Originally posted by DivineFem
When the video first started and I heard the first few words, I just busted out laughing
Reminds me of the episode of South park...

Probably because it was from southpark. the earth is a reality tv program with like thousands of different opposing species tossed together on a single planet to see what happens.
And should we become aware of it, the earth ends (gets cancelled). All about ratings.

Originally posted by SaturnFX
It makes sense (assuming benevolence) that they wouldn't want to parent us, but rather have us go through the trials and errors to gain wisdom before hitting the stars.

I don't know what kind of sense that makes. It's like saying, "Well, here are a bunch of people with a horrible disease for which we have a surefire cure. But let's just sit back and let them either completely die off or develop a cure on their own, just so it doesn't mess up our ability to study them." Pretty selfish, if you ask me.

Also, if there was a kind of Prime Directive or quarantine in place, all aliens everywhere would have to go along with it. But if you think there are actually millions of alien species out there, it seems extremely unlikely that they would all have the same attitude about it. I could see maybe half of them thinking a Prime Directive was stupid and flying into meet us or conquer us or whatever.

Maybe we really are the only living things in the universe. Or in the universe close enough for it to matter. If there is an advanced civilization of aliens billions of light years on the other side of the universe, they might as well not exist because we'll never detect them or have anything to do with them.

If there are advanced, interstellar civilizations out there and have visited Earth, I think the most likely explanation is that they have merely been studying us with as little direct interference as they can the same way we study populations of apes and monkeys in the wild. Sure, they might come down now and again to take a few biological samples from some randomly selected individuals, but generally they just want to watch and observe and learn what they can.

Any aliens that may have been observed by humans might have been their version of Jane Goodall laboriously going about their fieldwork, year in and year out.

do these people know how big space is or are they talking out of the place feces comes from??
there is no doubt life is out there sure, thats a given, look in the mirror.

the difference is when we start to expect that every species is capable of space travel, too many variables right now.
yes we can go in space, after 10,000 years of somewhat civilized human society. but not very far, and not in every direction.

yes there is a chance that a nomadic space faring race could stumble upon us, but remote.

we could be in the newest addition to the universe, takes much longer for all the million + year old species to get here since we'd be stuck with all the other technologically similar races.

Originally posted by LifeInDeath
If there are advanced, interstellar civilizations out there and have visited Earth, I think the most likely explanation is that they have merely been studying us with as little direct interference as they can the same way we study populations of apes and monkeys in the wild.

I just think that's a lot of projection. Just because to us UFOs and aliens are kind of lumped into the category of "science" or "science fiction," the aliens might not even have that concept. And even if they were studying us like Jane Goodall and the chimps, hey, the chimps knew she was there. So in order for the idea that they're studying us in secret to make any sense, the aliens would need to have the same kind of value system and think and act like us in a big number of the same ways.

They'd have to essentially be us. Which is one reason why the UFOs/aliens we do see actually being time travelers from our own future makes more sense than them being aliens from some other planet. Time travelers would be highly motivated not to interact with their past in any significant way in order to minimize the chance that they'd destroy themselves and their own future.

That's interesting, I personally would separate studying and observing us from directly contacting us. There might be a lot of civilizations that know about us and have observed us for a long time, but might feel that revealing themselves to us would not be in our best interests for the moment.

I do like the theory that maybe Earth doesn't have anything to offer extraterrestrial civilizations.

Hair's comment is interesting: “Any ancient civilization is probably not biological. They don’t need a place like Earth. They don’t need to come here and steal our water. There’s plenty of it out in the outer solar system where the gravity is not so great and they can just take all they want.”

It's good to keep in mind that there is likely intelligent life out there, but it's not likely to be something we would interact with.

(Of course, there are plenty of people would would dispute the observation that Earth hasn't been visited.)

Let's face it, even if we have beneficial traits, I doubt any advanced race would be willing to deal with us when they see all the hate and resentment we have towards each other. I think they know as a race we are greedy, dishonest, bigoted and all too willing to turn to violence to get our way. If a spaceship landed in a populated area and aliens started walking afoot there are definitely more than a handful of earthlings that would shoot first and ask questions later, even if the government said they came in peace, etc. We simply haven't advanced enough to mingle with more advanced races imo. Maybe there are 500 million of us that can?

It's not just the distances, which conventional logic prohibits anyway, but also that it is quite likely that intelligent life would evolve in completely different time frames. The child in me wan't to believe that organisms could travel beyond their parent star, but I am on the fence as to where it would ever be possible, no matter how advanced they become.

Maybe they are avoiding us because we are primative, aggressive creatures...we are the Aliens to them.

Perhaps we should consider this question a little more "Holistically".

Planet Earth is Approx 4.5 billion years old, we are part of a Solar System that, with our sister planets, revolves around our Sun.
Our complete Solar system is apparently situated in a relatively quite neighbourhood, approx. 2/3 or so distance from our Galaxy centre (the Milky Way), on one of the many spirals of our wonderful Galaxy.

If you were to observe our Galaxy from afar, it appears similar to our sister galaxy Andromeda, also a spiral galaxy.
If you could pinpoint the approx position of our Solar system, in our Galaxy, you would observe that our Solar system is but a tiny glow, in a cluster of stars that make up a spiral, that is in a cluster of 100s? 1000s? of spirals, that are contained in our Galaxy, with a large centre cluster "Nucleus" in the middle.
While, to our perception and understanding, we seem to be in the middle of nowhere, the way our puny human minds can comprehend, we are in fact, Surrounded by 100s of thousands of Stars and Solar systems, maybe millions of them that make up our little tiny part of the Universe called the Milky Way. Potentially there are Millions of other planets just like Earth, in our Galaxy "City".

How the Stars developed in our Galaxy, I have no Idea. Were they created in the centre, then spread out? Who Knows? Are new stars and Solar systems being created in our Galaxy's Nucleus? Who REALLY Knows?? (the Aliens might)

So here we are, in our little tiny patch, in our lovely Galaxy, surrounded by Millions of other Solar Systems and planets, minding our own business, dreaming that we are alone.......

If life happened on Earth, 2/3s along one spiral of our huge Galaxy, WITHOUT a DOUBT, the same Chemical Reaction occurred on other planets within our own Galaxy..........We probably have Millions of neighbour planets, containing intelligent life.

AND our Galaxy, is itself, only one of MILLIONS, Possibly BILLIONS in the Universe!

Please everyone, open your minds and look at the BIG picture.

We are Not Unique....Sorry. Start thinking logically people.