Extraterrestrials

[vulcanlogician]

There are two ways to approach the issue.

1) Scientifically, looking at plausibility as GS did.

2) As a crackpot loon who thinks he has fragments of his anal probe in a mason jar.

(Let's be scientific, shall we? There is some hope, however slight, that we might actually discover extraterrestrial life. That would be an amazing discovery.)

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I love to meet something more alien than my cousins.

[Minimalist]

We're a galactic freak show.


If there are ET's who actually travel for lifetimes to get here I would be surprised.  If there are ET's who have developed Startrek level travel capacity I would also be surprised.  

Just as the absence of time travelers is the best evidence for thinking that isn't happening, the same can be said for ET's.  Even if they can somehow get here, they won't be bringing anything revelatory which will provide religious levels of meaning and hope.  There won't be a UFO apocalypse after which there will be a new world.  So make peace with our mundane existence cuz that's all y'all gonna get.

The Ancient Aliens shits drive me nuts.  Sure, a space-faring civilization flew who-knows-how-many light years to get here during the Old Kingdom and their sole reason for doing so was to teach primitives how to chip limestone?  Give me a fucking break.

[Catholic_Lady]

Billions of stars in billions of galaxies. We cannot be the only life out there.

Absolutely agreed my friend, but more to the point ...
are they here visiting Earth?

Highly doubt it.

[FatAndFaithless]

It's probable that in the inconceivably-vast universe there somewhere exists some form of something we'd call 'life'. It's less probable that it's intelligent life. It's even less probable that it's capable of language and communication. It's even less probable that it's capable of building/maintaining civilizations. It's even less probable that it's capable of inter-planetary travel. It's even less probable that that life is capable of inter-solar-system travel. It's even less probable that it exists close enough to our specific planet (in the OCEAN of other potential locales) to bother coming here. It's even less probable that it would have the technology to arrive, colonize, and come/go undetected among our populations (for whatever reason it might have).

Every time you add an assumption to the statement, it becomes less likely. The statement that some form of some life probably exists somewhere in the universe is pretty uncontroversial simply due to the gargantuan numbers that we're dealing with. But as you add assumptions the numbers go from gargantuan to extremely tiny, and making assertions based on extremely tiny numbers just isn't good enough. That's where that whole 'evidence' thing comes in, as much of a pain in the ass that it is.

I'd be willing to go on any record saying that I believe life in some form more likely than not exists somewhere, but anything after that - about what kind of life it is, where it is, what capabilities/characteristics it has - simply cannot be justified until actual evidence is produced. And as we've seen with other propositions, just making shit up or pointing to gaps to fill with fantasy isn't the answer.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

We'll put you on the list of people who said exactly that several times lately.

[FatAndFaithless]

Good to know I'm part of the cool kids!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Good to know I'm part of the cool kids!

You'll be hearing from the Department of Redundancy Department after they get done calibrating all the thermometers to see what temperature water freezes.

[Cinjin]

Originally, I would have been inclined to agree with most of you. My thought was that intelligent life very likely exists right in this galaxy, but that it was probably not making house calls. I'm an evidence sorta guy. Problem is, when I finally got past the decades long practice of ridiculing anyone who's interested in studying a phenomenon, I found that there is stacks of evidence for it everywhere.

2 or 3, 10 or 20, maybe even 1 or 200 accounts could be dismissed. Not thousands. To dismiss thousands and thousands of sightings and experiences, many from very reputable people, without so much as a look - smacks of ignorance and hearkens back to the blind dogma of the Catholic church when questioned about a flat earth being the center of the universe. "I don't understand how a race a million years ahead of us could get here, so it can't be true."

Anyway, dozens of government officials from nearly every major country have come forward to admit that extraterrestrials are indeed real.
Both British and US Freedom of information acts have unearthed a myriad of documents that show those governments have been extremely active in covering up and then ridiculing UFO sightings. 

The more I looked into it, the more I became convinced that we have been and still are being visited by extraterrestrials. This is from a guy who was most definitely a skeptic. Actually, I still am. If anyone ever tells me they saw a UFO, I'm going to immediately start punching holes in their story.

That being said. There's far too much evidence collected in the last 80+ years to blindly dismiss the possibility.




I'll return to respond to your insults. I just have a lot of work to do right now.  
Cheers

[The Grand Nudger]

In the most generous interpretation, cutting out all of the anal probings during happy hour in rural america (it was your boy Jimbo, not aliens, sorry Cletus!).....many people report seeing UFOs.  

I'm completely comfortable dismissing thousands of UFO sightings if the subject is aliens..because even if there were aliens they're not likely to be the explanation for very many of those ufo sightings.

Do you have any favorites?  I'll take one credible alien craft over mountains of ufo accounts.  Quality, not quantity. "Too much" bad evidence is still bad evidence.

(I want to believe superbad)