They're here

[ValueArb]

4 hours ago, maplevalue said:

 

I think a great parallel is with the UFO story and the COVID lab leak theory. Origin of COVID a very complex topic where there is active debate within the scientific community. We do not have hard evidence that it leaked from a lab (and likely even if it did would never hear about it since certain governments/individuals would do everything in their power to make sure this did not get out), therefore many people absolutely refuse to believe it did and brand those that do as conspiracy theorists. However, there are very compelling arguments as to why it might of (some argue about the biology of the virus, others about sicknesses within the WIV in 2019). If you demand hard evidence of a lab leak, you don't have it now, but is it really wise to view the lab leak as a 0% event?

 

Same thing with UFOs, if you absolutely must have a dead alien body in front of you to believe that aliens might exist then there is no way you will believe in them now. However, if one is willing to be flexible and consider that congress holding hearings into UFOs with several credible witnesses is possibly a precursor to harder evidence coming forward, then you cannot dismiss aliens as a 0% event, and likely need to raise your own view on the probability aliens exist after watching the hearing.

 

A final thought, one of the things I have realized in my career (currently doing a STEM PhD) is how limited our understanding is of the world around us. Be careful putting too high of a burden on accepting something as true, as it stands we can say very little about very few things with much certainty!

 

 

Science relies on preponderance of evidence to start believing a hypothesis could be true, and for extraordinary claims we require extraordinary evidence.

 

The problem is the preponderance of evidence isn’t on the side of aliens existing, and we don’t have any extraordinary evidence. We just finished a congressional hearing that was held not to present extraordinary evidence, but so congress members could preen in front of cameras.

 

The “star” witness admitted he hasn’t seen any of the evidence, just repeated hearsay, sometimes even hearsay of  hearsay. Every time he was asked for specifics his reply was “let me tell you that in private”.

 

And then after the hearing the chief scientist of the new military office on UAP research issued a release claiming Grusch mislead the panel by misrepresenting his interactions with the office.

 

This is no different than any UFO claim of the last 70 years, lots of claims of smoke but no one can demonstrate the existence of a fire.

[Parsad]

6 hours ago, ValueArb said:

 

 

Science relies on preponderance of evidence to start believing a hypothesis could be true, and for extraordinary claims we require extraordinary evidence.

 

The problem is the preponderance of evidence isn’t on the side of aliens existing, and we don’t have any extraordinary evidence. We just finished a congressional hearing that was held not to present extraordinary evidence, but so congress members could preen in front of cameras.

 

The “star” witness admitted he hasn’t seen any of the evidence, just repeated hearsay, sometimes even hearsay of  hearsay. Every time he was asked for specifics his reply was “let me tell you that in private”.

 

And then after the hearing the chief scientist of the new military office on UAP research issued a release claiming Grusch mislead the panel by misrepresenting his interactions with the office.

 

This is no different than any UFO claim of the last 70 years, lots of claims of smoke but no one can demonstrate the existence of a fire.

 

+1!  For the record, I believe that other planets with intelligent life exist.  It's just hard not to reconcile that with the sheer vastness of space and simply based on mathematics.  But if you keep claiming smoke, I need to at least see the tiniest of sparks!  Cheers!

[Sweet]

1 hour ago, Parsad said:

 

+1!  For the record, I believe that other planets with intelligent life exist.  It's just hard not to reconcile that with the sheer vastness of space and simply based on mathematics.  But if you keep claiming smoke, I need to at least see the tiniest of sparks!  Cheers!

The maths isn’t that clear either.  Posted a video below which I stumbled on a few months ago, it goes into some of the maths.  

 

 

[Spekulatius]

On 6/20/2023 at 11:56 AM, Thrifty3000 said:

If you really want to go down the hole with this stuff I recommend these two conversations.

 

Joe Rogan interview with Bob Lazar:

 

The one with Bob Lazar is interesting because he made claims over 30 years ago that couldn’t be proven or verified at the time. And over the years more and more of his claims have been validated. For example he claimed having access to technology that used Element 115, which wasn’t even on the periodic table back then, and couldn’t be proven to exist until recently with the construction of large hadron colliders.

 

Joe Rogan interview with James Fox:

 

The one with James Fox is interesting because he recounts multiple examples of the most credible events - events where there are a variety of mutual witnesses and significant evidence. He recently made a documentary about what he thinks is probably the most significant event to date. It happened in Brazil in the 90s and was witnessed by civilians of all ages, police, doctors, military, politicians etc.

On Element 115 (Moscovium), it is easy to make a claim but what does access exactly mean, since this has a half time of less then 1 sec? it is also easy to predict what this element will be like, before it is synthetically produced, you just need an enormous particle collider to just make a few atoms of it that exist for a few seconds before decays.

 

I am constantly surprised that people still listen to Joe Rogan. He is one of the worst prepared interviewers that I ever have come across. I listened to a few podcasts years ago to see what the fuzz about him is all about and decided it’s waste of time. Even more so for anything remotely related to science. There is just so much better stuff out there.

 

Try Big Brains from UofChicago just to name one example.

[maplevalue]

3 hours ago, Parsad said:

But if you keep claiming smoke, I need to at least see the tiniest of sparks!  Cheers!

 

I suppose this is where we might differ. Sworn testimony by David Fravor retired US Navy Commander, who witnessed the tic-tac, doesn't seem crazy, plus the declassified video of it to me suggests either some country around the world has access to secret technology leaps and bounds ahead of what we currently have, or it's extraterrestrial.

 

Both are pretty extraordinary things to consider, but one of which has at least a nonzero probability of being true given the evidence that currently exists (and we are likely to see more evidence as more gets declassified).

 

10 hours ago, ValueArb said:

Science relies on preponderance of evidence to start believing a hypothesis could be true, and for extraordinary claims we require extraordinary evidence.

 

Another way of looking at science is people come up with theories as to how the world works, and then as more and more evidence is gathered they are increasingly accepted as true by the scientific community. Long before we could fly to space and actually observe the sphericity of the earth ("extraordinary evidence the earth was round") people over time came to accept the earth was in fact round. In the UFO case, sure we don't have a dead alien body in front of us, but the hearings I believe raise the probability we see something non-human in origin in our lifetimes, even if its not a high percentage, but it definitely just went up.

[Sweet]

1 hour ago, maplevalue said:

Another way of looking at science is people come up with theories as to how the world works, and then as more and more evidence is gathered they are increasingly accepted as true by the scientific community. Long before we could fly to space and actually observe the sphericity of the earth ("extraordinary evidence the earth was round") people over time came to accept the earth was in fact round. In the UFO case, sure we don't have a dead alien body in front of us, but the hearings I believe raise the probability we see something non-human in origin in our lifetimes, even if its not a high percentage, but it definitely just went up.

 

These are very different examples.

 

The earth was proven to be spherical long before we went into space, it was deductible through observation and maths a long time ago.

 

There is no comparable proof that aliens exist, and the hearings might only raise the probability of seeing an alien if aliens are actually here.

 

If aliens aren't actually here then the probability that we see aliens are exactly as they were before the hearings.

 

It doesn't follow that the probability 'definitely just went up' then.

 

 

Edited August 1, 2023 by Sweet

[Sweet]

1 hour ago, Spekulatius said:

On Element 115 (Moscovium), it is easy to make a claim but what does access exactly mean, since this has a half time of less then 1 sec? it is also easy to predict what this element will be like, before it is synthetically produced, you just need an enormous particle collider to just make a few atoms of it that exist for a few seconds before decays.

 

I am constantly surprised that people still listen to Joe Rogan. He is one of the worst prepared interviewers that I ever have come across. I listened to a few podcasts years ago to see what the fuzz about him is all about and decided it’s waste of time. Even more so for anything remotely related to science. There is just so much better stuff out there.

 

Try Big Brains from UofChicago just to name one example.

 

I refer to him as Bro Rogan for a reason.  I like listening to Joe, but he does indulge in the biggest pile of rubbish.  I watched his show about the Lost City of Atlantis where his guest claimed that the Richat Structure in Mauritania is (or might be) Atlantis.  Joe found the evidence compelling, he may even referred to it as 'overwhelming', but it was a best weak in my view.  As a layman to the topic I could think of many alternative explanations that are more simple and more likely.  I sure would like the story to be true but the so-called evidence was incredibly light I felt.  Yet if you listened to Joe you would think it was case closed.

 

That said, Joe is on the money about a lot of things too.  It's easy to pick on the parts that are stupid because there are so many of them over the years.  He has reigned in a lot of his wild views.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Sweet

[rkbabang]

The thing I like about Rogan's show is that he interviews a wide range of people from all walks of life and lets them talk. 

 

Yeah, he makes a lot of stupid comments and asks some dumb questions, but over the course of a 3 hour show the guests gets a chance to say everything they wanted to say.  Rogan admits he's no expert on anything and he doesn't come off as having any type of addenda.  Listening to more "polished" mainstream interviewers you mostly get leading questions with no time for the guest to properly respond, the hosts often arrogantly think they know as much or more about the topic as the experts, they often edit the show before airing it so you hear only what they want you to, and of course there are some people that the mainstream shows just won't interview at all because they don't want you to hear the other side of some topics.  You can get a lot of value from Rogan's show around a bit of nonsense.

 

[ValueArb]

9 hours ago, Parsad said:

 

+1!  For the record, I believe that other planets with intelligent life exist.  It's just hard not to reconcile that with the sheer vastness of space and simply based on mathematics.  But if you keep claiming smoke, I need to at least see the tiniest of sparks!  Cheers!

 

I 100% agree with this. There is no evidence or compelling reason to believe we are the only intelligent life in the universe. The conditions our particular form of life needed for it's instantiation are extremely unique, a long lived yellow dwarf star, a planet in the habitable zone and likely a very large moon to provide tidal forces that helped create the building block nucleic acids of our cells.

 

But there are trillions of trillions of solar systems throughout the universe and odds are there many billions of earth like planets orbiting in the habitable zones around stable long lived stars. The problem is this does nothing to support the idea that UAPs are created by intelligent life forms from other solar systems. Because

 

1) Every observation we have of the universe demonstrates speed of light as a hard limit to travel and communications.

2) We also know that any method to travel faster than it would violate causality, which we've never seen violated in the entire history of the universe.

 

So if the nearest intelligent life is thousands of light years away, its almost impossible for it to even know we exist, and even if it somehow anticipated our advances in technology to a world encompassing civilization it would likely take many tens of thousands of years to travel here. And the physics of any type of ship able to travel even 1% of the speed of light require a massive, massive vehicle using enormous amounts of energy to be able to slow to visit our planet. And that would be easily detectable, likely by the naked eye before it could even reach the solar system. 

 

So every argument for "aliens" behind the UAPs requires a level of physics that's akin to magic, that we have not the slightest theoretical groundwork to explain. That can never be a falsifiable claim so fine, but then why aren't these aliens actually angels sent from God, ghosts of our ancestors trying to communicate with us or playful immortal pixies? Why pick one supernatural phenomena as an explanation over literally thousands of others?

[ValueArb]

6 hours ago, maplevalue said:

 

I suppose this is where we might differ. Sworn testimony by David Fravor retired US Navy Commander, who witnessed the tic-tac, doesn't seem crazy, plus the declassified video of it to me suggests either some country around the world has access to secret technology leaps and bounds ahead of what we currently have, or it's extraterrestrial.

 

People misidentify objects all the time, whether do to distance, lighting, motion, lack of time or a combination. Your brain fills in gaps in distant images based on previous images or even your own expectations. Remember, human eyes suck, contrary to the claims of creationists their design is terrible. Blood vessels are actually layered in front of the retina and the light sensing cells, absorbing a significant amount of light before it can even reach the light sensing cells. Also the light sensing cells are massed only for direct vision not peripheral and the eye has large blind spot where the optic nerve enters the retina. A significant portion of us require glasses to see reasonably at all.  And being a skilled naval aviator doesn't enable you to escape these very human limitations. 

 

And there are far more plausible explanations of the navy videos. The videos were all infrared, and experts have pointed out the "objects" are consistent with lens flare, glare, and heat emissions. The  "maneuvers" are consistent with the source camera moving, not the "object". 

 

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/military/story/2021-05-29/navy-ufo-videos-skeptics

 

6 hours ago, maplevalue said:

 

Both are pretty extraordinary things to consider, but one of which has at least a nonzero probability of being true given the evidence that currently exists (and we are likely to see more evidence as more gets declassified).

 

 

Another way of looking at science is people come up with theories as to how the world works, and then as more and more evidence is gathered they are increasingly accepted as true by the scientific community. Long before we could fly to space and actually observe the sphericity of the earth ("extraordinary evidence the earth was round") people over time came to accept the earth was in fact round. In the UFO case, sure we don't have a dead alien body in front of us, but the hearings I believe raise the probability we see something non-human in origin in our lifetimes, even if its not a high percentage, but it definitely just went up.

 

So the evidence isn't just not conclusive, it's not evidence of aliens or even secret military craft in any shape or form.  More videos like these prove nothing other than our video recording systems have flaws, our eyes have flaws, and they can combine to make us see things that aren't even there. Even if you could find similar videos that had compelling evidence it wasn't a lens flare, or infrared heat emission, and shows similar incredible acceleration and velocities now you have to explain why there is no sonic boom and no ionized atmosphere? How can it be a physical object at all given its passing through trillions of Nitrogen/Oxygen atoms without affecting them?

 

So then we arrive back at the supernatural and the question goes back to, why not gods or ghosts or holograms? What evidence is there that aliens is any better an explanation? 

[rkbabang]

14 minutes ago, ValueArb said:

 

People misidentify objects all the time, whether do to distance, lighting, motion, lack of time or a combination. Your brain fills in gaps in distant images based on previous images or even your own expectations. Remember, human eyes suck, contrary to the claims of creationists their design is terrible. Blood vessels are actually layered in front of the retina and the light sensing cells, absorbing a significant amount of light before it can even reach the light sensing cells. Also the light sensing cells are massed only for direct vision not peripheral and the eye has large blind spot where the optic nerve enters the retina. A significant portion of us require glasses to see reasonably at all.  And being a skilled naval aviator doesn't enable you to escape these very human limitations. 

 

And there are far more plausible explanations of the navy videos. The videos were all infrared, and experts have pointed out the "objects" are consistent with lens flare, glare, and heat emissions. The  "maneuvers" are consistent with the source camera moving, not the "object". 

 

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/military/story/2021-05-29/navy-ufo-videos-skeptics

 

 

So the evidence isn't just not conclusive, it's not evidence of aliens or even secret military craft in any shape or form.  More videos like these prove nothing other than our video recording systems have flaws, our eyes have flaws, and they can combine to make us see things that aren't even there. Even if you could find similar videos that had compelling evidence it wasn't a lens flare, or infrared heat emission, and shows similar incredible acceleration and velocities now you have to explain why there is no sonic boom and no ionized atmosphere? How can it be a physical object at all given its passing through trillions of Nitrogen/Oxygen atoms without affecting them?

 

So then we arrive back at the supernatural and the question goes back to, why not gods or ghosts or holograms? What evidence is there that aliens is any better an explanation? 

 

 

Exactly.  Unexplained things would have been angels or demons 500 years ago, it would of been the Gods 2000 years ago or maybe fairies or gnomes before that, its space aliens now.  It is possible likely that our understanding of existence is still extremely primitive and that over the next 500 years we will grow our scientific understanding more than we have in the last 500 years.  Maybe Alex Jones's "interdimensional beings" will be closer to the truth of what has visited us than lifeforms from another star system or maybe something else entirely.  I have a feeling (based on nothing but my opinion) that intelligent life is rarer than most assume.  I base this on the fact that in >2B years we are the most advanced species to evolve on earth and if an comet hadn't punched the dinosaurs ticket it might not have happened at all ever.  Also it would be so easy for humanity to wipe itself out even now long before we are capable of interstellar travel and making ourselves extinct will become easier and easier as time goes on. Other intelligent species must hit the point where they can kill themselves off long before they hit the point where they can travel between the stars. I think it is possible we are the most intelligent species which exists in the Milkyway Galaxy at this current time or if there are others they too may kill themselves off before mastering interstellar travel.

  

[Thrifty3000]

I’m the type who will be skeptical of UFOs until I’m personally beamed into a flying saucer and probed by aliens.

 

With that said, in the words of our ol’ buddy Chuck Munger, it feels like there’s a bit of simple pain avoiding denial going on in this thread.

 

Even though none of us have seen credible evidence of aliens, I do think there is credible evidence that:

 

- there has been a strong stigma against reporting UAP in the United States.

 

- there appears to be a concerning amount of tax money being spent outside the reach of congress - presumably under the guise of top secret alien-related initiatives. Two of our congressmen strongly expressed concerns with this during last week’s hearing, and one went so far as to threaten the Holman rule if he continues to get run around from defense officials. (This is actually where I think the recent crackdown could provide the best drama. I put low odds on proving aliens exist, and very high odds on learning that some crooked government insiders/contractors found a clever way to pocket billions of dollars of defense department budget with practically no accountability.)

 

- despite what several posters claim there does appear to be a number of reasonably credible sources with loads of reasonably credible evidence worthy of further investigation. Examples:

 

1) If you haven’t watched the recent congressional testimony of three reasonably credible witnesses check it out. I think they presented their cases well.

 

2) South American cultures do not have the same alien stigma that North Americans have. Their governments have been open about having military groups dedicated to UFO investigation/intelligence for years. They have made cases public and released videos, etc.

 

3) Following the US’s opening up about UAP in 2017 other governments that had long vehemently denied UFOs started changing their stories. Japan was probably the most notable.

 

3) While we are all fanatical about analyzing investments, there are a large number of fanatics that enjoy spending their time searching for aliens. One such person I’ve recently learned about is a retired ER doctor that claims to have encountered a UAP over 3 decades ago outside Boon North Carolina. He started a foundation and devoted the last 33 years to building a network of over 700 whistleblowers and witnesses, and a trove of over 7 terabytes of documentation/evidence. He has been consulting congress and intelligence agencies and has recently turned over all of his data. He is currently trying to make it public. (Don’t get me wrong, plenty of the stuff this guy says sounds completely crackpot to me, but a couple of his most crackpot theories were echoed by others in last week’s congressional hearing.)

 

Long story short, congress needs to figure out if some crooks in the defense department should face the firing squad, and also, it’s probably too early to write off hundreds of witnesses and whistleblowers that have risked their lives, careers and reputations to call attention to concerns the world is just now starting to take seriously.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Thrifty3000

[ValueArb]

19 hours ago, Thrifty3000 said:

I’m the type who will be skeptical of UFOs until I’m personally beamed into a flying saucer and probed by aliens.

 

With that said, in the words of our ol’ buddy Chuck Munger, it feels like there’s a bit of simple pain avoiding denial going on in this thread.

 

Even though none of us have seen credible evidence of aliens, I do think there is credible evidence that:

 

- there has been a strong stigma against reporting UAP in the United States.

 

So what? There is also a strong stigma against reporting angels and ghosts, does that imply all three are real?

 

19 hours ago, Thrifty3000 said:

 

- there appears to be a concerning amount of tax money being spent outside the reach of congress - presumably under the guise of top secret alien-related initiatives. Two of our congressmen strongly expressed concerns with this during last week’s hearing, and one went so far as to threaten the Holman rule if he continues to get run around from defense officials. (This is actually where I think the recent crackdown could provide the best drama. I put low odds on proving aliens exist, and very high odds on learning that some crooked government insiders/contractors found a clever way to pocket billions of dollars of defense department budget with practically no accountability.)

 

There is always congressional grand-standing. No one has offered any credible evidence there is billions in spending on this.

 

19 hours ago, Thrifty3000 said:

 

- despite what several posters claim there does appear to be a number of reasonably credible sources with loads of reasonably credible evidence worthy of further investigation. Examples:

 

1) If you haven’t watched the recent congressional testimony of three reasonably credible witnesses check it out. I think they presented their cases well.

 

All of their evidence was hearsay and hearsay of hearsay. Beyond Gruch's self serving, vague and non-specific testimony you have a naval aviator talking about unidentified objects that are commonly witnessed by pilots, military and commercial. As I've pointed out, human vision and memory are inherently unreliable. An airliner 20 miles away can look like a silver tube, a disc, or to be rapidly changing shape, based on the lighting and weather conditions and your visual acuity and cleanliness and clarity of your windows and sun glasses. 

 

And Fravor's testimony is also a mix of hearsay (other pilots saw what I saw) and he could present no physical evidence of it. Again, what he thinks he saw and what he actually saw may be different things. And if the tic-tac was exactly as he described and performed as he claimed, it could not be a physical object due to the lack of sonic boom and atmospheric plasma trail.

 

19 hours ago, Thrifty3000 said:

 

2) South American cultures do not have the same alien stigma that North Americans have. Their governments have been open about having military groups dedicated to UFO investigation/intelligence for years. They have made cases public and released videos, etc.

 

And many of those videos have been debunked. Thats what the UFO cultists don't tell you.

 

19 hours ago, Thrifty3000 said:

 

3) Following the US’s opening up about UAP in 2017 other governments that had long vehemently denied UFOs started changing their stories. Japan was probably the most notable.

 

Again UAP is no different than UFO. It's not an acknowledgment of aliens, its just an acknowledgment that we can't identify everything we see. Some UAPs may be advanced drones from other countries, we should always be open minded and investigate them so we don't end up being surprised by balloons overflying our military bases.

 

19 hours ago, Thrifty3000 said:

 

3) While we are all fanatical about analyzing investments, there are a large number of fanatics that enjoy spending their time searching for aliens. One such person I’ve recently learned about is a retired ER doctor that claims to have encountered a UAP over 3 decades ago outside Boon North Carolina. He started a foundation and devoted the last 33 years to building a network of over 700 whistleblowers and witnesses, and a trove of over 7 terabytes of documentation/evidence. He has been consulting congress and intelligence agencies and has recently turned over all of his data. He is currently trying to make it public. (Don’t get me wrong, plenty of the stuff this guy says sounds completely crackpot to me, but a couple of his most crackpot theories were echoed by others in last week’s congressional hearing.)

 

One turd in your soup means it's no longer soup. Mixing in crackpot with what is claimed to be evidence should make you very skeptical of their other "evidence". And "trying to make it public"? The internet has been around for decades, putting terabytes online has been trivial for most of it.

 

And we don't need even 7 terabytes more grainy footage of flying objects too far away to make out any specific detail on, so that they could easily be balloons, drones, airplanes, etc. The bar for "evidence" is so low in the UAP/UFO community its just tedious. 

 

19 hours ago, Thrifty3000 said:

 

Long story short, congress needs to figure out if some crooks in the defense department should face the firing squad, and also, it’s probably too early to write off hundreds of witnesses and whistleblowers that have risked their lives, careers and reputations to call attention to concerns the world is just now starting to take seriously.

 

A firing squad? Risking lives? Methinks you are not "the type who will be skeptical of UFOs until I’m personally beamed into a flying saucer and probed by aliens." as your bar for convincing seems incredibly low. 

 

Again to quote Carl Sagan, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Where is all the physical evidence from all the crashes and all the bodies? Anyone who presents the first physical evidence of an alien encounter will win eternal fame and lucrative rewards, the risk reward of disclosure is massively weighted to rewards. Grusch hasn't' presented a shred of evidence yet he's going to have a very comfortable retirement doing paid appearances and writing UFO books.

 

Lastly, what every UFO fanatic ignores is there is already a significant scientific effort into finding and contacting aliens. It's called SETI. The only reason SETI scientists aren't invited to hearings is they will tell you that they can almost always find pretty mundane explanations for almost all UFO videos and haven't been able to find any physical evidence, ever, from these claimed encounters.

Edited August 2, 2023 by ValueArb
SETI

[Intelligent_Investor]

I think 2 things can both be true: we are not the only intelligent beings in the universe (I think it would be extremely arrogant to assume we are the only intelligent species in all of time and space), and that even if 1) is true, we have never been visited by them and the "UFO" sightings are other phenomenon

[Sweet]

41 minutes ago, Intelligent_Investor said:

I think 2 things can both be true: we are not the only intelligent beings in the universe (I think it would be extremely arrogant to assume we are the only intelligent species in all of time and space), and that even if 1) is true, we have never been visited by them and the "UFO" sightings are other phenomenon

Why is it extremely arrogant to assume we could be alone in the universe but not to assume that there is other intelligent life?

 

Edited August 2, 2023 by Sweet

[rkbabang]

1 hour ago, Sweet said:

Why is it extremely arrogant to assume we could be alone in the universe but not to assume that there is other intelligent life?

 

 

It is pretty unlikely we are the only intelligent beings in the universe, but I think it is far more likely that 1) we are the only intelligent beings in the Milky Way Galaxy; and 2) No beings exist anywhere with the technology for intergalactic travel.  In which case we are for all intents and purposes very alone.

 

[spartansaver]

13 minutes ago, rkbabang said:

 

It is pretty unlikely we are the only intelligent beings in the universe, but I think it is far more likely that 1) we are the only intelligent beings in the Milky Way Galaxy; and 2) No beings exist anywhere with the technology for intergalactic travel.  In which case we are for all intents and purposes very alone.

 

According to NASA there are ~300M potentially habitable planets in the milky way. That's a lot of chances for smart life to pop up. 

 

I've always been doubtful that aliens have crashed on earth. They have good enough technology to travel from a planet light years away but they crash? Maybe we've spotted UFO's, I'm less certain around that. 

 

If physics holds up as we understand it today (can't travel faster than speed of light), we likely won't ever meet any other intelligent life.  

[Sweet]

42 minutes ago, rkbabang said:

 

It is pretty unlikely we are the only intelligent beings in the universe, but I think it is far more likely that 1) we are the only intelligent beings in the Milky Way Galaxy; and 2) No beings exist anywhere with the technology for intergalactic travel.  In which case we are for all intents and purposes very alone.

 

I posted a video further up.  Not sure if anyone watched it - guess not given replies so far.

 

Even if there many trillions of habitable planets, if the chances of life of any kind forming is 10^-100 then it’s more likely there isn’t life in the universe.   That’s not even the probability of intelligent life forming.

 

Since nobody knows what the chances of life forming are, then nobody can truly say one way or another.

 

All of this explained in the video posted.

To call it arrogant to believe we might be alone is a view I don’t understand.  It’s equally arrogant to think you know what the chances of life are of forming and infer from that intelligent life must exist elsewhere.

 

I certainly hope there is intelligent life out there, would be one lonely universe if there wasn’t.  If was forced to guess I would guess that there is life too but it’s a total guess.

 

Edited August 2, 2023 by Sweet

[rkbabang]

13 minutes ago, Sweet said:

I posted a video further up.  Not sure if anyone watched it - guess not given replies so far.

 

Even if there many trillions of habitable planets, if the chances of life of any kind forming is 10^-100 then it’s more likely there isn’t life in the universe.   That’s not even the probability of intelligent life forming.

 

Since nobody knows what the chances of life forming are, then nobody can truly say one way or another.

 

All of this explained in the video posted.

To call it arrogant to believe we might be alone is a view I don’t understand.  It’s equally arrogant to think you know what the chances of life are of forming and infer from that intelligent life must exist elsewhere.

 

I certainly hope there is intelligent life out there, would be one lonely universe if there wasn’t.  If was forced to guess I would guess that there is life too but it’s a total guess.

 

 

 

My line of thinking is that a lot of the variables in the Drake Equation are completely unknown.  You can easily put in numbers which make the chances much less than 1 in 300M.   There are so many potentials for great filters. Life starting to begin with, intelligent life evolving, evolved intelligent life that doesn't go extinct after discovering Fission and Fusion, intelligent life that doesn't go extinct after creating strong AI, on and on and on....   Then you have to factor in the chances not only that they exist and that they are capable of interstellar travel, but that they somehow found us and came here.  It would be astounding if the chances of all of that were less than 1 in 10 billion.

 

Edited August 2, 2023 by rkbabang

[Sweet]

41 minutes ago, rkbabang said:

 

 

My line of thinking is that a lot of the variables in the Drake Equation are completely unknown.  You can easily put in numbers which make the chances much less than 1 in 300M.   There are so many potentials for great filters. Life starting to begin with, intelligent life evolving, evolved intelligent life that doesn't go extinct after discovering Fission and Fusion, intelligent life that doesn't go extinct after creating strong AI, on and on and on....   Then you have to factor in the chances not only that they exist and that they are capable of interstellar travel, but that they somehow found us and came here.  It would be astounding if the chances of all of that were less than 1 in 10 billion.

 

The whole thing is mind blowing.  My brain isn’t capable of understanding the vastness of space of the understanding the sheer scale of some of these probabilities.

 

Bringing it back down to earth.  Biologist Craig Venter who worked to sequence the human genome has also been working of trying to understand the minimal number of genes for life.

 

Right now, for a living cell to exist under controlled, aka ‘perfect’ environmental conditions, they believe a cell needs 473 genes coded for on just over 500,000 DNA base pairs.

 

For those genes to work the DNA base pairs have to be in the right order to produce functioning proteins, because if even one protein doesn't function correctly the cell dies, or cannot reproduce and dies from old age.  
 

Randomly having those DNA base pairs of the 473 genes in the correct order to function has probability of 4 ^ 500,000.

 

On top of that you need a core set of proteins to coexist simultaneously to the DNA to metabolise food for energy.  Let’s assume 200 of the 473 genes produce proteins which must be present from time point zero, and the average protein is 200 amino acids which also need to be in the right order.  The probability of that also being present randomly is 20 ^ 40,000.

 

The probability of the DNA and protein machinery required for life to randomly orientate correctly = (4 ^ 500,000) x (20 ^ 40,000).

 

Sure there is probably some flex in the coding and arrangements so move the decimal place to the left a bunch.  It’s still astronomical randomness for DNA and protein to just be in the right order.

 

That’s assuming the DNA base pairs and amino acids are present in the environment, that these genes and proteins coexist in the same area, and they are randomly gets engulfed in a lipid layer to form a cell.  It also assumes no competing forces are working to destroy them like high heat, or acids etc.

 

Life really is amazing.

 

 

Edited August 2, 2023 by Sweet

[ValueArb]

Abiogenesis is a fascinating topic, and I hope we will have some detailed evidence of how it occurred before I die.

 

One theory is that I’m going to butcher here but I really like is to blame it on the moon. When the earth formed it was very hot for a hundred million years or so. The moon was about ten times closer and earth was rotating much faster, days were as short as three hours.

 

So as the oceans formed you had these immense tides racing across the earths hot surface where they’d create massive  tidal pools evaporating from the heat until refreshed a few hours later. The oceans would have been full of amino acids and they would have been combining rapidly given the heat energy in these hot pools and then flung back into the ocean next tidal surge. So the numbers of combinations over many millions of years would have been incredible.

 

At some point some of the combinations create forms that can self replicate. And over many more millions of years some combine in sheets, and then one day a sheet encloses fully enough to create a cell, maybe with different self replicating proteins trapped inside it. And there we go.

[Sweet]

7 hours ago, ValueArb said:

Abiogenesis is a fascinating topic, and I hope we will have some detailed evidence of how it occurred before I die.

 

One theory is that I’m going to butcher here but I really like is to blame it on the moon. When the earth formed it was very hot for a hundred million years or so. The moon was about ten times closer and earth was rotating much faster, days were as short as three hours.

 

So as the oceans formed you had these immense tides racing across the earths hot surface where they’d create massive  tidal pools evaporating from the heat until refreshed a few hours later. The oceans would have been full of amino acids and they would have been combining rapidly given the heat energy in these hot pools and then flung back into the ocean next tidal surge. So the numbers of combinations over many millions of years would have been incredible.

 

At some point some of the combinations create forms that can self replicate. And over many more millions of years some combine in sheets, and then one day a sheet encloses fully enough to create a cell, maybe with different self replicating proteins trapped inside it. And there we go.

It could be something like, it might have to be something like that, but we don’t know either.

 

The odds of life self generating in lab conditions will be much higher than outside a lab where you have a range of factors working against the formation of life.

 

I bring up the immense odds of life occurring as a counterpoint to the view that it’s obvious that the universe is full of life.  I tried calculating (4^500000)x(20^40000) and it won’t compute - just gives infinity.

 

The process probably needs a non-random element, i.e. something innate in physics, chemistry, that causes these molecules to form in a way that it removes a lot of randomness.  Even then the odds are going to be big.

[Spekulatius]

Brandolinis law always comes to my mind when I see these UFO theories. That stuff was popular since at least the 70‘s and flares up in popularity from time to time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law

 

 

The conspiracy crowd seems to think that the onus is on science and now the government to debunk this stuff. That not how science works, you can’t really disprove something (in most cases)l the burden of proof is on those who make a claim.

 

But anyhow, I enjoy these things but regard them as entertainment.

[Intelligent_Investor]

Assuming that we are the only intelligent life out there is arrogant because you are assuming we are the ultimate outlier: there are over 200 billion stars in the Milky Way and there are over 200 billion galaxies in the known universe. That is 40 sextillion stars, if the possibility of life is even one in one trillion, then there are still over 40 billion star systems out there with life. The scale of the universe is so large that the probability of life would need to be so miniscule that we would have needed to overcome a greater than 1 in 40 sextillion chance for us to be the only life ever. If assuming we or our planet is special enough to overcome those odds isn't arrogant, then I don't know what is

Edited August 3, 2023 by Intelligent_Investor

[rkbabang]

54 minutes ago, Intelligent_Investor said:

Assuming that we are the only intelligent life out there is arrogant because you are assuming we are the ultimate outlier: there are over 200 billion stars in the Milky Way and there are over 200 billion galaxies in the known universe. That is 40 sextillion stars, if the possibility of life is even one in one trillion, then there are still over 40 billion star systems out there with life. The scale of the universe is so large that the probability of life would need to be so miniscule that we would have needed to overcome a greater than 1 in 40 sextillion chance for us to be the only life ever. If assuming we or our planet is special enough to overcome those odds isn't arrogant, then I don't know what is

 

 

I think we can discount ever meeting anyone from another galaxy.  So we are only talking about the Milky Way.  Not all 200 Billion stars have habitable planets fit for life.  Not all habitable planets have a large moon for protection.  It is certainly possible that we are the only intelligent lifeforms at the moment in the Milky Way and even we have no reasonable means to travel between the stars.  There is nothing arrogant about it.  We just don't know.  Anyone who claims to know is lying to you or lying to themselves.  I put contactable ETs in the same category as god(s).  People want to believe, so they do.