We Are Babies: Why Any Aliens We Contact or Meet Are Likely to Be Very Advanced

originally posted by: CJCrawley
2 billion years older than Earth...

2 billion years from now, Earth will be a scorched, tortured, lifeless rock.

I imagine many of those "older Earths" will suffer a similar fate.

I don't know if the Earth will be scorched and lifeless in 2 Billion years (e.g., it will be a while longer than that before the Sun does that sort of damage to Earth). However, I agree that our civilization may not still not be around in 2 Billion years (rather than our current civilization continuously advancing to become an advanced civilization directly linked back to our current civilization). I think it is more probable that our civilization as we know it will have endings and restarts between now and then.

There may be intelligent creatures who the ancestors of the human species living in 2 billion years (or even a 10th of that time, 200 Million years, which was longer ago that the dinosaurs lived), but it may not be likely that whatever civilization they have will have a direct link back to us -- i.e., not likely for there to be a future civilization that steadily advanced from where we are to become a super-advanced version of our current civilization.

Sure -- some intelligent life may still be around on Earth in 2 Billion years, but (1) that life's civilization may not have a direct lineage back to our current civilization, and (2) that life may not even have a direct lineage back to humans.

Would we even recognize an advanced alien civilization?

We have a narcissistic tendency to anthropomorphize our interpretation of advanced ET species. But what happens when a single characteristic is changed... say curiosity, for example? What if "they" are uninterested in the "outside world"? Does this render them unworthy of the label "advanced"? Wouldn't it make contact unlikely?

Consider a highly intelligent, deep-thinking species so perfectly adapted to their environment with a highly complex and direct ability to communicate with each other such that technology is unnecessary to them. Perhaps a society of cetacean-like creatures living in an ocean environment beneath the crust of an ice planet orbiting a gas giant. Maybe they have everything, from art, mathematics, language, to traditional literature and music... all without technology. The only thing they do not have is an interest in what's beyond the ice. We would likely see them as animals, just as we do terrestrial whales.

originally posted by: elementalgrove
a reply to: JadeStar

It has always cracked me up how many people remain skeptical about highly advanced civilizations.

The hubris that such ignorance can create!

I always felt this was a strawman position to take on this. There are not that many people (virtually no scientists and hardly any people who have even a moderate enough education to understand the size and scope of the universe) who don't think that other advanced civilizations are possible.

They may believe that there isn't enough evidence to be able to claim that other advanced ETs are visiting us in spaceships, but that is a different question altogether. But most people, including most ATSers (even most alien visitation skeptics) feel that is is very possible that other advanced civilizations are out there somewhere in the vast universe.

I mean, the Milky way galaxy is just an anonymous speck compared to the universe, and there could certainly be a highly advanced galactic civilization in some of those other anonymous specks of galaxies elsewhere in the universe.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

yet...many of your scientific "friends" seem to think that it's impossible that we are being visited...by those same "possible" aliens...because we are too far from anything...and it takes such a looooong time to travel here

originally posted by: MarioOnTheFly
a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

yet...many of your scientific "friends" seem to think that it's impossible that we are being visited...by those same "possible" aliens...because we are too far from anything...and it takes such a looooong time to travel here

Most of them think it's unlikely because there's no compelling evidence that we are. Certainly no proof.

a reply to: draknoir2

Most of them think it's unlikely because there's no compelling evidence that we are. Certainly no proof.

If anything...it's highly likely...just not if you're seeing the universe with primitive human eyes. I always thought of scientists as better than that. Observations are there...but our models...as always...don't mimic what is observed. But...we like our models...

originally posted by: MarioOnTheFly
a reply to: draknoir2

Most of them think it's unlikely because there's no compelling evidence that we are. Certainly no proof.

If anything...it's highly likely...just not if you're seeing the universe with primitive human eyes. I always thought of scientists as better than that. Observations are there...but our models...as always...don't mimic what is observed. But...we like our models...

Scientists can be, at times, even more a slave to current dogmas within the community than the general public.


At any rate, in order to gauge its likelihood you would need data... data that you do not have. Nobody does. So until you do, you are just stating a personal opinion.

a reply to: elementalgrove

But then in the two billion years that extraterrestrial civilizations more advanced than our own have potentially existed... where are they now? Why haven't they said hello, they are taking their sweet time.

originally posted by: MarioOnTheFly

yet...many of your scientific "friends" seem to think that it's impossible that we are being visited...

Show me one quote where that is true. No one says it's impossible; there's simply no evidence to support the hypothesis, which means it can't be science.

Observations are there...but our models...as always...don't mimic what is observed. But...we like our models...

Another factually incorrect statement. Models are created to mimic reality. That's the whole point, but hey, whatever floats your boat. You are one of "those" entrenched in the "church of ET".

a reply to: MarsIsRed

Models are created to mimic reality.

LOL...you mean like the IPCC models...right ?

get out of here...

originally posted by: TM62
a reply to: JadeStar

Looking for the book I found this, be looking forward to watching

It's Official:
Syfy Greenlights 'Childhood's End' Miniseries ...
deadline.com/.../childhoods-end-miniseries-syfy-greenlight...
Deadline.com
Sep 3, 2014 - As we scooped last night, Syfy has greenlighted Childhood's End, a six-hour miniseries based on Arthur C. Clarke's classic to premiere in 2015.

OMG that is awesome!!

originally posted by: MarioOnTheFly
a reply to: draknoir2

Most of them think it's unlikely because there's no compelling evidence that we are. Certainly no proof.

If anything...it's highly likely...just not if you're seeing the universe with primitive human eyes. I always thought of scientists as better than that. Observations are there...but our models...as always...don't mimic what is observed. But...we like our models...

I have to disagree here.

What observations are you referring to?

Because nothing in the many UFO reports seems to indicate extraterrestrial visitation to my eyes.

And more damning than that is that the things which would indicate true extraterrestrial visitation: ie: the worldwide networks of privately operated meteor cameras which record anything in the sky that moves and the privately run earth observation satellites do not seem to be logging alien spacecraft as they enter or leave our atmosphere.

One can not claim government cover up here because in the case of the meteor cameras most are run by individuals and in the case of the earth observation satellites, any company with definitive proof of ET visitation would stand to make a decent amount of money off of the photographic proof.

Both would be picking up plenty of UFOs if we were being visited in the numbers people like Richard Dolan allege.

This would seem to rule out an extraterrestrial cause for UFO reports.

So if not UFOs what observations in your mind are you talking about which science is not correlating with ET visitation?

originally posted by: ISeekTruth101
a reply to: elementalgrove

But then in the two billion years that extraterrestrial civilizations more advanced than our own have potentially existed... where are they now? Why haven't they said hello, they are taking their sweet time.

As Michio Kaku says: "When you drive past an ant hill do you stop and approach the ant hill and say, 'I come in peace, I bring you trinkets, I bring you smart phones, I bring you nuclear weapons'?"

a reply to: JadeStar

Fair enough, but ant hills have been openly visited and studied, and have millions of witnesses amongst them, possibly on a weekly basis at least.

originally posted by: MarioOnTheFly
a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

yet...many of your scientific "friends" seem to think that it's impossible that we are being visited...by those same "possible" aliens...because we are too far from anything...and it takes such a looooong time to travel here

I've come across some who say "it is impossible", but it's only a very, very few people who say this. But then again, you can always find a very small number of people who believe (or not believe, as the case may be) almost anything. For example, there is a very small minority of people who think poorly compressed videos show shapshifting reptilians; however, I don't hold those deluded individuals against the entirety of believers of ET visitation.

Sure -- there are some knee-jerk debunkers who say space travel over great distances is impossible, but most people skeptical of alien visitation (including myself) think ET visitation is certainly within the realm of possibility, although there is no compelling evidence to say that it is a fact and is happening.

originally posted by: ISeekTruth101
a reply to: JadeStar

Fair enough, but ant hills have been openly visited and studied, and have millions of witnesses amongst them, possibly on a weekly basis at least.

True. But one must wonder what the ants perceive when they are

a reply to: draknoir2

Yes, there is a high chance that life is out there, maybe even intelligent and highly advanced by our standards. But what if there is none? I know scary thought, but not impossible, right?

Am I an arrogant and ignorant sceptic now?

originally posted by: moebius
a reply to: draknoir2

Yes, there is a high chance that life is out there, maybe even intelligent and highly advanced by our standards. But what if there is none? I know scary thought, but not impossible, right?

Am I an arrogant and ignorant sceptic now?

Is it "Not impossible" that we are alone? No; it's not impossible.
Very highly improbable? I'd like to think so.

Science uses the term "almost surely" or "almost certainly", which has a specific meaning to science. "Almost surely" means that something is highly probable to be true, even if the opposite case can't be 100% disproved.

For example, a scientist would probably say "I think life almost certainly exists elsewhere in the universe". He's not saying it is impossible for it to be the case that there is NO other life (how could he prove that it is impossible for us to be alone until he actually finds that ET life), but he's saying being alone in the universe is highly improbable, given the facts he knows about scope of the universe.

Reply to JadeStar ---

Speculating on how a ET starship would enter our atmosphere...would quite likely be in a stealth mode, approaching from the direction of our Sun, and entering over a sea that is free of radar coverage and meteor cameras. It might still be under starlight photon power from the Sun or other stars photons, thusly having no need to generate it's own plasma photons at the moment of reentry into our atmosphere. The starship could possibly use some king of camouflage that is projected onto the starships hull from some kind of laser holography, with any orbiting observation camera might fail to pickup as a flying solid object.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Thanks, I am aware of scientific terminology.

I just find it very amusing, that someone being open minded to the possibility, that there might be nothing out there, would be called out as ignorant and arrogant.