Alien conflicts

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: JadeStar

I see the whole alien wars/alien conflict idea as so much sci fi

Yes, and haven't you just ruined the poor OP's thread by insensitively banging on about it for about three hundred posts. As if any sensible person didn't know that already. Do you really think there's something to be gained by arguing with diehard UFO cultists and people who think they have been abducted by aliens? What?

(UFO culture is) a projection of our little world, its provincialisms, phobias, dogmas and squabbles onto a universe which is incredibly vast and loaded with resources beyond what most people can even imagine.

The same is true of all fields of human activity, including your vaunted science of exobiology.

Now, for heaven's sake, relax a bit and stop being so humourlessly pedantic. And please stop dragging this thread off topic. If it irks you so much to play the what-if game, why are you on this thread at all? To state the obvious?

Fine. If you don't want me here and if logic and reason have no place among or within speculative threads then I'm done with this forum. I might hang out over in Space Exploration but as you said, my time here in A & U is probably wasted.

It's all entertainment right? Why ruin it with actual science based thinking?

I didn't realize Aliens meant only core story ones....

I know when and where I'm not wanted.

Scdfa - I've sent you a U2U - I do want to hear about your experience in detail but you got your wish, I'm done with Aliens and UFOs.

Jade, I'm not your biggest fan, but I appeal to you to stay. The place is better with you here.

Here are a couple of things on which UFO sceptics and believers can probably both agree:

• If more than one alien race is visiting this planet, then — given the vastness of our Galaxy and the number of stars and planets it must contain — there has to be something unusually interesting about Earth.
  
  
• Whether we are being visited by one race or many, our visitors take a good deal of care to keep out of our sight — not always, to be sure, but most of the time. UFO encounters are rare, and tend to occur in out-of-the way places.

Aliens, it seems, treasure their privacy. We have no idea what they are doing here, on what we like to think of as ‘our' planet. Their intentions are as mysterious to us as they are themselves.

To me, this suggests that whatever it is they have found on Earth that is of such consuming interest to them, it isn’t us.

What might it be, then? An interesting question, but not one I propose to try to answer. The corpus of science fiction provides any number of possibilities already, but none that can be verified.

Let’s leave the question of what it is aside for the moment and ponder an equally interesting problem: if the aliens are interested in Earth, the presence of an intelligent and aggressive race in vast numbers, occupying the locus of their interest, can hardly be insignificant. They'd have to take us into account in their plans and schemes.

*

Since we see and hear so little of them, and what we do see and hear is so mysterious, it’s clear that the various alien species visiting us have taken humanity into account. They have agreed among themselves to keep us in the dark, and at a distance, while they go about their business.

If these various visiting aliens are from different parts of the galaxy, all drawn to this spot by our planet’s mysterious attraction for them, then they must have some means of communicating with one another, for how else could they come to any agreement concerning us?

The provisions of this agreement must be interesting. It must contain clauses concerning how we are to be treated during the course of accidental or unavoidable encounters. It must contain clauses prohibiting direct communication, not to mention technology transfer.

One thinks of the agreements between foreign opium-traders in Guangzhou, or Canton as it used to be called, during the last century. Agreements on what to reveal about themselves to the Chinese, and what to conceal. Consensual fabrications to be used in case of emergency. And so on.

Maybe one day we'll get our hands on a copy of it.

*

Agreement or no agreement, there may be times when one or another of our groups of alien visitors (or some faction among them) feels impelled to break cover, if only to a select audience of humans. The temptation would be much greater should the resource that draws them to our planet be finite, or very rare. The different alien groups will then be in competition with one another to exploit it. Perhaps one group hits on a way to use humans as agents or catspaws. Then they’ll enter into a secret agreement with a powerful human state, or even with individuals or groups (drug cartels? multinational corporations? Islamic State?) who are in a position to help them get what they want.

There’ll be secret technology transfer. Maybe a few on-planet 'advisors'. Whereupon another Earth state or group, hostile to the first, is sure to find out about it. To protect itself, it will come to its own arrangement with a different, competing group of aliens.

Would the final result be proxy wars fought by the armies of humanity on behalf of competing alien interests?

*

No doubt the protocol I spoke of earlier would contain provisions intended to prevent such things from happening. Previous experience with primitive races on other worlds will have taught our alien visitors what problems may arise, and what to do to avert or mitigate them.

Still, there is always the danger that one bunch of space cowboys might try to break the agreement to gain an advantage over the others. However, there would also be a lot of pressure, especially from the older, more civilized (and more powerful) alien groups, to enforce the agreement to the letter. Perhaps some of the UFO phenomena glimpsed by humans are the result of police activity — encounters between alien blockade-runners and the law, involving extreme manoeuvres during which pursuers and pursued can no longer keep themselves 'stealthed' and invisible to human eyes and instruments.

That leaves only the question of how — them having been here since at least the 1950s, according to reports, which is nearly three generations — they’ve never, ever given themselves away by dropping the alien equivalent of a nut or a bolt or a bubblegum wrapper. But maybe that’s part of the protocol too, like the rule the revellers at the Burning Man festival impose upon themselves: leave no trace of your presence behind.

But dammit, do you mean there isn’t one careless klutz like me out there among the stars? No trainees, no interns, no doddering incompetents, no buck privates? Doesn't Murphy's Law apply to aliens?

No. It isn’t possible. I don't believe you. They may have brains as big as planets and godlike powers over time and space, but if they’re intelligent beings they’ll have interests, motives, desires and fallibilities just like us, and they're bound to cock up just like us from time to time. Aliens are people too.

We'll get the varmints some day.

originally posted by: ZetaRediculian
a reply to: JadeStar

BTW: It is not the job then of the scientists OUTSIDE of UFOLOGY to gather data on something outside their field of research. It is the job of the scientists (too bad so few exist) WITHIN UFOLOGY TO GATHER SUCH DATA.

This is the thing I dont understand. Who are these scientists? I have this vision of a bunch of guys in lab coats that have nothing better to do than reject ufo data all day.

The elusive, non-existent scientists to study the subject sounds like more grasping at straws for excuses. Along with the government cover up conspiracy, controlled abductions, men in black, among many others. I understand the need to explain why after decades and "millions" of cases the best evidence mainly consists of stories, but to say the subject hasn't been studied by scientists, isn't entirely true...

Astrophysicist -scientist- J Allen Hynek had access to data from cases early on. Although many believers will say Blue Book was a sham, Hynek did go beyond Blue Book and personally look into some of these cases. He would photocopy the Air Force documents he was given because he believed there was something more. He traveled to where the incidents happened and would talk to the witnesses and look at any physical trace evidence. He did this with the Lonnie Zamora case for example.
He founded CUFOS in 1973 which looked at cases from a scientific perspective. He studied the phenomenon for decades up until his death in 1986. All the while never providing that definitive evidence of alien beings on Earth after 40+ years of his personal scientific study. He could only give an opinion that he believed UFOs were being controlled by an intelligence force.

Nuclear Physicist -scientist- Stanton Friedman has been studying UFO/aliens for over 45 years. He says he thrives on studying data on the subject. He's traveled the country and world lecturing for over 40 years with endless chances for exposure to that one case that would provide us with evidence. Someone that absolutely would capitalize on the discovery of evidence. The best he can do is rehash both Roswell and the Hill case over and over through his lectures. Two popular cases that were thoroughly studied, but still do not have enough evidence to show alien beings are here as a fact.

Here we have two examples of "scientists," with a combined opportunity from the late 40's until today, that would love nothing more than to discover that one case or one piece of evidence that would prove without a doubt that aliens are here on Earth. Two men that were obviously not afraid to speak their mind for fear of ridicule by the scientific community. Two men with the resources, knowledge, and capability of finding the case. A single case within millions. So, I don't understand the argument that no scientist will touch the subject or they shy away from UFO study, when you have two very public figures with scientific backgrounds that have actively studied the phenomena for 60+ years and would welcome any data and any evidence.

I also don't understand this plea by believers for the scientific community to look over these cases. If you place 50 scientists into a room and give them every piece of data over the last 70 years, do you really think they will come up with a conclusion that alien beings are here for a fact? Or just the possibility? No one argues the possibility.
It seems more for the believers than the skeptical. The believers would have their "scientific study" with opinions to reassure and validate their own belief and feelings- Which is in line with following the lead of "expert" UFOlogists and buying into many cases sold to them.
I can only speak for myself, but in the least, I would still want to be given scientific proof in the form of physical evidence that has been freely studied by multiple unbiased sources. Why should anyone expect less?


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originally posted by: JadeStar

Fine. If you don't want me here and if logic and reason have no place among or within speculative threads then I'm done with this forum. I might hang out over in Space Exploration but as you said, my time here in A & U is probably wasted.

Pisha... There are plenty of things that are wasted on this forum. Logic or reason ain't one of 'em.

*Double Post*

Honestly I'm not a believer, I just want skeptics to stop spamming threads and demanding proof of alien life when people are simply speaking hypothetically or speculating on the possibilities.

If no one is claiming to have proof of alien life, then it's ridiculous to demand it. Is like people talking about faerie lore, and someone demanding proof of faeries before you can speak about it. Heck is like two people talking about what they'd do if they won the lotto, and some asshat shows up and tells them to shut up unless they can prove they're telling the truth.

I don't need to believe in aliens to speculate on what they might be like, nor do I need to believe every piece of UFO evidence to speculate about what it might mean if some of what people are saying is actually true.

When people are no longer allowed to discuss diverse topics, because every time they try, it's instantly met with spamming bs demands that have nothing to do with what the thread is about in the first place, which is speculation on what ifs, not making factual claims, then we've truly shut down our minds, and our imaginations. If this is truly the banal existence skeptics want, then I want no part of it.

No one needs to prove that aliens exist, nor is such a demand reasonable, before they can start speculating on them.