What would you think if definitive proof of alien life emerged? Would it consign all religious thought to, as Mark Twain once predicted, the fate of a stuffed ornament in museums? How would suggestive confirmation of the principles of uniformity and plenitude - that if life can form on Earth it can form anywhere and thus will for everywhere - mix with confirmation of the principle of mediocrity (nothing special about humans)? Would mediocrity impact humans relation with technology and would plenitude turn science skyward?
Disclosure Day (2026), Spielberg: https://youtu.be/icDuEHSxE-w?si=jKBowVzx1K6IggNh
Replies
My humility tells me we're not alone. I don't think aliens have visited. Though an academic colleague of mine is firmly in the conspiracy camp that visits have happened but been covered up. I can't manage to get past distrust of those conspiracy theories. But I don't think we're alone. Hopefully they won't eat us.
But what if they did, Meelk? The hypothesis is interesting enough to generate speculations about "what if"? Some what ifs are probably pointless but humans discovering life started elsewhere, we have cosmic cousins, it would be the greatest thing to happen to humanity since the last time the Eels won a premiership.
I get that theory too, that they would be so superior to us that they would not even be that interested. But I lean towards the real constraints of time and distances.
Strange Eel, the Drake equation for calculating probability of finding life includes chance of life evolving, chance of them sending signals, and chance they will be around long enough to find us or us them. But there is no variable for whether they would bother trying! I guess that's a key assumption, of whether advancement preserves curiosity?
When you consider that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Earth and most of those stars have planets orbiting them (just like our sun), then the chance of life somewhere else is very very high in my opinion.
As long as they are Eels Supporters that will be okay I suppose 🙄🙄
Great point.
What happens if they're literally Eels? They only spare Eels fans. Which other fans do they eat first?
Joey, when Frank Drake first proposed the Drake equation to estimate probability of ET, he "calculated" 20 to 50,000,000 civilizations. With that margin, yeah, he was taking wild swings! I think recent estimates based on future data about planets etc has dropped it to 500 to 5,000. Some put it at 0 of course.
Probaklt just means all Drake equation style estimates are simply guesses shrouded in complex math?!
No such thing as Aliens or life on other planets in my personal opinion.
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
-
5
of 5 Next