I will keep this short and very sweet

The odds of you being here talking about aliens is far more than aliens being here.. heuh?? well think about what are the odds of you being alive then get back to me on the subject of the odds of aliens please..

I love maths

It's not possible to assign odds to this situation. It's not a repeatable experiment to determine subjective probability. There's no previous likliehood that has been established as a precedent to even try and frame any odds.

There are two possible events; either aliens are here or they're not.

Choose which ever you believe or sit on the fence, but there's no point trying to bet on it like it's a game that's going to pay off.

Some people know that aliens are here, as they have met with them. Others can suit themselves!

Graphix10 -

I'm not meaning to have a go at you, but you are making stuff up. Saying "What if...?" is making stuff up. If I say "how could aliens get here?" you might as well say "they fly here on pink interstellar elephants". Mentioning wormholes and warp drives adds a pseudoscientific sheen to it, but those things are still not proven to be possible. It's no explanation at all.

I suppose it makes a vague kind of sense if you know aliens are already here and therefore need to explain the travel aspect. But I don't see any point simply inventing stuff to explain how something could be possible.

I suspect this is the source of my disagreement with many people on this thread.

Similarly, Zorgon -

We probably agree on a certain amount. The "we were created by aliens" scenario was one I mentioned in my first post on this thread; I said I was discounting it from my argument, not from the realms of possibility. If aliens were proved to be visiting Earth, it seems the most likely scenario to me. However, I see no reason to suspect this actually happened.

Random aliens finding us? It's possible but, I think, unlikely. The sheer endeavour of travelling to every 'suspicious' planet is easily underestimated. Masses of resources. Huge amounts of energy. Generations of aliens. And for what? Possibly nothing there upon arrival. I don't see the point of postulating stuff like "well, maybe they live forever, fly on dreams and live by eating space" to explain something for the sake of it.

If there was life as close as Alpha Centauri, or even within 100 light years, that would suggest there was life pretty much everywhere. And so we would surely see evidence of it very clearly. To avoid that, you need to move into the whole "aliens are everywhere but have the technology and international trade agreements (etc) to hide from us" scenarios. Which are unfalsifiable and unscientific, and worth considering for amusement only.

Hmmm....okay, well I'm not sure how to have a conversation about advanced technology that might exist, unless I say "What if...". I haven't talked to any alien engineers in the last couple of weeks. Do you want definitive answers? I mean, I could do that but it would sound ridiculous. At least "What if" allows me to give examples of what MIGHT be happening. Anyway - here's your answer. I'll change everything from 'What if they have.' to 'They have...' so I can stop "making stuff up".

Yes. Aliens are here. THEY HAVE figured out interstellar travel and have been using it since our early existence. THEY HAVE no need to concern themselves with speed, distance or time as THEY HAVE developed technologies which allow them to jump from galaxy to galaxy without traveling into deep space. THEY HAVE the ability manipulate time by using multidimensional windows which allow movement through space without being noticed by first dimensional beings. THEY HAVE been monitoring human beings for thousands of years. THEY HAVE no reason to interfere with our destiny, only to preserve the integrity of our planet. THEY HAVE tampered with our DNA to increase intelligence and promote invention, which allowed us to advance significantly (on our own) during the Babylonian times. THEY HAVE kept an eye on us because of our violent nature. THEY HAVE seen our future; what we have become. THEY HAVE fear but THEY HAVE hope. Only time will tell.

THEY HAVE never used (PIE) Pink Interstellar Elephants, although the peanuts would probably be awesome on those flights.

Is any of this true? Absolutely...because I didn't say "What if...".



[edit on 11-12-2008 by Graphix10]

[edit on 11-12-2008 by Graphix10]

[edit on 11-12-2008 by Graphix10]

[edit on 11-12-2008 by Graphix10]

It's not possible to assign odds to this situation. It's not a repeatable experiment to determine subjective probability. There's no previous likliehood that has been established as a precedent to even try and frame any odds

Odds er thats maths sir!

What are the odds of any of us being here? then he says what are the odds of aliens visiting earth??

abit of stupid thing to ask dont you think? i mean EHLLOOO we are here?

or are u going to tell me we are the only life in space / universe

No you cant and that probibilty is like like 1 a certen

Please Understand MATHS before you u ask such stupid questions...

You seem to forget you are a product of the universe so what makes u so special??? please

You are and im sorry to say this assuming you are the only thing here when you just like me are a leaf on a tree, and if u dont know what that means then i guess u dont undersand maths and nature and what we are all about..

What are the odds? the odds of you typing what you are.. work it out,,

Originally posted by theresult
I will keep this short and very sweet

The odds of you being here talking about aliens is far more than aliens being here.. heuh??

well think about what are the odds of you being alive then get back to me on the subject of the odds of aliens please..

I love maths

Good reply; In my opinion I think you add to the positive probability.

Not so sure about the first one there is not enough people here, its probably remote I think.
What can I say about the second - that's incalculable. Even more boggling is you and I communicating - Brain crash coming on.
Cheers

[edit on 11-12-2008 by majestictwo]

Graphix -

That's fair enough. If you already believe aliens are here, then I can sympathise with trying to explain how that would be possible. In that sense, 'making stuff up' is fine. It would actually be the start of a scientific enquiry: "I have a phenomenon to explain, so here is one possible theory and now let's test it".

But I don't have a phenomenon to explain. I am starting from the premise that I don't know whether aliens are visiting and wondering how likely it is. One obvious barrier is travel. Now, I could invent stuff to try to overcome that barrier - but there's no basis for doing so. It's no different from just pretending the barrier isn't there.

Theresult -

I think you need to look up what anthropic bias is. We can infer nothing from our existence apart from the fact that we exist. If there was only one civilisation in the universe, it would be us by definiton. That's all we know - at least one.

It's kind of like being in an office block late at night and thinking to yourself "Wow! I'm in an occupied room! The odds against me picking this one in particular are astronomical, so other rooms must be occupied too".

Or a puddle of urine on the ground thinking "Wow! I'm the exact right shape to fit in this hole! It must have been designed for me!". But I digress.

Originally posted by damagedoor
Graphix -

That's fair enough. If you already believe aliens are here, then I can sympathise with trying to explain how that would be possible. In that sense, 'making stuff up' is fine. It would actually be the start of a scientific enquiry: "I have a phenomenon to explain, so here is one possible theory and now let's test it".

But I don't have a phenomenon to explain. I am starting from the premise that I don't know whether aliens are visiting and wondering how likely it is. One obvious barrier is travel. Now, I could invent stuff to try to overcome that barrier - but there's no basis for doing so. It's no different from just pretending the barrier isn't there.

Theresult -

I think you need to look up what anthropic bias is. We can infer nothing from our existence apart from the fact that we exist. If there was only one civilisation in the universe, it would be us by definiton. That's all we know - at least one.

It's kind of like being in an office block late at night and thinking to yourself "Wow! I'm in an occupied room! The odds against me picking this one in particular are astronomical, so other rooms must be occupied too".

Or a puddle of urine on the ground thinking "Wow! I'm the exact right shape to fit in this hole! It must have been designed for me!". But I digress.

I think the real question here is - How many more years advanced might an alien race be? If they are significantly more advanced (and I keep using 'a million years', so I'll stick with it here too) , then we have to look at where we will be in a million years...because that's the only example we have. Have we been to the moon? Yes, more than 30 years ago. Do we want to go farther and continue to explore? Obviously a yes here. We're planning trips back to the moon as well as preliminary plans for (manned) trips to Mars. Why would we go to Mars? Life, plain and simple. We want answers to our existence. We will eventually Terraform Mars as part of out galactic expansion. Why? So we can use the damn thing. Are we building bigger and better telescopes? Of course we are. We want to see whats out there. We are doing these things NOW.

Having said that, IF aliens are here, then travel is of no consequence to them. They are advanced beyond what our narrow human minds can accept and that's just the way it's going to be until we reach full disclosure. Human beings appear to be unique...and I'm sure they know that.

Originally posted by Graphix10
I think the real question here is - How many more years advanced might an alien race be? If they are significantly more advanced (and I keep using 'a million years', so I'll stick with it here too) , then we have to look at where we will be in a million years...because that's the only example we have. Have we been to the moon? Yes, more than 30 years ago. Do we want to go farther and continue to explore? Obviously a yes here. We're planning trips back to the moon as well as preliminary plans for (manned) trips to Mars. Why would we go to Mars? Life, plain and simple. We want answers to our existence. We will eventually Terraform Mars as part of out galactic expansion. Why? So we can use the damn thing. Are we building bigger and better telescopes? Of course we are. We want to see whats out there. We are doing these things NOW.

I'm not really disagreeing with you - just discussing - but there's a danger in thinking that in a million years our knowledge today will simply be redundant. Certain things will hold true - we're not going to suddenly discover that the Sun actually goes round the Earth.

And I see no reason to believe that faster than light travel is possible. There is no reason to think that in a million years it won't still be impossible, other than wishful thinking.

You can always say 'what if?'. Traversable wormholes and warp drives currently reside in the same basket as PIEs (I like the acronym by the way).

If we can only go a percentage of light speed, we're limited. Plain and simple. In a million years we could probably have gone to the opposite side of our own galaxy and back again. In a straight line. Starting now. But who is on these ships for that long, and how? Thinking outside the box is great, but you have to be realistic. It would take us maybe thirty years to get even to Alpha Centauri. Who is going to do that? Who will pay? Why?

Terraforming Mars makes a degree of sense. But it's a venture that would take hundreds, possibly thousands of years, and would be massively expensive. I'd love to see a politician argue for that one. We can't even persuade people to cut CO2 to save our own planet.

For me, as far as I can sensibly imagine, we're stuck where we are. And for a race of non-immortal aliens, I see it being pretty much the same.

I, like other people, think aliens are here. Maybe they won't have human features like depicted in the movies, but they're here nonetheless. They might not have hands but have another type of gripping part that helps them. They might be single-celled or not but odds are that aliens do exist.

Originally posted by theresult
You are missing the point... He asked what are the odd of aliens visting earth.

first you need to calculate US and you dont nore does he...

I'm not missing the point - you need to read the whole thread and follow the discussion.

The probablity that we exist is '1'.

The probablity of intelligent life arising on a planet is unknowable. Discounting the observer fallacy, all we can infer from the fact that we exist is that it's happened at least once. It may be common or extremely rare. We don't know.

The probability of aliens visiting here, I would estimate as close to zero, based on what we know. Other people are assuming it's '1' and then suggesting what we know must therefore be incorrect. I think that's wrong, but it's what makes this site interesting.

Originally posted by damagedoor
And I see no reason to believe that faster than light travel is possible. There is no reason to think that in a million years it won't still be impossible, other than wishful thinking.

Wesley Clark said he thinks it will be possible. That it's a matter of the right math.

The thread doesn’t ask for any math result although some earlier post thought that. This is about getting into our mind the enormous odds (I believe) against them being here.

You guys following the tread right now are spot on IMO you are the ones debating about the Odds/chance/probabilities whatever you like to call it from a mental prospective. It gets us thinking about it rather than listening to “Oh there’s billions of civilisations out there all travelling around the universe”

For aliens to be here right now is about survival as much as anything. For us to become aliens we must survive those evolutionary steps talked about earlier. A million years was suggested but let’s be kind and say we have to be here for a tenth of that before we have the opportunity to travel across the galaxy. Can we survive that amount of time – your guess is a good as mine. That’s in-fact another whole new debate wouldn’t you agree. If we do not survive then we cannot be aliens. I don't see why it should be different for any alien civilization – they to have to survive to be here.

There maybe, shall we say lots of civilisations how many would survive to become galactic travellers. Then the odds are reduced again for those that become intergalactic travellers. To go from galactic to intergalactic must be a huge step that will require time and the survival of the civilisation for another X–years.

Originally posted by majestictwo
Instead of suddenly firing off your volley in this thread why don't you post us why you think the odds should be reduced.

I can fire off as many volleys as I wish, provided I do so within the terms and conditions of this website. Just because it's a discussion forum, doesn't mean that everyone has to play nice all of the time. It's not always a popularity game.

Read my post a couple of pages back. I already explained why it's pointless to assign any odds to aliens being here. They're either here, or they're not. In terms of probability, it's either zero or one, depending upon what you're willing to believe. There is no inbetween gambling crap, as it's not an appropriate use of mathematics for this scenario.

Zorgon thinks (knows?) they are here (not that I am speaking for him, so don't think that I am) and I agree with him. Can I prove it? Nope. I don't care to. People can believe whatever they damn well want to believe - and they do. Look at some of the ridiculous opinions that exist on this forum, not to mention the many other forums on ATS.