of my reply might be that men might be like that, but women aren't so much, you know? Would you agree with that at all, 709?
Fuck if I know. If I actually understood your kind completely I would probably use that yet unknown power to get laid. It'd be a fucking superpower greater than any I could wish for. I wouldn't just be an X-Man, I'd be a XXX-Man.

Oh happy day.

So it goes.
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Windswept
On Pacific time
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Moderator's Pub
 
2008-10-21, 16:08



We aren't really all that complicated.
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Xaqtly
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2008-10-21, 16:10

As an intelligent race as a whole, we have no yardstick to measure ourselves against, cosmically speaking. We don't know if we're inferior specks of dust, or if we're towering giants of intellect compared to any hypothetical alien races out there. I tend to think that if we do ever meet another race, they will not be anything like we've been programmed to expect by TV and sci-fi in general.

I sometimes put some (meager) thought into it, and I think that communication could be really, really difficult at first. What if "yellow" to us means "taxidermist" to them? I mean I really doubt any of our abstract concepts will match up, our math will probably be totally different, I don't think we can even count on binary to establish rudimentary communication.

Maybe these aliens hear by "blorking" something, a concept in its entirety previously unknown and unsuspected by anybody on Earth, even the Marquis de Sade. And you know somebody's going to do a Vulcan salute, which for all we know could be a recipe for a tasty vek'logg salad to them.

One thing we can count on is that at least at our current level of progression, any action taken by any aliens we meet will be perceived as hostile and somebody will start shooting. We can only hope Star Trek has taught us some lessons about not shooting first, because hey, maybe they're just speaking in metaphor. You don't know that they aren't.
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709
¡Damned!
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
 
2008-10-21, 16:18

Sure.

Visions of CondomMan™ aside, I'd like to hear why you think the female half aren't like that?
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curiousuburb
Antimatter Man
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
 
2008-10-21, 16:29

Klaatu, Barada Nikto
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709
¡Damned!
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
 
2008-10-21, 16:34

^

Exactly. You have to wonder about the implications of a Gort Force. That is, is every interstellar race so weak as us?
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Windswept
On Pacific time
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Moderator's Pub
 
2008-10-21, 16:53

Quote:
Originally Posted by 709 View Post
Sure.

Visions of CondomMan™ aside, I'd like to hear why you think the female half aren't like that?
Okay, I'll pick my way through your previous post:

Quote:
Originally Posted by 709 View Post
Maybe. But, truly, why?

Have we, as a species ever done that?

No. Not really. We stifle thought for profit. We exchange thoughtfulness and creativity for rent money. We believe in things that don't exist and wage wars on their invisible behalf.
Women would be a thousand times less likely to wage war to settle problems between nations. We loathe the senseless waste of the precious lives that we have nurtured, and are good at communicating. We would settle our problems by communicating.

Quote:
We are not good. And therein lies the crux. Maybe another hundred to five hundred years we'll get over ourselves and start thinking about our place in a universal sense, but, seriously, look around you. Is what we are now good enough for stellar ambassadors?

No, of course. Not even remotely close.
Many women *are* good. They are nurturing of humans, the planet, and its creatures. This caring is, of course, built into us via our hormones and is there naturally. But it *is* there, nonetheless. If we weren't nurturers, the human species could not have survived, considering the prolonged span between childhood and adulthood.

Quote:
With all our self-serving ideas of "They have to like us!" and "Why wouldn't they like us?" you only have to look at the human race. A fucking stupid species that given the chance would wipe opposing views from the planet.

We are ignorant and angry. There's no two ways to say anything else but those truths.
I have to agree with much of this, and I blame it completely on the bad aspects of testosterone. We couldn't have survived as a species without the good aspects of testosterone - the physical strength, courage, adventuring, risk-taking and problem-solving aspects. But the bad aspects are so very unfortunate, and it will indeed take us an inordinately long time to moderate them with the civilizing effects of progressive and educated societies.

So, okay, dear one, how does 'that' sound? Can you go along with any of that? You notice that I don't blame *men* for our problems. I completely (and sincerely) blame testosterone.
  quote
709
¡Damned!
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
 
2008-10-21, 17:08

Quote:
Originally Posted by Windswept View Post
So, okay, dear one, how does 'that' sound? Can you go along with any of that? You notice that I don't blame *men* for our problems. I completely (and sincerely) blame testosterone.
Possibly. But if you're absolving men and accusing testosterone, then you're simply making my point for me. Men and women both use testosterone to their own ends, and just because the men carry more of it doesn't mean the women don't use it. In fact, you watch enough period pieces to know that women (of power, especially) can be the greatest of manipulators as well as caregivers. The "use" of testosterone doesn't necessarily imply that one using it has it.

So it goes.
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Windswept
On Pacific time
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Moderator's Pub
 
2008-10-21, 17:18

Quote:
Originally Posted by 709 View Post
...women can be the greatest of manipulators...
Well, yes, I completely agree. But I was speaking in very *general* terms (in response to your earlier post) about the human species not necessarily having to be characterized wholly as "ignorant and angry".

Okay?
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709
¡Damned!
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
 
2008-10-21, 17:20

Well, I thought "present company excluded" was a given.
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curiousuburb
Antimatter Man
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
 
2008-10-21, 17:31

If we're going to derail a perfectly good aliens thread with gender and hormone talk, can we at least stick to green alien women or hot vulcan babes or mudd's venus pill (placebo version).

And if we're going to make it an X-files thread, can we stick to Scully?

All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand.
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709
¡Damned!
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
 
2008-10-21, 17:33

I just saw T'Pol in the straight-to-DVD Starship Troopers III. Terrible movie. No Vulcan boobies whatsoever.
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Maciej
M AH - ch ain saw
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2008-10-22, 00:38

Quote:
Originally Posted by Swox View Post
I think that ghosts and alien abductions are likely part of some sort of weird mechanism in our minds, based on a deep sense of parochialism. I think one of the easy ways to tell the difference between "spiritual experiences" and delusions is whether they reduce one's self-sense (former), or are self-aggrandizing (latter). Alien abduction stories, like paranoid fantasies induced by psychosis or drugs, are typically completely narcissistic fabrications, IMO. Yeah, aliens travelled billions of light-years to use your genetic material to create a new master race... right....
I would agree with this. I think they're out there, but they're definitely not here. I believe abduction stories are mostly explained by sleep paralysis. Plus, lots of these stories are pulled out through hypnosis, and under hypnosis people are in a pretty suggestive state. One of the "documentaries" (and I say that with a boulder-sized grain of salt) did present some research from Harvard (I think it was) about sleep paralysis but naturally, the abductees insist their experiences were real.

User formally known as Sh0eWax
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