E.T.s. Turn out the lights. They may not be coming...

Has ET already dismissed us as unintelligent?
Posted on Wednesday, 4 June, 2014 | c/o CNET
www.unexplained-mysteries.com...

Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson has suggested that we may already be in a post alien contact era.

While SETI focuses its efforts on finding evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence out in space, there are some who believe that aliens may have already been visiting us for some time.

In a recent interview with MSNBC, astrophysicist and Cosmos presenter Neil DeGrasse Tyson has put forward a third possibility, one that most of us aren't going to like. The concept centers around the fact that it is only by our own definition that we have determined what constitutes "intelligent" life in the universe.

"My great fear is that we've in fact been visited by intelligent aliens, but they chose not to make contact, on the conclusion that there's no sign of intelligent life on Earth," he said.

It has long been speculated that our understanding of the universe may be severely limited by our perceptual capabilities. Perhaps to a sufficiently intelligent alien species a human being appears no more intelligent than an insect - a primitive life form barely capable of comprehension.

"The audacity of us to even claim we can define intelligence," said Tyson."


Something Ive been saying for a long time...and seconded by Dr. Stanton Freidman in my question to him in the "ASK ME ANYTHING" thread.
Dr. Stanton Freidman's Response: posted on Mar, 10 2014 @ 01:27 PM *reply to post by mysterioustranger

"I don't see big disclosure coming. We seem unwilling to consider ourselves as Earthlings, instead we are totally nationalistic. Nobody speaks for planet Earth." Stanton Freidman

Since they are and have already been here and we don't get that....we should probably not wait up. Not until we at least...WISE UP and change.

a reply to: mysterioustranger

I wrote this in one of my own threads

Imagine an alien race that’s just one billion years more advanced than us, just imagine what they’d be capable of! Now imagine aliens with EIGHT BILLION years head start!!
To us, if we were actually capable of seeing them!, they would be absolutely God like.
To them, we may be little more than lumps of flesh that wobble about noisily.

As for Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I dont trust that man any further than I can spit!

a reply to: mysterioustranger

I respectfully submit to Mr. DeG Tyson that he is mistaken. We have been off the planet and we can make very large bangs with nuclear fission. I don't think we are your garden variety bipedal ape.

Absolutely agree with this. I would say an intergalactic species would view human society the way we view a rat colony.

Or maybe we just failed the "space cash" test?

a reply to: ScientiaFortisDefendit
Respectably though, this could even seem primitive compared to beings that can actual travel light years. Our short life spans may also be another factor. One wouldn't spend time trying to tutor a fruit fly.

I just highly doubt that we have anything to offer them. And in this the only thing they'd bring us is a world full of scared people.

originally posted by: ScientiaFortisDefendit
a reply to: mysterioustranger

I respectfully submit to Mr. DeG Tyson that he is mistaken. We have been off the planet and we can make very large bangs with nuclear fission. I don't think we are your garden variety bipedal ape.

Oh, we've been off the planet? How cute. Maybe they traveled past thousands of galaxies to get here.
Oh, we can blow things up with nuclear bombs? That's cool. Maybe they can annihilate entire solar systems with strategically-placed custom-made black holes.

originally posted by: ScientiaFortisDefendit
a reply to: mysterioustranger

I respectfully submit to Mr. DeG Tyson that he is mistaken. We have been off the planet and we can make very large bangs with nuclear fission. I don't think we are your garden variety bipedal ape.

this may be the case but we are primitive...we still fight with each other over stupidity like race,wealth and religion....we have active wars constantly on various parts of the world...so these actions are hardly stemmed from intelligence

Who cares?

Seriously, stop and think for a moment.

An alien species that is so advanced, that we appear like ants to them......

Okay, soooooooo....what? We just stop being who we are? We just stop trying?

Do the ants that you walk by even notice or care that you are smarter than them?

No. They only notice when you step on the anthill or mess with them.

Normally they just continue to do what they do.

What would we do if every time someone told anyone that they are too stupid and can not learn something, those people that were told that: stopped believing in themselves and simply gave up?

Tyson is a smart man for the most part. And yes, I believe he is most likely correct that somewhere out there in the universe there most like is life so intelligent that we wouldn't even understand that it was there.

However, even if that's the case, and they can't be bothered with us (which might be a good idea when you think about it), I really don't care.

It does not mean that the human race should just stop trying.

a reply to: mysterioustranger

Our current human civilization is still in infancy. Possibly aliens have visited and decided to give us more time to mature. If our current civilization has been around for, let us say 10,000 years (just a guess), maybe they think we need another 10,000 years before they check up on us again. Why do we believe we are ready? It is not our choice. Another 10,000 years to us may seem like a few days to them. So, sure they check in on us from time to time. Sometimes we have been destructive, sometimes we seem very creative, sometimes we get sick, other times we prosper and grow. They, if they exist, have us and our environment under control in perspective to the universe. Here on Earth, we think life and our environment is so effing important, and so effed up, because all we see is what we see.

We are too damn needy already, what would happen if they showed up? We would want, and want, and need, and want. They may be our universal bretheren, but they do not have to care for us like a mother to an infant. This could be a protected upbringing, but maybe this is the Big Leagues of universal life, here on Earth. Either way, we have to survive on our own, not expect someone to love us or empathize with us.

Wouldn't that be more evidence that they would view as as insects or animals... something they wouldn't hesitate to experiment on?

For all we know the aliens could be near literaly just 20 minutes into the future. What if the discovery of Higgs boson or synthetic magnetic monopoles will set off some amazing scientific revolution and within 100 years we will be cruising along the stars? Sure the aliens could have an eight billion headstart. Maybe we need a couple billion years more, too, But it could also be that their headstart is much shorter than we think.

As for finding Earth uninteresting...I presume that life in general is going to be relatively rare in space. Complex life even more so. I don't think that "the locals can only annihilite their whole planet with nuclear explosives" is going to be uninteresting in galatic scale. And sure enough we may be ants. But there are people who study ants for living.

originally posted by: hopenotfeariswhatweneed

originally posted by: ScientiaFortisDefendit
a reply to: mysterioustranger

I respectfully submit to Mr. DeG Tyson that he is mistaken. We have been off the planet and we can make very large bangs with nuclear fission. I don't think we are your garden variety bipedal ape.

this may be the case but we are primitive...we still fight with each other over stupidity like race,wealth and religion....we have active wars constantly on various parts of the world...so these actions are hardly stemmed from intelligence

Not disagreeing, but if they are out there, I don't think they would simply ignore us.

Nice thread.

I think these're the options:
1) No life elsewhere (unlikely, right?)
2) No intelligent life elsewhere (again, seems unlikely)
3) They don't consider contacting us (on an open basis at least) important
4) We haven't met yet because of (unspecified) obstacles preventing it

I think most people go with 4, but this thread is centered on 3.

I usually go with 3, but 4 is possible too. Maybe life is very uncommon and intelligent life even more uncommon, so the nearest intelligent life is too far away. Maybe there's no potential form of interstellar travel that's fast enough. Maybe what we have on the drawing board, like nuclear propulsion, is the best there'll ever be. And maybe it's very hard to get it. Maybe civilizations commonly become extinct before they reach that juncture.

To me option 4 is depressing, but it doesn't have to be, I guess. Maybe we're one of the first intelligent species to emerge. Maybe there's millions more to follow and they'll all be near each other. Further, maybe there's a method of propulsion that can allow us to travel between the stars so fast that we'll be able to travel between the galaxies someday? Option 4 doesn't have to mean the universe is empty of life and/or so challenging we'll always be struggling to find life elsewhere. And in that regard, option 3 isn't much better if every intelligent lifeform is either too inferior or too superior.

Option 3 is weird, though. If every intelligent lifeform is so much more powerful than the next, when will they ever get a chance to meet equals? It'd be very lonely if you could only either meet ants or gods.

Take Earth, for example. We do at least have monkeys and dolphins and magpies and elephants and other creatures. It's not just ants. But where're the demi-gods? Either way, there're no EQUALS, but there's overlapping going on. We can see this clearly, especially in monkeys.

a reply to: jonnywhite

Nice post.

It'd be very lonely if you could only either meet ants or gods.

I don't know about you, but it feels pretty lonely right now from where I sit.

originally posted by: hopenotfeariswhatweneed

originally posted by: ScientiaFortisDefendit
a reply to: mysterioustranger

I respectfully submit to Mr. DeG Tyson that he is mistaken. We have been off the planet and we can make very large bangs with nuclear fission. I don't think we are your garden variety bipedal ape.

this may be the case but we are primitive...we still fight with each other over stupidity like race,wealth and religion....we have active wars constantly on various parts of the world...so these actions are hardly stemmed from intelligence

Or maybe they aren't as intelligent as us and are intimated.... Gotta give you're own species a LITTLE bit of credit damn...

This is why I love Neil deGrasse Tyson. Needless to say, I adored each and every episode of the COSMOS reboot because of this and the fascinating content, but he has this way of presenting a complex idea simply enough to raise questions and spark debate.

If I'm going to be perfectly honest, our race as a whole IS NOT intelligent. Yes we can walk, talk, eat, think and all the rest, but we make the wrong choices. It must be thousands of scientists by now, who've said that we need to look after our one home in the Universe or we'll be up the deep-end of S**t Creek without a paddle to get ourselves out of it. And that's just putting it mildly.

Think on it for a second, we pollute CONSTANTLY. We make the wrong choices both for ourselves (smoking, drinking, crime...etc) and for our planet (littering, landfill, pollutants, radioactive waste/bombs....etc) while relying on current (I will not say "Modern" because that awful day-glow furniture and technology from the 70s was considered such) technology to fix us!

I wouldn't be in the least big surprised if in fact an Alien species or multiple intelligent Extra-Terrestrial races had in fact visited us before, monitored our wrongdoing and mistake making and came up with the (more than likely correct) assumption that we'll end up destroying ourselves.

If and when "disclosure" does in fact happen, and I dearly hope that it DOES, "they" need to tell us what they think. I believe that if an Alien race said we were basically idiots, capable of nothing but damage and chaos, that we could turn it around to prove them wrong.

That's just my 2c.

originally posted by: 3u40r15m

originally posted by: hopenotfeariswhatweneed

originally posted by: ScientiaFortisDefendit
a reply to: mysterioustranger

I respectfully submit to Mr. DeG Tyson that he is mistaken. We have been off the planet and we can make very large bangs with nuclear fission. I don't think we are your garden variety bipedal ape.

this may be the case but we are primitive...we still fight with each other over stupidity like race,wealth and religion....we have active wars constantly on various parts of the world...so these actions are hardly stemmed from intelligence

Or maybe they aren't as intelligent as us and are intimated.... Gotta give you're own species a LITTLE bit of credit damn...

well if they are advanced enough to travel the stars and visit other planets fair to say they at least got past the point of greed,and destroying their planet.....hell as it is NASA's funding is limited as war is more important...so the space race is looking somewhat retarded....we are still burning fossil fuels as thats what the greedy want so any new tech gets hidden away....we have more than half the planet facing starvation on a daily basis....we cannot even look after our own...sure we have intelligent people on the planet but they are sure not the people running the planet....and we measure intelligence based on what we know as a species and that is somewhat limited

ask yourself this if you were on the outside looking in would you come say "hi" or would you fire up the warp drive and move on ?

more to the point any attempted visit has no doubt been intercepted by the military machine and lets face it they are not exactely that freindly

a reply to: mysterioustranger

We really should change our ways but it takes more than one person or even a few hundred on ats to change the worlds ways. (Obviously) They may even decide to turn off our lights if that change doesnt come soon enough. Sad scenario.....

originally posted by: ScientiaFortisDefendit

originally posted by: hopenotfeariswhatweneed

originally posted by: ScientiaFortisDefendit
a reply to: mysterioustranger

I respectfully submit to Mr. DeG Tyson that he is mistaken. We have been off the planet and we can make very large bangs with nuclear fission. I don't think we are your garden variety bipedal ape.

this may be the case but we are primitive...we still fight with each other over stupidity like race,wealth and religion....we have active wars constantly on various parts of the world...so these actions are hardly stemmed from intelligence

Not disagreeing, but if they are out there, I don't think they would simply ignore us.

why not we dismiss ants as an example.....if life is abundant in the universe it is quite possible that we are just boring to them and there are plenty of other places to visit that are far more interesting and likely alot less violent

a reply to: Boscov

The Aliens landed on planet Earth around 4am GMT. They looked around, went errmmm, and left.

We don't really know where our species came from or our complete history on this planet. If we cant understand that then why think we could understand and accept life is elsewhere in the Universe. I would go along with concept we have been and still are being visited. I think those visits though are more along the lines of a duck blind. Watching, observing...