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Do you believe in Aliens?

Indricotherium

Interested to know how ST fans feel on this one, as it is intrinsic to the show.

Do you think there are Star Trek style aliens out there?

I do not.

Bit of a ramble on my thoughts on it:

I'm in the camp that life is exceptionally rare in the universe, and that within that intelligent life is even more rare. So rare that it effectively doesn't exist, because if it does, it is not possible for us to encounter or interact with it.

It's taken the guts of a quarter of all time available in the universe to produce a handful of intelligent humanoid species on earth and of those only one managed to develop to a point where travel to other planets can even be contemplated.

I'm assuming that everywhere that this happens, developing to the point where interplanetary travel can be achieved and interstellar travel can be contemplated, it goes hand in hand with the development of terrible weapons of mass destruction making destruction of the race in question inevitable, reducing further the chances of interaction.

Given the size of the Universe in terms of space and time, and how rare, and fragile, I believe life is I don't think we are ever going to coincide with another intelligent race.

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Inviere

Indricotherium wrote: »

It's taken the guts of a quarter of all time available in the universe to produce a handful of intelligent humanoid species on earth and of those only one managed to develop to a point where travel to other planets can even be contemplated.

True, however we went from hunting Mammoths with spears, to landing on the moon in 150k years. That shows us that once intelligent life takes hold, its progress is exponential, and fast.

I'm assuming that everywhere that this happens, developing to the point where interplanetary travel can be achieved and interstellar travel can be contemplated, it goes hand in hand with the development of terrible weapons of mass destruction making destruction of the race in question inevitable, reducing further the chances of interaction.

Not a given by any means, but merely a possibility. Our own lust for power, greed for material things, and devout killing of others because our sky wizard is better than theirs cannot be applied yet to other cultures. This all goes back to the dawn of theism etc, and could unfold very differently on other worlds.

Given the size of the Universe in terms of space and time, and how rare, and fragile, I believe life is I don't think we are ever going to coincide with another intelligent race.

It's certainly looking that way currently unfortunately. We seem to be light years away from interstellar travel within a human life time (no pun intended), thats even assuming we radicalize our understanding of physics!

ScumLord

Inviere wrote: »

True, however we went from hunting Mammoths with spears, to landing on the moon in 150k years. That shows us that once intelligent life takes hold, its progress is exponential, and fast.

That's true on a cosmic stage, we're a flash in the pan. But we had long moments of stagnation. The stone age lasted a long time and not much changed. The modern world moves along at a staggering pace, we've sort of learned how to constantly evolve our technology which didn't happen as much in the past.

It could be argued that if certain environmental events didn't happen we wouldn't have been forced to adapt to it and would still be throwing stones at things in Africa. We spent the vast majority of our time as intelligent sentient creatures being hunter gathers, it took a long, long time to settle down, develop writing, maths and so on, tens of thousands of years. Even with that it took millennia of trial and error before we found social systems that worked and we still didn't have the scientific method that allowed us to constantly innovate.

I don't think human level intelligence is any guarantee of becoming a space faring species. I don't think even being smarter would help, I think being smarter would have draw backs of not needing to innovate as much.

Inviere

ScumLord wrote: »

We spent the vast majority of our time as intelligent sentient creatures being hunter gathers, it took a long, long time to settle down, develop writing, maths and so on, tens of thousands of years. Even with that it took millennia of trial and error before we found social systems that worked and we still didn't have the scientific method that allowed us to constantly innovate.

As you say though, all but a mere flash in the pan. When considering the cosmos, 150k years from Apes to Astronauts is serious progress to make. With the right environment, and the right evolutionary path, I think intelligent civilzations are quite probable. Not Star Trek style as per the OP's original question, but probable, given the right parameters. Then there's all the other galaxies to consider.... It's cruel actually, to know we'll likely never ever know what's really out there.

Indricotherium

Inviere wrote: »

As you say though, all but a mere flash in the pan. When considering the cosmos, 150k years from Apes to Astronauts is serious progress to make.

Is it though?

Apes can understand that birds can fly, and they can't. They can understand the laws of motion on a rudimentary level. They use tools. Is it that much of a stretch to Astronauts?

I'd argue that the jump from basic cell to sexual reproduction was bigger and more critical. Things that seem to take many millions of years.

Inviere

Indricotherium wrote: »

I'd argue that the jump from basic cell to sexual reproduction was bigger and more critical. Things that seem to take many millions of years.

My point was, that when intelligence takes hold, and with the right evolutionary path (bipedal as opposed to marine life for example), it seems to have taken very little time (relatively speaking) for that fledgling intelligence to make rapid, rapid, progress. Therefore, when you say it has taken a quarter of the lifetime of the universe to produce us, that's not necessarily the case everywhere. Similar life could have taken hold 500k years ago somewhere else, and may not take hold for another 500k years somewhere else again. Time would appear to be a less critical factory than say planetary conditions, and random events (would we be here today if the dino's weren't suddenly wiped out etc).

ScumLord

Indricotherium wrote: »

Apes can understand that birds can fly, and they can't. They can understand the laws of motion on a rudimentary level. They use tools. Is it that much of a stretch to Astronauts?

A lot of living things have extraordinary processing power. If a fighter jet had the processing power and skills of a common house fly for example it would be untouchable in the sky. But those creatures use up all their processing power to do basics like find food or a mate. They have nothing left over and that's the norm. It was a freak occurrence for humans to end up with extra processing power because the energy costs are so huge.

Humans are now a force of nature, very few animals can make that claim, we're part of the geology even if humans disappeared today and aliens came here a million years from now they'd find evidence of an advanced civilization in the geology. That's never really happened outside of large clumps of living things dying in the one spot and turning into oil.

We're at least up there with any other event in history, the consequences for us becoming a space faring species are huge for the life on this planet. It's likely if we can move the majority of our population into space that earth would become a protected planet. The life on earth would likely infect just about every other planet in our solar system by piggy backing on human travel.

If we ever did make it to another solar system we'd probably find it hard to visit any of the planets without also infecting it with life from earth.

ItHurtsWhenIP

ScumLord wrote: »

... If a fighter jet had the processing power and skills of a common house fly for example it would be untouchable in the sky. ...

I don't know about this. The fighter jet would constantly be stuck banging off a window pane, in spite of another part of the window being open. :eek:

That is unless it was the superfly that Blart Versenwald III created which could distinguish between solid glass and an open window.

:rolleyes:

ScumLord

ItHurtsWhenIP wrote: »

I don't know about this. The fighter jet would constantly be stuck banging off a window pane, in spite of another part of the window being open. :eek:

That is unless it was the superfly that Blart Versenwald III created which could distinguish between solid glass and an open window. :rolleyes:

Ok so, maybe a hawk, it's not like birds fly into win..doh.

AMKC

Deleted User wrote: »

I think theres life of all shapes and sizes out there. Even on earth we have 4 different albeit similar races. If only one in every billion star systems out there had intelligent life on them, then theres at least 300 civilisations out there.

Just enough for a Federation.

Getting around is the problem though.

Put another way, under Federation law, us in 2017 would not be considered intelligent life.

Why do you think that?
Ok maybe they would not contact us or interfere in our affairs as that might be going against some Prime Directive they might have but I doubt they would think we are not intelligent. Sure we are a young race with a lot still to learn and maybe still a bit of evolving to do.

I think it all depends on the type of alien race. If the race was a million years ahead of us yes maybe they would think of us as just insects to be squashe then again they might not. They might know we are a fairly young and simple race to them but that there is hope and potential for us to be something great and unique. It would all depend on the aiiens really. So if we ever do meet them in my lifetime I just hope they are good ones like out of V or something and not Independence Day type one.
Ok he V aliens I was only joking they were bad too but maybe aliens like the Vulcans only thing there is we need to have a big bad war first and then create Warp Drive so they will notice us if they are out there.
Anyways I am going to stop blabbing on now lol.

Do I think there is other aliens in the Universe? Your right I do its infinite to our minds as I think there is very few people in the world today who can truly comprehend how big it really is.

Do I think there is Star Trek style ones? Sure maybe some Tholian type, some maybe a bit like the Klingons etc but not as many as in Star Trek but it would be great if there was.
I also think there are aliens out there that are so different from us it will be very hard to even comprehend them. Silicon based aliens for instance. For now we can just imagine and dream about what aliens might be like.

ScumLord

I found a good youtube channel the other day from a guy named Isaac Arthur. He answers a lot of questions like this, in depth.

Here's one where he talks about why hollywood get's it so wrong.