So UFO's and aliens... what's the deal?

[Kosh]

I was a true believer in my youth.  Now that I'm pushing 50, not so much. 
 
I believe the chances are very good that there is intelligent life in the universe, and some are possibly much more technologically advance.  They might even have mastered interstellar travel.  We know that the standard model of particle physics is not telling us the whole story about what is going on in the universe.  This is especially true when it comes to gravity.  A species that has mastered this knowledge might has the universe at their finger tips.  We just don't know.
 
I just don't see it as being very likely that they've been here.  If you have the universe at you fingertips, there is an awful lot of interesting places to go.

[The Grand Nudger]

 
I just don't see it as being very likely that they've been here.  If you have the universe at you fingertips, there is an awful lot of interesting places to go.

Maybe they're livestock anus afficianados and cereal grain-based zen garden hobbysists?  

[Fake Messiah]

I was a true believer in my youth.  Now that I'm pushing 50, not so much. 

You know that's the same thing John Carpenter said on "The Thing" DVD commentary. Kurt Russel asked him if he believed in alien visitation and he said "No. It's something you believe as a young guy."

But I must admit that I was also moved by saucer stories and some of them are indeed moving peaces of fiction presented as "real thing" - I mean so what? Some horrors do it too, like that fucking "Exorcist" I mean there are so many people that think that movie is a documentary.
I remember my first encounter with Ufology when I saw that movie "Roswell" on TV in the 90s. I remember it started "this was based on real events". I didn't know anything about Roswell and I remember being freaked out "What this was real? No way! Arghhh!" but then as movie progresses it becomes more ridiculous, especially with rubber aliens at the end which are now kept at the Roswell alien museum, just like Mel Gibson treasures Jim Caviezel's rubber crown of thorns from "Passion" in his private church. You know I guess the only reason people have private churches is that they can have sex with the statues.
Other story that really moved me was back in early 2001. I was watching some Russian movie on TV late at night and after it finished there was some "documentary" on aliens. They told a story how few decades ago alien saucer crashed somewhere in US (I don't remember where) and one alien survived so army locked him into the buker and called him IO (binary numbers). They said how alien was very passive and didn't pay any attention to them and just stared at his crystal all day long. Then one day he became friendly and showed them his crystal and they could see it was a communication device as well as a device you can see the past and the future. He also told them how they live 800 years, have very intelligent AI so they don't have to work anymore or go to wars, but that they also lost their feelings because there was nothing to be ambitios for, so that's why they come to Earth to collect human DNA. OK that last part was really stupid but they presented it with drawings and I remember that that night I even dreamed that alien and how I was looking at the crystal and saw how in the year 2055 people will find parts of a large spaceship in Jupiter's spot.
So it was like watching some horror movies but I can't stand those docs anymore, just like documentaries on Noah's ark.

[Arkilogue]

If they are "out there" at all then most likely they've been here long before man.... this little gem is a shiny one.

If you wanted to remain hidden from humans, you'd go under the ocean.

[The Grand Nudger]

Meh, if you've got the tech to cross the galaxy then hide in the bottom of the ocean, you could just as easily hide in plain sight and wouldn't have to bother yourself with all that noise.  

Sells popcorn, though, makes for a good movie plot.

[Arkilogue]

Meh, if you've got the tech to cross the galaxy then hide in the bottom of the ocean, you could just as easily hide in plain sight and wouldn't have to bother yourself with all that noise.  

Sells popcorn, though, makes for a good movie plot.

Like a cloaking device? Perhaps for surveillance of the farm but not practical nor necessary to use all the time.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don;t know that you'd -need- a cloaking device.  We couldn't find Bin Laden.  I couldn't find my car keys this morning. Probably not gonna find ET if he doesn't want to be found. Bottom of the ocean, back of my closet, would it really matter where it chose to hide? We may not even recognize it as life.

[Kosh]

If beings used some sort of interdimensional travel mechanism (folding space), it might render them invisible to our senses. 
 
Again the question is..  Why come here.. 
 
If I wanted to play optimist, I could say that they use a similar method that we do when it comes to searching for "possible" inhabitable world.  They look for main sequence stars with rocky planets that orbit in the goldilocks zone.  It's possible that their advances technology is on an order of magnitude more sensitive than ours, and they simply found our solar system by using this method and came to investigate (because they can).  Or maybe they can send recon probes to gather information. 
 
I've even heard theories that they are actually humans from the future.  Not sure what they would be doing.  Maybe they are messing with the timeline.  Maybe a million years from now our ancestors are CO2 breathing critters who like the temperatures in the 50C range so they are helping us terraform the planet
 
In any event, I just think any of it is the case.  You would think someone would have caught irrefutable proof with billions of people carrying the equivalent of hi def movie cameras.

[chimp3]

Cheech and Chong do a skit about an alien with three balls. "ET.ET." Ernie Torres, Extra Testicle. Exceptionally horny visitor to earth.

[Asmodee]

I used to think the "UFO phenomena" was fascinating.  Until I started hanging out in a couple of UFO forums.  Then I realized it was all just BS.  Let me tell you how a normal conversation goes there.

1) Somebody posts something which cannot be easily explained with what we know and then explains it with what they wish they knew
2) There is some back and forth between enthusiasts and skeptics with skeptics offering natural explanations and enthusiasts rejecting every one of them
3a) If nobody recognizes it as a known phenomena, 2 goes on for a while and name-calling begins.  "Septic skeptic" is a popular one.  Step 2 goes on for a while until everyone loses interest
3b) If somebody does recognize the phenomena or even the particular evidence it is ALWAYS a natural explanation.  The conversation ends abruptly with enthusiasts pretending it never happened
4) The process starts all over in a new thread

This is how EVERY SINGLE thread goes.  There are no exceptions.  If you can't PROVE to them there is a natural explanation then their particular pet explanation is correct.  If it "could not have been" X then it "MUST BE" whatever they want it to be.  And it "could not have been" X unless you prove it IS X.  If you do they pretend the conversation never happened and use the same flawed arguments again in the next thread.

On top of that they insist on using phrases like "UFOs are real!"  Well of course they are!  A "UFO" is an "UNIDENTIFIED flying object".  But that's not really what they're saying.  What they are saying is that alien space craft visiting the planet is a real phenomena.  So why do they use the wrong term?  So that if they're ever called out they get to back out of it by saying, "I never said aliens were here!", which, no, they did not, even though that's exactly what they are saying.  If you request that they accurately state what they are saying it is like you never made that post.  It simply goes ignored, as if it doesn't exist.  And in the same conversation the same enthusiast will tell you both that "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" when explaining why no evidence to support the idea the crop circles are caused by aliens means absolutely nothing AND THEN go on to explain that in "real" crop circles there is no evidence to show that they were made by humans, proving that they are real.

I actually had one person quote Sherlock Holmes to me as if the quote were some law of science.  "When you eliminate the impossible, that which is left, however improbable, must be the answer."  Well, yeah, if you're a fictional character with a universe designed around you to make you always come out on top and never be wrong, that is correct.  In the real world, however, that is meaningless babble which couldn't be more wrong.  You don't determine "what is" by figuring out "what is not".  If you are looking at an apple and you determine it is not a rock, that doesn't really bring you any closer to figuring out what it "is".  That's just not how reality works.

Long story short, UFO enthusiasts are all nuts and there is nothing to any claim they ever make.