Alien cover up

[Aoi Magi]

Consider if there were 50 total planets.
Consider earth is one of this 50 planets.
So we have 49 planets remaining.
Each planet will have a 50-50 chance of having intelligent life in it.
So 50-50 chance for each planet of 49 planets leaves you with a 50-50 chance of life in these 49 remaining planets overall.
But if you consider earth, which has life in it, then the odd are no longer 50-50 as we have at least 1 planet with life. Which would mean that the probability of aliens in the 49 remaining planets are now higher.
But wait, some people from earth does some space travelling and find out that 3 of the planets have no life in them.
Then these 3 planets no longer have a 50-50 chance of having life in them, they have 0 chance of having life in them.
That leaves us with what? 50 planets with 1 planet we are sure there is life and 3 planets we are sure there is no life.
So that means the probability is now staked against the existence of aliens, one which increases as we find more planets with no life in them.

Face it, there are no aliens. We are alone. There's no point in waiting.. Quite sad actually.

How many planets in the "goldilocks zone" have we actually explored so far, Pool? Heck how many planets have we actually explored within our own solar system? We have spent our entire lives as a civilization on this tiny planet and we are still discovering new lifeforms here to this very day...

If life came naturally and the conditions are satisfied on other places, life will be there as well... and as time passes we are discovering more and more places that do satisfy these conditions, so in reality the odds of finding life is only increasing.

[Excited Penguin]

Maybe we're the aliens. Did you ever think of that?

[Mermaid]

People are stupid. Really, really stupid. Devoid of critical thinking skills.

[Mermaid]

Terrifying evidence of the aforementioned stupidity:
https://www.facebook.com/OccupyDemocrats...nref=story

[Excited Penguin]

Fermi paradox

The Sun is a typical star, and there are billions of stars in the galaxy that are billions of years older.[2][3]
With high probability, some of these stars will have Earth-like planets,[4][5] and if the earth is typical, some might develop intelligent life.
Some of these civilizations might develop interstellar travel, a step the Earth is investigating now.
Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in about a million years.[6]
According to this line of thinking, the Earth should already have been visited by extraterrestrial aliens though Fermi saw no convincing evidence of this, nor any signs of alien intelligence anywhere in the observable universe, leading him to ask, "Where is everybody?"

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Consider if there were 50 total planets.

No real reason to do so, but I'll play along.

Consider earth is one of this 50 planets.
So we have 49 planets remaining.

50-1 = 49. Yes, I think I grasp it so far.

Each planet will have a 50-50 chance of having intelligent life in it.

Why? There would only be a 50-50 chance if all the planets were identical. The odds of intelligent life would be far greater on a mirror-Earth than on a planet whose surface is molten iridium.

So 50-50 chance for each planet of 49 planets leaves you with a 50-50 chance of life in these 49 remaining planets overall.

Actually, no. By way of analogy, consider a fair coin flip. In a single flip, you've got a 50-50 chance of the coin coming up either heads or tails. In 49 flips, you have a chance (albeit a small one) of getting 49 heads in a row.

But if you consider earth, which has life in it, then the odd are no longer 50-50 as we have at least 1 planet with life. Which would mean that the probability of aliens in the 49 remaining planets are now higher.

Erm...you aren't allowed to change the size of your statistical universe without good reason.

But wait, some people from earth does some space travelling and find out that 3 of the planets have no life in them.
Then these 3 planets no longer have a 50-50 chance of having life in them, they have 0 chance of having life in them.
That leaves us with what? 50 planets with 1 planet we are sure there is life and 3 planets we are sure there is no life.
So that means the probability is now staked against the existence of aliens, one which increases as we find more planets with no life in them.

Another analogy: I visit the Sahara desert at noon. I drop a sponge, walk 10 meters and drop another sponge. I repeat this process three more times. I check the sponges an hour later and find that all of them are dry. From this, I conclude that there are no such things as oceans.

Face it, there are no aliens.

That may indeed be the case, but you haven't given any real reasons why that should be so.

We are alone. There's no point in waiting.. Quite sad actually.

I will agree to the extent that we are effectively alone (see my post earlier in this thread).

Boru

[dyresand]

Pool consider this the planets in the Goldilocks zone we have found so far doesn't show any life on them but considering
how old the light is coming back to us their could be some sort of life on it. Hell there kepler-62 e its almost exactly like earth.
Not to mention water its the most abundant resource in the entire universe where ever there is water liquid water there would
be some sort of bacterial life. Or even better the first stages of life like plankton in a ocean.

[Excited Penguin]

There's a possible explanation for why aliens haven't visited us already, if the galaxy is full to the brim with intelligent life that started way before us. Maybe there's an inherent trait in all possible civilizations that makes them discover some technology they can't outlive. Maybe we'll discover it too. Maybe for us it will be A.I. We won't know until it hits us, especially if we don't do anything about fighting all possible existential risks, but only those that we already know for sure might happen(e.g. atomic bomb).

[Anomalocaris]

Maybe the aliens visited us many times in earth's 4.5 billion years.  But to have a good chance for aliens to have visited us during the living memory of modern men, there would have to be on average more than 1 visit per 10,000 years.   This would mean aliens would have to have visited more than 6,000 times since the demise of dinosaurs, or more than 50,000 times since the Cambrian explosion.

See, it's statistically very probable for us to have missed alien visitation completely even if aliens, on a cosmological time scale, actually frequently visited earth, say 10,000 times since when trilobites crawled on the sea floors. Not having seen aliens, even if it is proof that aliens have not visited during the time when we were around to see and record them, is still not a statistically weighty evidence for whether aliens ever visited.

The other question of what evidence they may have left from past visit?  We have no way of knowing why they visited, how they visited, and what they did while visiting, so we have no way of speculating what sort of evidence they ought to have left had they visited. Perhaps each visit was just an orbital remote sensing survey. Perhaps the colonized a whole continent, but subsequently the surface they trod upon all eroded away and the debris have mostly subducted into the mantle.

We simply have no evidence to say one way or the other.

[Excited Penguin]

Maybe the aliens visited us many times in earth's 4.5 billion years.  But to have a good chance for aliens to have visited us during the living memory of modern men, there would have to be on average more than 1 visit per 10,000 years.   This would mean aliens would have to have visited more than 6,000 times since the demise of dinosaurs, or more than 50,000 times since the Cambrian explosion.

See, it's statistically very probable for us to have missed alien visitation completely even if aliens, on a cosmological time scale, actually frequently visited earth.

The other question of what evidence they may have left from past visit?  We have no way of knowing why they visited, how they visited, and what they did while visiting, so we have no way of speculating what sort of evidence they ought to have left had they visited.

They might have very well helped us discover writing and other such important technologies to get us going. Or maybe they kick-started life on this planet. Or maybe they just brought it here from another planet and changed our collective and individual memories of it because we're actually some sort of political prisoners. In fact, we humans, are all descendants of the bloodline that ruled this cluster of galaxies and we got overthrown. But somebody will figure it out(I'm not saying it will be me, but it will be me) and start on this amazing journey of revenge and love and honor and space travel.