why do we beleive that an alien species is or would be more advanced than us

why is it that every1 who beleives in alien species or have ideas about 1 always beleive that the species r more advanced than us (technology that is)

does any1 have an opinion on this?

The main one I guess is that they can get here but we can't get there, so they must know something we don't.

But, in reality, this doesn't necessarily make them more advanced. They may just be more advanced when it comes to space travel.

Originally posted by leader of men
why is it that every1 who beleives in alien species or have ideas about 1 always beleive that the species r more advanced than us (technology that is)

does any1 have an opinion on this?

Simply because most believe that they are visiting us on Earth.
If we were visiting them...it might be the other way around.

yup but dont forget space travel is only a small amount of technology that we used aliens may be crap at space travel but very good at genetics etc

For me the answer is connected to the estimated Age of the Universe. Depending on the basic nature of any intelligent species the rate of technological advancement can be more or less than ours. If you spread this over the vast time involved I think the logical conclusion is as follows:

Of all the intelligent Races in existance some are well in advance of us, some are roughly equal and the rest would fall below us.

The reason people assume that 'Aliens' in general are more advanced is as mentioned above, if they can get here from elsewhere then they are more advanced.

Someday we will be the ones who visit other places. We will find Races that do not seem ready to handle our existance. I can only hope that we show the wisdom to know when contact is right and when it is not. It will be interesting to be on the other side, to be the 'Truth' that is hidden.


A.T
(-)

I'd like to make an analogy here about advancement.
If an internal combustion engine had its timing advanced to a fine tune, it does great work. If the firing were retarded up to a point, it would miss and it wouldn't work so well... beyond that point and it wouldn't work at all. On the other end, too much (rapid) advancement could similarly be a bad thing since the leaps and bounds would pass over things that might otherwise have needed to be learned/done (for stability sake)
Man has been retarded in that we only have a short technological history. If an alien species were here, perhaps there technological database had millions of years to draw upon instead of the couple of thousand mankind has.
Necessity is the mother of invention. If an alien species had survived for a million years, they would have needed (by logistics alone) to travel interstellarly in order to support their growing numbers (unless that growth were retarded by the likes of wars, famines, blundering, meddling, genetic mutations, (due to pollutants) star collapse/radiation etc. in which case they'd be concerned with survival rather than technology) ... I guess you get the picture, man is his own worst enemy from a development point of view. Our technology has always been advanced through weapons first research.... and what good is a bullet unless you fire it?
I'd like to think that we are just now starting to grow up. using diplomacy instead of bombs, uniting to solve common problems etc. Truth be told, we still use bombs instead of schools (which is really where any advancement would occur, through education). To be fair, once we blow the hell out of them we do build schools... sorry for my facetiousness.

The main one I guess is that they can get here but we can't get there, so they must know something we don't.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell, isn't it?

It'd mean they've somehow managed to bypass or violate some physics "laws" as we know them, or they are extremely patient, hehe...

It could be a one-trick pony (i.e. they've mastered interstellar travel, but still have to pour the powder in their guns), but that really isn't the logical conclusion, is it?

Our society is based on mostly greed, and now a days our most powerful minds want to make a buck rather than to help our advancement. Plus these are questions of time, in the future dolphins will be wondering why we are so advanced.

Space travel isn't the only way to travel...

What if an alien find a way to manupilate time, yet not able to do space travel yet...

Originally posted by FoxStriker
Our society is based on mostly greed, and now a days our most powerful minds want to make a buck rather than to help our advancement. Plus these are questions of time, in the future dolphins will be wondering why we are so advanced.

Yeah. Logically why the hell would they want to interfer in any way? We don't have anything to offer them and they have a million zillion things to offer us, from our point of view ofcourse. They probably just wanna see how things are going and are maybe acting as a sortof parent to humanity, or probably not even that, since they've never once interfered with anything (if that thread about a UFO diverting a meteor wasn't true that is), I mean, atleast to our knowledge. Once they make themselfes announced there'll be all kinds of pressure on them, and eventually the world will be divided into people that think they're okay then there'll be the remaining 99% of the ignorant, conservatist idiots out there thinking they 'owe' them something, like "Hey, you have flying UFOs that can travel at [x] speed, why don't you save ppl more often, HUH?".

So yeah, I'm dissin' humanity and I don't believe it's ready for contact, not in a couple of hundred years anyway.

I know plenty of people that don't have a clue how an automobile operates yet they drive just fine. You dont need to know anything to drive.

On the other hand if aliens aren't extraterristial but interdimensional technology may not be the operating system. It might be closer to voodoo than technology and you might not need to be to techno savy, just hungry.

I find it astonishing that man almost always views things from an arrogant anthropomorphic standpoint. Cosomologically speaking were at the level currently as that of a newt.

Also time travel may not need elaborate mechanical devices. I think it was El Professor that said "future science will look more like magic than science"

FoxStriker nailed it when he said our society is based mostly on greed.

Cosomologically speaking were at the level currently as that of a newt.

Hear hear. The development speed of technology has practically been standing still the last... well, since the birth of man. It's when electricity came that things began to heat up, and that my friends, wasn't very long ago.

I'd have to say that any aliens advanced in space travel have to be advanced in many other areas as well, like in weapons, materials, and energy. Say they experiment with a fusion reactor or ion propulsion in their craft...right there they have the possibility of making nuclear bombs, fusion reactors to power cities, and lasers to be used as weapons or in medicine. Their crafts will need to be made of advanced materials to take the stresses of space travel and re-entry into the atmosphere. These strong materials would probably be used in other applications as well, where lightness, strength, or the shedding of heat are needed properties. You need electronics and a computer to navigate and control the craft. It seems highly plausible that they have advanced computers, electronics, and are advanced in many other areas that are affected by electronics. I can't be sure that every technology used on a craft would be used in other areas in their societies, but there is definately a very strong chance it would be. It just makes sense.

[edit on 20-7-2005 by zhangmaster]

We are probably less advanced than most alien species if there are any. Also if they can space travel and visit us then they could be advanced in more areas than just space travel, They could shoot laser beams at us for all we know

I'm just speaking out loud but what if our government has the same technology that aliens has, and do travel to their planets too and the aliens thinking the same thing we do right now, saying stuff like humans are more advanced then we are and they can travel here and we can't. Scince we kept so in the dark about aliens why can't we have the same technology as they do kept in the dark from us. We probably have martians saying "this humans travel over to over planet and can't help us in anything they know and we can't go and see them or have their kind of technology".

Because there are always less advanced species than others and more advanced species than others. It's likely that there are other intelligent beings in the universe that are less advanced than us, as well as other intelligent beings that are more advanced than us who can travel through space and who don't think and communicate like we do.

Because there are always less advanced species than others and more advanced species than others. It's likely that there are other intelligent beings in the universe that are less advanced than us, as well as other intelligent beings that are more advanced than us who can travel through space and who don't think and communicate like we do.

Originally posted by meshuggah1324
Because there are always less advanced species than others and more advanced species than others. It's likely that there are other intelligent beings in the universe that are less advanced than us, as well as other intelligent beings that are more advanced than us who can travel through space and who don't think and communicate like we do.

Perhaps we are "top of the chain" though.

That has been my thinking for quite some time.

I doubt it. With all the billions of planets out there. I mean look here on earth. We are the most advanced species. But there are all kinds of different levels of intelligence on earth among different animals. I just think out there in space there are both less and more advances species that exist. It seems more logical to me.

[edit on 20-7-2005 by meshuggah1324]

Originally posted by Dulcimer

Originally posted by meshuggah1324
Because there are always less advanced species than others and more advanced species than others. It's likely that there are other intelligent beings in the universe that are less advanced than us, as well as other intelligent beings that are more advanced than us who can travel through space and who don't think and communicate like we do.

Perhaps we are "top of the chain" though.

That has been my thinking for quite some time.

Yeah, your'e probably right. We're doing such a great job of taking care of this planet and its inhabitants.