Alien cover up

[Gawdzilla]

The chance that there is intelligent life on other planets is a dead cert.  I'm equally certain that humanity will never see one of these ETs, will never recover one of their artifacts, and will never exchange information with them.

Additionally, the idea that 'aliens walk among us' is so impossibly far-fetched as to rank as a childhood fantasy.

Boru

Don't expect them to act as badly as we have. Don't be surprised if they do, just don't assume they will.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I don't expect ETs to act any way at all - they aren't here, they've never been here, they'll never be here, so my expectations of their behaviour are pretty low.

Boru

[Bard A Madsen]

If there were aliens I don't think they would come close because most of the world believes in anthropomorphized natural Spacefall phenomena, humans are just not ready.

[CapnAwesome]

If there were extra terrestrials visiting earth today, it would be impossible to cover up. Everyone is walking around with a 5 mp camera in their pocket. There are no aliens, not here.

How do you know aliens won't have effective means of camouflage or disguise?  Or ability to perform observation or manipulation from a distance outside of our effective surveillance?   Or for that matter tap into our systems to render those data we do gathering about them useless?

I think we have no evidence of alien visitation.  Without direct evidence of how many aliens capable of visitation there actually are, how they behave and what capabilities they actually have, we are in no position to assert whether that lack of evidence ought to be expected from well known principles, or if it requires an separate circumstantial explanation.

But we can not preclude the possibility that we are being visited by aliens who are effective to keeping their visit hidden.

If that were true  then it wouldn't matter whether or not aliens are visiting us anyway. Instead of a God that is invisible and does nothing (but can do anything), you just have invented aliens that are invisible and do nothing (but can do anything.) It's almost the exact same argument. I guess technically it makes sense to be agnostic about them but I would say the total lack of credible evidence where there should be evidence is good enough to say that we have not been visited by aliens.

[Anomalocaris]

How do you know aliens won't have effective means of camouflage or disguise?  Or ability to perform observation or manipulation from a distance outside of our effective surveillance?   Or for that matter tap into our systems to render those data we do gathering about them useless?

I think we have no evidence of alien visitation.  Without direct evidence of how many aliens capable of visitation there actually are, how they behave and what capabilities they actually have, we are in no position to assert whether that lack of evidence ought to be expected from well known principles, or if it requires an separate circumstantial explanation.

But we can not preclude the possibility that we are being visited by aliens who are effective to keeping their visit hidden.

If that were true  then it wouldn't matter whether or not aliens are visiting us anyway. Instead of a God that is invisible and does nothing (but can do anything), you just have invented aliens that are invisible and do nothing (but can do anything.) It's almost the exact same argument. I guess technically it makes sense to be agnostic about them but I would say the total lack of credible evidence where there should be evidence is good enough to say that we have not been visited by aliens.

It's not quite the same argument.   The notion that hidden aliens may be amongst us without leaving discernible evidence does not go on to say "therefore aliens are indeed amongst us",  much less "the alien of whom we have no naturalistic evidence must therefore not only be here, but must also possess more specific attributes besides those necessitated by their unobservability, such as being creators of the universe and being the same as what some specific primitive happen to have said to have fucked his mother to himself brith just to absolve you, somehow,  of that which you never did, so you must reorder your life and perception, at the behest of more primitives, some modern and some from the Iron Age, in order to properly adore him".

[CapnAwesome]

If that were true  then it wouldn't matter whether or not aliens are visiting us anyway. Instead of a God that is invisible and does nothing (but can do anything), you just have invented aliens that are invisible and do nothing (but can do anything.) It's almost the exact same argument. I guess technically it makes sense to be agnostic about them but I would say the total lack of credible evidence where there should be evidence is good enough to say that we have not been visited by aliens.

It's not quite the same argument.   The notion that hidden aliens may be amongst us without leaving discernible evidence does not go on to say "therefore aliens are indeed amongst us",  much less "the alien of whom we have no naturalistic evidence must therefore not only be here, but must also possess more specific attributes besides those necessitated by their unobservability, such as being creators of the universe and being the same as what some specific primitive happen to have said to have fucked his mother to himself brith just to absolve you, somehow,  of that which you never did, so you must reorder your life and perception, at the behest of more primitives, some modern and some from the Iron Age, in order to properly adore him".

It's close enough. We have no naturalistic evidence (or evidence of any kind) that aliens are amoungst us. The other stuff you wrote is about a specific version of God (The Christian God), if someone were hypothesizing a specific version of an Alien race (The greys who have so and so flying saucer and came here in 1948 and crash landed in New Mexico) visiting earth it would be the same level of ridiculousness. Just like with God, the more specific you get the more ridiculous it gets. That doesn't detract that there is no good reason at all to believe aliens have been here.

[Anomalocaris]

Hypothesizing a specific version of alien is a separate thing.

Recognizing there may be no way to distinguish technologically advanced aliens who do not wish to make their presence known is something totally different.

It is equivalent to saying we can not fully preclude the possibility that such of the universe as we can detect was the result of what we might regard as purposeful calculation.

We simply do not emphasize it because it does not appear we have any immediate, either directly or tangentially, productive path towards improving our understanding of whether either is actually the case. So we don't belabor them.

We don't become attached to specific possible answers to questions whose real answers we have no means of identifying.

[CapnAwesome]

Hypothesizing a specific version of alien is a separate thing.  

Recognizing there may be no way to distinguish technologically advanced aliens who do not wish to make their presence known is something totally different.

It is equivalent to saying we can not fully preclude the possibility that such of the universe as we can detect was the result of what we might regard as purposeful calculation.  

We simply do not emphasize it because it does not appear we have any immediate, either directly or tangentially, productive path towards improving our understanding of whether either is actually the case.  So we don't belabor them.

We don't become attached to specific possible answers to questions whose real answers we have no means of identifying.

Again, the exact argument for why God might exist.

[Anomalocaris]

Hypothesizing a specific version of alien is a separate thing.  

Recognizing there may be no way to distinguish technologically advanced aliens who do not wish to make their presence known is something totally different.

It is equivalent to saying we can not fully preclude the possibility that such of the universe as we can detect was the result of what we might regard as purposeful calculation.  

We simply do not emphasize it because it does not appear we have any immediate, either directly or tangentially, productive path towards improving our understanding of whether either is actually the case.  So we don't belabor them.

We don't become attached to specific possible answers to questions whose real answers we have no means of identifying.

Again, the exact argument for why God might exist.

So?   God by some non self contradictory definition might exist is a perfectly sound position, as is God by any non self contradictory definition might not exist.  That a specific God does indeed exist is the as yet totally unsupportable position which is effectively a willful delusion. That you ought to crave the favor a specific God allegedly offers for your believing his existence even when his existence is otherwise unsupported is where the position goes from unsupportable and delusional to utterly disgusting.

[CapnAwesome]

Again, the exact argument for why God might exist.

So?   God by some non self contradictory definition might exist is a perfectly sound position, as is God by any non self contradictory definition might not exist.  That a specific God does indeed exist is the as yet totally unsupportable position which is effectively a willful delusion.   That you ought to crave the favor a specific God allegedly offers for your believing his existence even when his existence is otherwise unsupported is where the position goes from unsupportable and delusional to utterly disgusting.

My problem with the argument is the same with both, if we have to conclude that it's possible for something to exisit when part of the imagined characteristic of it is the ability to conceal itself, then infinite imaginary things are possible to exist.  Why not leprechauns? Also both are only possible when kept so vague that their hypothetical existence becomes pretty pointless. These aliens could be literally anything. So the only real statement that someone is making is that something undetectable (from another planet) might exist. It's logically possible but also extremely pointless. The reality is there is no credible evidence that aliens have visited earth, no conceivable mechanism for them to conceal themselves from us so completely and no reason for them to. Aliens have not visited earth and that's the reality of the situation.