My theory on what is or isn't out there.

This is a post I originally made on the A&UFO forum, inside what appears to be a largely dead topic and I kind of wanted to share my thoughts, receive feedback, and possibly debate it. I feel it's more appropriate in this forum anyway, where perhaps the responses won't be quite as emotional (in the sense that people that feel they've experienced ET phenomena tend not to care about arguments like mine, and debating it there becomes pointless). I'm not looking for anything in particular, just your thoughts, comments, agree, disagree, etc.

There are an incredible array of circumstances that must align in an improbably specific way for the genesis of life in the (only) method we are familiar with. With that said, the sheer multitude of star systems and galaxies in the universe helps to mitigate the seemingly insurmountable odds AGAINST the formation of life. If even .01% of planets held life, that would still amount to a very large number of inhabited planets. I'd bet the farm that we are not alone.

The question complicates when one factors in time. The universe exists on a scale of billions of years. Humans exist on a scale of thousands. What % of all the species that ever lived existed millions or billions of years in the past, and what % of them evolved to a point where they're capable of preventing their own extinction and thus becoming functionally immortal as a species? Will we be the first?

The reason I postulate we MAY be the first (in our galaxy) is because we, as a species, are on our way to immortality both through biotechnology and robotics. And we'll have achieved this on a timescale, again, in the thousands of years rather than millions or billions. With the continued exponential acceleration of our collective technological prowess, within a hundred thousand years we could be on our way to being a type 3 civilization fully utilizing all the resources in our galaxy. At some point, individual humans will become immortal, our procreation and proliferation will greatly accelerate, and we will be sending self-replicating drones to every corner of the galaxy to colonize and extract resources. This again will all be done on a timescale that is insignificant on the time scale of the universe, even if it takes us a million years to reach this point, which it won't. What I'm getting at: In the billions of years our universe has existed, assuming that our path of evolution is "average" in development milestones, where are all the type 3 civilizations? One must not exist in our galaxy, or we're still yet somehow unable to detect that massive energy drain that would be occurring.

This either means most species extinguish before they reach omnipotence (which is foreboding for us humans), or we're exceedingly rare in our pursuit of it.

And the truth is, noone is giving humans enough credit for what we've figured out about ourselves and the universe. For all we know, we could be amongst the most technologically advanced species out there. We have both quantum understanding and nuclear technology amongst many other important things; this could be at the far side of the bell curve when compared to other species in our galaxy. The problem is that nobody wants to think this way because it's not romantic. We want very desperately to see ourselves as a fledgling species amongst a great cosmic megaopolis as we've been conditioned by years of great sci-fi that portrays the universe in such a way. While I'm including myself in that desire, I can't let it blind my ability to think rationally about what may or may not be our place in the galaxy, if not universe.

Edit: Just wanted to add, I do absolutely believe there is alien life in our galaxy. I simply believe, however, that a large % of it either existed far in the past and expired, or are along the lines of the Navi from Avatar if we divide exobiology as we do biology on earth, between "animals" and "humans" (beings without complex cognitive abilities and beings with it, whatever form they may take). I.E, whatever species sits atop that particular planet's food chain and draws the most parallels to us.

reply to post by SaosinEngaged


Well said, mate, I would very much tend to agree with you. Reminds me of Asimov's Foundations series, in which he exposes the evolution and downfall of mankind.

In a non-fiction, science essay, Asimov also shows why humans were the only specie on Earth to evolve to where we are now. He states that although other forms of life are possible, technological advancement is proportional to a very few characteristics which only seldom, if not one, species will share. For instance, dolphin are very intelligent. But steam motors require the invention of fire, something which dolphins cannot achieve because 1: they live in water, and 2: they have fins and cannot rub two sticks or two silex together. In environment without those material, fire will also be hard to achieve even IF the life form which inhabits these environment could theoretically be capable of creating fire.

Fascinating, really.

This was an extremely well thought out OP, and I happen to agree with it almost in its entirety. I think too may people define life and even intelligent life to mean equal to or more advanced than us. For all we really know, it could very well be that all other life on every planet supporting life is less than or equal to our existence. Perhaps even extremely less advanced.

This is why I will continue to remain a skeptic on all things UFO. I absolutely believe there is other life out there. Somewhere. I have no reason to believe any of those life forms possess the ability to travel to Earth. And I also believe in a higher power. call it God or whatever you want. Not the biblical version, but something. And as such, I don't believe that "God" created the entire universe, put man on Earth and said, "Well look at that. nailed it perfectly on the first try. No need to use the rest of these planets."

That being said, I will never challenge or question those who claim to have had an encounter, abduction, etc. Only they know what they saw and it isn't my place to tell them they are wrong. I don't personally believe we are being visited by anything, but I don't walk in others shoes either.

Good thoughts.

In my mind there is no question whatsoever that we are not the only intelligent life forms in the universe. I wonder though, what percentage of extinct alien species were responsible for their own demise and extinction - which is just what I think will be the eventual case for the human race.

...of course I hope that is NOT true. But really, our technology seems to be evolving more quickly than our souls (for lack of a better term). Maybe this recent surge in technological advances is a result of finding, or being given, alien technology. For our race to survive our own scientific creations we need a serious moral and spiritual overhaul.

I tend to believe that cloaking technologies are pretty basic to species that could travel faster than light.

Add this to some sort of "prime directive", it's no wonder we can't see any other civilizations.
What simpler way to withhold the prime directive than cloaking every planets with life from each other?

If we are ever to attain type 2-3 civilization, I'm sure we will have a lot of answers.

usernameconspiracy
This was an extremely well thought out OP, and I happen to agree with it almost in its entirety. I think too may people define life and even intelligent life to mean equal to or more advanced than us. For all we really know, it could very well be that all other life on every planet supporting life is less than or equal to our existence. Perhaps even extremely less advanced.

This is why I will continue to remain a skeptic on all things UFO. I absolutely believe there is other life out there. Somewhere. I have no reason to believe any of those life forms possess the ability to travel to Earth. And I also believe in a higher power. call it God or whatever you want. Not the biblical version, but something. And as such, I don't believe that "God" created the entire universe, put man on Earth and said, "Well look at that. nailed it perfectly on the first try. No need to use the rest of these planets."

That being said, I will never challenge or question those who claim to have had an encounter, abduction, etc. Only they know what they saw and it isn't my place to tell them they are wrong. I don't personally believe we are being visited by anything, but I don't walk in others shoes either.

Great post.

I am a staunch agnostic, however I fully realize that the further theoretical physics takes us, the closer we get to some pretty bizarre scenarios to explain our universe. Among them is the real possibility of a god or manipulator at the helm of its creation. I subscribe to multiverse theory, and with it comes a myriad of possible explanations/interpretations for its existence.

Secondly, I only take "issue" with people who claim to have experienced abductions amongst other phenomena when it causes them to expect everyone else to believe every word of what they say. As I've never experienced such a thing, no matter how compelling their case/argument I will never understand or comprehend what they've experienced and can only apply my own rational thoughts to their situation. And first to mind comes sleep paralysis, in which I've experienced terrible instances of myself (it can be truly frightening and feel very real) and can only speculate that it is the root cause of many such reports.

I try to keep an open mind, but I cannot shut down the part of my brain that fully embraces occam's razor.

The thing that turns me off is that there are many who practice a sort of "ET worship" that annoys me in much the same manner as the ardent and often ignorant worship shown by many followers (but not all!) of the earth based religions.

cosmikDebris
Good thoughts.

In my mind there is no question whatsoever that we are not the only intelligent life forms in the universe. I wonder though, what percentage of extinct alien species were responsible for their own demise and extinction - which is just what I think will be the eventual case for the human race.

...of course I hope that is NOT true. But really, our technology seems to be evolving more quickly than our souls (for lack of a better term). Maybe this recent surge in technological advances is a result of finding, or being given, alien technology. For our race to survive our own scientific creations we need a serious moral and spiritual overhaul.

Yup. Exactly what I was getting at. Either these species extinguish from either external or internal factors. That is, either by cosmic extinction events, or by somehow exterminating one another. Don't forget, the human desire to conquer and our proneness to violence are both influenced by our evolution. Theorizing that other lifeforms evolve under similar evolutionary pressures should suggest the same proneness to imperialistic/militaristic behavior which, I think, is the reason why Hawking came out and said we shouldn't want to meet ET.

reply to post by SaosinEngaged


I agree with most of your post, but I have an issue with one (key) paragraph:

we, as a species, are on our way to immortality both through biotechnology and robotics. And we'll have achieved this on a timescale, again, in the thousands of years rather than millions or billions. With the continued exponential acceleration of our collective technological prowess, within a hundred thousand years we could be on our way to being a type 3 civilization fully utilizing all the resources in our galaxy.

One hears this a lot from hopeful futurists, but I don't see any evidence that it will, or even can happen.

There is no such thing as immortality. There is, at best, the very-long-term preservation of some kind of analogue of a human being: a computer program stored in a very durable substrate. That is not a human being in any meaningful sense. Take away the biological component and it ceases to be human.

What drives us? What motivates our behaviour? Even the desire to gain abstract knowledge has biological roots. Take away our bodies and you take away our feelings. Of course you could probably program artificial emotions into your computer program, but that would be philosophically meaningless and lacking in any practical purpose.

Your human-analogue computer programs may well take over the Galaxy, but that will mean nothing to the by-then-extinct human race. Even the kudos (or the opprobrium) due to those who created the inheritors of the Galaxy will no longer be of any interest to us.

Interstellar travel for biological entities is almost certainly impossible given the time-constraints you alluded to in your post. And a Galaxy buzzing with machine intelligences may be fascinating to someone with the soul of an engineer, but I suspect it would fail to excite most other people, as it utterly fails to excite me.

Clarke's other quote (among many) "Either we are the only intelligent species in the galaxy or we aren't. Either option is mind boggling"
Sometimes the UFO experiences seem too much like future versions of humanity. There is no reason for use to expect the same physical form from an ET. Could they have early malfunctioning drives that cause an unintended cross time trip?
There is no reason the ET could not exist. The real problem is are we co-existing in the same time frame? With the universe being this old they could have come and gone billions of years ago in a far away galaxy. Or they could be right next door to us. They could also be a little pile of slime now taking another few million years to appear on the galactic stage.
The speed of light is a fixed limit so far. If we found that intelligent ET was merely 100 light years away what we do? Until we climb off this ball of mud and find a way to around the speed limit they would only be a rumor. We will have no way to visit them for the next 200 years or so.

Speaking of "Mind Boggling", the latest data on exoplanets shows we are in a galaxy with tens of billions of planets that would be able to harbor life as we know it.

Most people call upon the size of the entire universe, billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars, stating that the sheer numbers says it all: life should be out there, and intelligent life too.

However, let us ratchet down a bit, and just think of our own galaxy as your OP is talking about.

We have a LOT of room to work with here that can lend to so much speculation that it would be hard to prove anyone wrong on a multitude of of suggestions. Maybe we are the first.......

Or maybe there are many that are at the exact same level we are now. If that is the case, then we are not the "first", but due to the vast distances between stars, and the vast size of our galaxy, communication and being aware of each may not be possible right now.

There could even be a multitude of civilizations out there literally among billions of worlds in our own galaxy alone, who are more advanced than us, but simply are not close to us. They may even be space faring species, but where as they have colonized their solar system (that's more advanced than we are at the moment), they do not have interstellar travel.

Or maybe they do have interstellar travel, but it's limited: only so many light years can they travel, and Earth is thousands or tens of thousands of light years away from them. We wouldn't know about them, nor us possibly at this point.

Or, as someone else has pointed out: maybe they (intelligent life) is all through our galaxy, but we do not know how to detect them, or their technology right now. Maybe they practice a sort of Star Trek "Prime Directive" and we're offlimits.

Or maybe we are certainly NOT the first......but there are many other beings out there in our own galaxy that are Type 3 or even higher.........but really have no reason to even notice us....much less make contact.

Think about it: we might be nothing more than ants to them. How often do you stop to talk to a ant nest?

Or you could be right. We are the most advanced at this point right now. Luck of the draw: other's were more advanced but were wiped out for some reason, either natural, or by their own devices. There may be others out there, but while we're using jets, rockets, iPhones and PCs, they are still using spears to hunt down prey and are nothing more than hunter gather's at this time. Or maybe they are just now sailing around on their world in sailing ships, discovering new lands.

The beauty of it all is: just our galaxy alone is so big with so many stars with billions and billions of planets, that their is room for many of these ideas.....

Until we finally get out there and find out what is going on that is.

reply to post by datasdream

"Either we are the only intelligent species in the galaxy or we aren't. Either option is mind boggling"

What he actually said was

Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying. Source

reply to post by Astyanax


Thank you for the correction. I captured the idea of his quote but not exact.

>>
[...] and what % of them evolved to a point where they're capable of preventing their own extinction and thus becoming functionally immortal as a species? Will we be the first?
>>

Let's for the sake of debate assume that accounts of aliens, entities, other-worldly beings including angels etc. are true.

Do you notice something?

Those beings, whether some call them aliens or others see them within a religious context seem to have indeed mastered what is still beyond our grasp: They reside OUTSIDE our physical world/reality. They are reported to be able to shift from one "reality" into another..they can enter and leave our physical reality at will.

(Shamans etc. can see them when they alter their mind using certain techniques like trance or certain drugs, ways to remove the limits imposed on our brains)

For me this is evidence that we may INDEED be dealing with intelligences which are SO ADVANCED that they literally have become "immortal", they are beyond of physicality, they are beyond of our concepts of space, time and the physics which apply for us.

If those beings/entities really exist they evolved to such an extent they really deserve the term "immortal". They evolved having at some point, maybe billions of years ago left their physical body....maybe they never even developed one and their evolution started entirely different than ours. Of course I can only speculate. They would be what we call "spirits" maybe, or mind/intelligence entities which exist without the need of a body..which IMHO would be the definition of the highest form of evolution a "species" can achieve, to exist in the purest form, as mind only or at least without the crutch of a physical body.

For me this would be a logical step, assuming millions, if not billions of evolution ahead of us..what would be the greatest and ultimate goal but an existence beyond physicality?

The irony and the funny thing...this is EXACTLY what people report when they talk about what they consider "ghosts", the other one "angel", the other "demon"...others "gods" ...it doesn't matter...those entities ARE reported by people, religions and belief systems are BASED on such things and millions, billions of people have some beliefs which to some extent involve such "other-worldly" beings.

In other words: Your "immortal" beings might be already here, for a long, long time, they might "zap" the galaxy from one instant to the other since concepts like "distance" for them don't exist. Open your eyes, read old texts, try to see what so called "religious" texts REALLY say. They ARE already here.