Something Completely Different

This fascinates me and scares me.

I thought I would post this thread where we can discuss the possibility of a few things. Life outside of Earth is pretty much nailed on imo, the better question is whether it is intelligent life and whether it has already visited Earth or communicated with us.

What do you reckon? And how would you react if you encountered something strange yourself? What if they asked you to hop into their craft and go for a tour round space, would you accept?

There are plenty of videos of grainy footage and anecdotes but nothing that really proves anything which to me says it all. Surely by now in the era of 4k recording on your phone there'd be something credible of aliens had visited us like many people have claimed.

Post all the videos, documentaries, articles, opinions and whatever else you like.

A nice video:


👽

I absolutely think there's other intelligent life in universe. I don't think it's very likely that any of it has visited Earth though. It would would be pretty amazing to make contact though, if it were possible.

I don't believe in intelligent life outside of Earth, but I truly believe in other species (animals), large or small. When I was a kid I thought that aliens would destroy the idea of religion, if they were around us. Yeah, crazy.

Quote from: Seven on Jul 28, 2023, 02:48 AMI don't believe in intelligent life outside of Earth, but I truly believe in other species (animals), large or small. When I was a kid I thought that aliens would destroy the idea of religion, if they were around us. Yeah, crazy.

Why do you think Earth would be the only planet to develop intelligent life?

One of my big problems with a lot of religious mythos is how they assume that, despite the universe being so impossibly vast, the only part of it that matters is one blue pipsqueak of a planet. Like why does the rest of it exist, then? Is God only the god of Earth, or is he the god of the universe as well? Seems kind of silly to create a such a massive thing if 99.99% of it was all just going to be empty nothingness.

I think it would be wicked dope if God was real, but aliens had their own god as well, like how Namek had its own dragon and set of dragonballs.

Evolution, weather conditions and other things. Also, in my mind is so hard to believe on those perspectives. Despite so much material and controversies, why this intelligent life never talked to us or something?

Before we worry too much about aliens, we should search for intelligent life here on Earth.  Cause if I was an alien, I'd watch a few TikToks and immediately want to turn around lol.

Can you imagine the day it is fully confirmed and announced worldwide, breaking news all over, that we've been in contact with intelligent life from outside of Earth?

It would be like when we walked on the moon x 50.

I honestly can't think of anything that could top it.

Freaks me out this does.

It'll never be announced - if I've learned anything from X Files it's that mankind cannot be trusted with the truth.

Quote from: Seven on Jul 28, 2023, 03:13 AMEvolution, weather conditions and other things. Also, in my mind is so hard to believe on those perspectives. Despite so much material and controversies, why this intelligent life never talked to us or something?

In philosophy we speak of the "unmoved mover" - i.e. the finger of god set the domino line tumbling into motion, and Chaos determined the rest. Some consider the event of the Big Bang to be god itself.

^I like it when people reduce the idea of god to something simpler, perhaps just a force without intent or some event.

It's still not as good as getting rid of the notion altogether, but it does cut out a lot of the bullshit you tend to get with religion.

Small steps.

As for aliens, I'd have to assume there's an unfathomable multitude of life out there that occasionally also evolves intelligent life, though I expect that to be extremely rare considering how long it took planet earth and the potential for intelligent life to be self-destructive.

Intelligent life from out there visiting us isn't something I currently believe in, but perhaps it's possible for us to see/detect something distant (like a Dyson sphere) or pick up some signal.

Quote from: Guybrush on Jul 29, 2023, 03:17 AM^I like it when people reduce the idea of god to something simpler, perhaps just a force without intent or some event.

It's still not as good as getting rid of the notion altogether, but it does cut out a lot of the bullshit you tend to get with religion.

Small steps.

I earned degrees in Religious Studies, Philosophy (x2 - ancient and modern western lol) and Social & Behavioral Sciences. Outside of academia I often forget that people don't approach religion as an anthropological study in cultural evolution.

I grew up in Mormon territory, but was excommunicated as a child (lol). Growing up near Yellowstone National Park, I've always found god in nature, and I worship at the altar of chaos.

That said, I find the existence of intelligent life to be a mathematically logical possibility. I don't think there are necessarily parallels to our interpretation of what currently constitutes "intelligent" - I believe there is life out there, but I also believe communication is/will be improbable.

Quote from: degrassi.knoll on Jul 29, 2023, 03:31 AMI earned degrees in Religious Studies, Philosophy (x2 - ancient and modern western lol) and Social & Behavioral Sciences. Outside of academia I often forget that people don't approach religion as an anthropological study in cultural evolution.

That sounds like a good approach.

I mention this every now and then, but I'm a biologist and learning about how life evolves and adapts to the environment does seem to generally reduce religious faith.

Then we also learn the basics of critical thinking as it's of course integral to science. Biologists use principles like Occam's Razor to try and find the most parsimonious phylogenetic trees (the evolutionary stories that make the least amount of unbacked assumptions).

Most of us will inevitably read The Selfish Gene and be exposed to people like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett.

For cultural evolution, Dawkins' meme theory (where the word meme comes from) makes sense to me. It says an idea (or meme) has the important traits of a gene. It can replicate, mutate, be replaced by a competitor in a competition for a finite resource which is human minds / attention. They can work together for mutual benefit and form complexes (like cultures and religions), much like genes can work together to form organs or entire organisms. Hence, we can apply our knowledge of evolution to explain and predict the evolution of things like culture and religion.

Meme theory's more thought exercise than science, but like how evolution neatly explains those weird things about life, meme theory seems (to me) to have the power to explain many of the weird things about religion and culture.

QuoteI grew up in Mormon territory, but was excommunicated as a child (lol). Growing up near Yellowstone National Park, I've always found god in nature, and I worship at the altar of chaos.

Ooh, I'd love to hear more about your excommunication 🙂 I hope you'll make a thread about it!

On principle, I'd say we don't know that there is a god and we don't know what science we'd need to explain a god. Assuming there is one when we know so little will inevitably lead to us making wrong assumptions. Rejecting god us a way to reduce the risk of being wrong. Then we can believe in god when it's the most parsimonious explanation.

For example, we saw something weird going on in the universe, so we've figured out there must be some matter we can't see (dark matter).

But before we actually see the effects of dark matter and need it to explain something, we shouldn't believe in it because we won't know anything about it and would risk filling our physics books with drivel.

This certainly happened to religious scripture. And even if there is a god, you could likely reduce erroneous assumptions by rejecting god until you know where it fits in.

It's extremely pragmatic, but considering how human belief shapes our world and cultures, I think more people should be pragmatic about this.

QuoteThat said, I find the existence of intelligent life to be a mathematically logical possibility. I don't think there are necessarily parallels to our interpretation of what currently constitutes "intelligent" - I believe there is life out there, but I also believe communication is/will be improbable.

Yes. With the vastness of space, a civilization may be long dead and every trace of it entirely wiped out and eroded by the time they'd get our reply.

I want to believe

Quote from: jimmy jazz on Jul 28, 2023, 02:53 PMCan you imagine the day it is fully confirmed and announced worldwide, breaking news all over, that we've been in contact with intelligent life from outside of Earth?

It would be like when we walked on the moon x 50.

I honestly can't think of anything that could top it.

Freaks me out this does.

Quote from: Psy-Fi on Jul 30, 2023, 04:08 PM

(https://i.postimg.cc/c1pLPv0v/TSM.jpg) (https://postimages.org/)

Looks like me tbf.

I do have thoughts on the subject but I'm not at liberty to say.  Maybe we can do it in a SCIF if one of you could possibly set that up.

I love this entire subject. Even if it's complete BS or not, it has always fascinated me that their may be other life out there. Or maybe life right here on Earth, a new species we could never have comprehended. Either way I'm super excited as to where this all leads.

I do feel like taking it seriously, extraordinary claims need to be supported by extraordinary evidence. I've no problem believing that various UAPs (Unexplained Aerial Phenomena) might happen, but I don't wanna jump to conclusions about what causes them. There may be more parsimonious explanations than alien intelligence being behind them.

But it's a fun idea in any case 🙂 and maybe it's time for aliens again as they fell out of favor with popular culture a long time ago.

I think all the recent news reports, hearings, etc in the US of aliens/UFOs is a national government shit-test, to see how gullible the population is and what they can get us to believe without any real evidence.

Quote from: Thelonious Monkey on Jul 31, 2023, 03:14 AMI love this entire subject. Even if it's complete BS or not, it has always fascinated me that their may be other life out there. Or maybe life right here on Earth, a new species we could never have comprehended. Either way I'm super excited as to where this all leads.

There's going to be plenty of shit in the oceans that we haven't found yet. Once we can go to the bottom and explore comfortably we're gonna find a shit load of new species. Some of the shit we've already found at the deepest parts we've been to are like weird goblin aliens that have adapted to live down there.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2022/jul/26/newly-discovered-deep-sea-species-in-pictures

Duke Nukem laying down facts!

Quote from: degrassi.knoll on Jul 29, 2023, 12:18 AMIt'll never be announced - if I've learned anything from X Files it's that mankind cannot be trusted with the truth.

(https://i.ibb.co/T2mjPP7/unnamed-6.jpg) (https://ibb.co/mT6Zhh2)

Don't be scared, if they wanted to hurt us they would have done it a long time ago and wouldn't give us such pretty crop circles. No need to fear outsiders.

I don't believe they have interacted with us, exactly. I believe they just like to hover above us being mysterious. Giving us pretty little crop circles.

I don't think they helped us build the pyramids. Helping us do such grand things would be very cruel, it would make all of our grand achievements meaningless. If every civilization in the universe needed help to do grand things nobody would ever get their civilization off the ground.

I don't think they are cruel.

The anal probing I'm quite sure is a "Calm down we're just fucking with you you're fine."

Mutilating livestock to me implies they know something about death and that no matter what everyone is fine. Another "Calm down I'm just fucking with you."

I do not believe in evil shapeshifting reptilians. The concept of an entire race only wanting to eat our negative energy is absurd to me.

I don't think the outside universe is a threatening place. I think we live in a world of fear and hatred and any race advanced enough to get here has evolved past these feelings.

I was mocked on the David Icke message board for not believing in shapeshifting reptilians like it was the most absurd thing I could possibly think. It's a crazy magical land where everything is backwards.

I'm sorry triple post but this is kinda a separate thought.

Bare with me here, this is where my beliefs get a little loony.

I believe the fact that in all of the grand total of infinity stars in the universe, the fact that they knew just where to look for us implies they know a little something about creation.

I believe the more advanced you are the more in line with God you are. I know you may be thinking my talk of aliens and God implies I live in a world of magical fantasy, I assure you my conception of God is very reasonable. You will be getting a handful of my essays eventually.

I know God when I see it and their crop circles are God.

Crop circles are a hoax. We know pretty well how it started and how they are done.

Quote from: grindy on Jan 29, 2024, 07:12 AMCrop circles are a hoax. We know pretty well how it started and how they are done.

Let's take a look at some of the skill and detail that goes into creating crop circles. (https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=602266585&rlz=1C1GCEA_enCA755CA755&sxsrf=ACQVn0-Ow827Eu622GDnwP4URDM99o8pgg:1706509460590&q=crop+circles&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjc7dCR-4GEAxUinokEHZCECuQQ0pQJegQIDBAB&biw=1920&bih=963&dpr=1)

1. The level of detail implies to me that this could only be done from above. 2. If a person actually had this level of skill, they would have to be the most fucked up kind of person to only apply this skill to fucking with us, they would have bigger things in mind. Either this person just travels the world doing this and only this every moment of his life or there are a ridiculous number of these people all over the world and they all have this level of skill and they all just want to fuck with us. They get together in a group and decide this is the particular aesthetic choice we will be using, we must all be unified, we must all look like the same person doing this art. 3. Small amounts of radiation can be detected at the site of crop circles.

I saw a documentary about a crew faking crop circles. It really was impressive what you can do with planks and rope. They made like a language and put a lot of thought into their designs. Then people they fooled were like "only an alien spacecraft could bend straw like this". Yeah, spacecraft or, you know, someone stepping on a plank apparently.

Like @grindy writes, the thing we definitely know about crop circles is people make them. They work hard at making them as mysterious as possible and frankly, they can become very good at it.

By Occam's razoring, you can dismiss an alien explanation for this. And if aliens wanted to communicate, why the hell crop circles? There are much better ways than bothering farmers.

It's just the beauty of geometry. You can do insanely complex stuff with a compass and ruler. You'd never believe those simple tools are the source of such beautiful artworks. And creating a scale drawing of something and then recreating the steps with a bigger ruler and compass, e.g. planks and rope, is not a particularly complicated process. It's a meme and I'd even say an art form at this point, so obviously tons of people are doing it. We know how it's done (as tore said, there's plenty of video of people creating those) and we often know who does it, since people have been caught doing it or admitted it themselves.

Quote from: Guybrush on Jan 29, 2024, 08:08 AMI saw a documentary about a crew faking crop circles. It really was impressive what you can do with planks and rope. They made like a language and put a lot of thought into their designs. Then people they fooled were like "only an alien spacecraft could bend straw like this". Yeah, spacecraft or, you know, someone stepping on a plank apparently.

A keen eye can tell the difference between the fake ones and the real ones. Yes, there are some very impressive people that can do some very impressive things, but I stand by my previous post.

Quote from: Guybrush on Jan 29, 2024, 08:08 AMLike @grindy writes, the thing we definitely know about crop circles is people make them. They work hard at making them as mysterious as possible and frankly, they can become very good at it. By Occam's razoring, you can dismiss an alien explanation for this.

I understand, this is the kind of reasoning I would employ back when I was cold hard scientific reason. I am still cold hard scientific reason but I now realize a lot of my thought processes start with fear based denial. Ideas like this were presented to me as magical fantasy so I put up the big barrier of "No! Impossible! There's no magic!" Of course there is no magic but we need to open our minds to many concepts dismissed as magic and analyze and make them not magic.

Quote from: Guybrush on Jan 29, 2024, 08:08 AMAnd if aliens wanted to communicate, why the hell crop circles? There are much better ways than bothering farmers.

Because they don't have a canvas. When you realize drop charges can gently level light delicate plant life in a very precise way it becomes the most obvious place to present your artwork. They do not want to communicate. Yet. They want to be mysterious. They want to make us think. They want to make the more foolish of us frightened. You can't just land on a planet. You can't just land on a planet such as ours. We will fucking kill you if you land on a planet such as ours.

They also clearly understand the nature of beauty. This is a gradual process and simply coming down and communicating is not the most beautiful way to do this.

Quote from: robhr on Jan 29, 2024, 08:20 AMA keen eye can tell the difference between the fake ones and the real ones. Yes, there are some very impressive people that can do some very impressive things, but I stand by my previous post.

I understand, this is the kind of reasoning I would employ back when I was cold hard scientific reason. I am still cold hard scientific reason but I now realize a lot of my thought processes start with fear based denial. Ideas like this were presented to me as magical fantasy so I put up the big barrier of "No! Impossible! There's no magic!" Of course there is no magic but we need to open our minds to many concepts dismissed as magic and analyze and make them not magic.

Because they don't have a canvas. When you realize drop charges can gently level light delicate plant life in a very precise way it becomes the most obvious place to present your artwork. They do not want to communicate. Yet. They want to be mysterious. They want to make us think. They want to make the more foolish of us frightened. You can't just land on a planet. You can't just land on a planet such as ours. We will fucking kill you if you land on a planet such as ours.

They also clearly understand the nature of beauty. This is a gradual process and simply coming down and communicating is not the most beautiful way to do this.

Nah, it's not fear or denial. I'd absolutely love it to be aliens, I'm obsessed with mysterious and otherworldly stuff. But I don't let that wishful thinking distract me from the facts.

Quote from: grindy on Jan 29, 2024, 08:23 AMNah, it's not fear or denial. I'd absolutely love it to be aliens, I'm obsessed with mysterious and otherworldly stuff. But I don't let that wishful thinking distract me from the facts.

I assure you I don't do wishful thinking.

Nobody is turning anybody in this argument and nobody is landing in the middle, I'm done with it.

Thank you, though, this thread has given me material for another essay. When I show you these six main essays together I think I may be able to change your minds but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Again, I just sounded like a pompous ass all over this particular post, I'm sorry.

Anybody been following the jellyfish UFO or the nazca mummies. Or like just anything to do with aliens. Anybody find any of the news these days to be compelling or do you just write everything off as superstition. While I have a fascination with this stuff, I'm open to hearing both sides and would love to know what you all of think of this time of disclosure we are clearly living in.

Quote from: Thelonious Monkey on Feb 01, 2024, 12:48 AMAnybody been following the jellyfish UFO or the nazca mummies. Or like just anything to do with aliens. Anybody find any of the news these days to be compelling or do you just write everything off as superstition. While I have a fascination with this stuff, I'm open to hearing both sides and would love to know what you all of think of this time of disclosure we are clearly living in.

For a long time, I've been interested in the philosophy of skepticism and critical thinking. I won't get into the deets, but I'm trying to reduce the risk of me being wrong in my assumptions and hope that I am successful.

When it comes to jellyfish UFOs, mummies and corn circles etc. we know that humans can create all these things. I haven't personally seen any evidence compelling enough to make me feel like we actually need an alien or supernatural explanation yet.

In this video below, they go through some later footage. Some is balloons, another is skydivers, one is a bugs bunny or something helium balloon floating upside down.

I know this probably sounds condescending and that's not my intention, but I also live in a part of the world where this sorta stuff isn't a thing. People generally don't see aliens or cryptids here and when strange things happen, such as Hessdalen light  (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessdalen_lights)sightings, most assume the explanations to be more down to earth.

It probably goes without saying, but I think perceptions are colored by culture and US culture seems very UFO-minded.

Quote from: Guybrush on Feb 02, 2024, 07:55 AMI know this probably sounds condescending and that's not my intention, but I also live in a part of the world where this sorta stuff isn't a thing. People generally don't see aliens or cryptids here and when strange things happen, such as Hessdalen light  (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessdalen_lights)sightings, most assume the explanations to be more down to earth.

It probably goes without saying, but I think perceptions are colored by culture and US culture seems very UFO-minded.

Might also be due to the social circles you move in.

Quote from: grindy on Feb 02, 2024, 08:05 AMMight also be due to the social circles you move in.

Maybe. All in all, I've met one person who said he believes we are or have been visited by aliens and he is an occasional part of my social circle.

Highly likely in my opinion that other planets exist ,different maybe even than us, but life forms non the less..