Alien life? -- your take on the subject

What's a "ridiculisation debunker" ?

How do you recognise one?

"Its English Jim, but not as we know it"

and another thing!

I am a member of 'SETI'; using my computer to process the radio telescope information following Sagan's concept of searching our galaxie for signs of 'intelligence' (there's none here, so we may as well look elswhere!).
You could say i'm 'putting my money where my mouth is' (to engage one of the many ridiculous sayings).
Why i've spent.................'pennys' over the years on this project, and in October they are assessing the results, and re-examining the most 'promissing'.

A caveat though, the closest planetary system to earth is over ten light years away. Any 'alien' having the technology to visit earth would have to (at the very least, happening to be our neighbour) invest twenty years of its lifespan, just for the trip.

This means this alien has to have a 'total mindset' personality rather like ..............'Wolf'!

Might be a little hard to deal with once it arrived, eh?

This poll indicates the majority's opinion that as extraterrestrial intelligent llifeforms exist, they might be contacting us. Which is what many in the security apparatus have indeed confirmed. I don't see what the problem is, or why this opinion has to be countered by all means.

I'm just the messenger. Take your hatemails out on admiral Hillenkoeter, admiral Hill-Norton, colonel Corso, colonel Dedrickson, astronauts Cooper and Mitchell and many others.

Are you saying tens of thousands of taco-faithful are not "credible witness"? Migawd, man, yet today there's still a shrine in which you can see the miraculous bread! There's even a sign out by the highway directing the curious to the venerably housed and scrupulously maintained relic of the phenomenon. How is faith in holy bread any more or less valid than faith in saucer folk, particularly given that the tortilla has such superiorly established provenance? I'm thoroughly unconvinced the thousands of professionally accomplished and socially prominent folks who profess to have seen Bigfoot or Nessie are not in error, as well. Now, I'm not a disbeliever. Believe me, Wolf ... I believe in UFOs ... I believe in them absolutely literally; they are UNEXPLAINED. Neither pro nor con there, partner, just unconvinced either way. The quantity and quality of "Witnesses", in the absence of valid, independently verifiable, rigorously vetted corroborating physical evidence leaves the proponents of your proposition mired in Argumentuim Ad Populum. BTW, I too have to my credit a few thousand completed SETI work units; in fact, all of my machines are on 24/7 and use a program which obtains, caches, and process multiple units at once. The way I figure it, there's an awful lot of space goin' to waste out there if there ain't something besides us in it, and waste is not a notable feature of the workings of nature. Apart, of course, from the credulous speculations of gullible humans, who fail to grasp the concept of "Insufficient Data". There is a clear cut answer; that answer is "We don't know". That's why they're UNEXPLAINED Flying Objects.

Sadly, I have to agree with Setanta. Arguing with Wolf is a waste of time. He KNOWS the truth. It is us who are wrong not to believe or express scepticism. For Wolf it is a matter of religious faith. He admits to being born "a normal sane sceptic" but has now been stuck with religious fervour. My comment earlier about a Damascene conversion seems more apt as this thread develops.

Okay, my cover is blown. I am an alien visitor who is simply on A2K to observe humans. It is clear that you are far too primitive to accept our advanced technology. You will have to wait for the Vulcans. I need to catch my spaceship now, and it is sadly booked on Air Canada, so delays are going to be a problem. I leave you now, traffic is gonna be murder.

Nonsense? I don't think they are purposely trying to mislead people, but they have a belief and they are purposely looking for evidence to support it. They aren't particularly interested in finding the truth, any more than any other "true believer" is.

Since when did opinion ever dictate reality? The majority used to believe in a flat earth too, didn't make it true.

You can't POSSIBLY be this dense, Wolf. Are you really trying to tell us you can't tell the difference between an unidentified flying object and an alien craft? Can you honestly not differentiate between a person and a claim? Sheesh, it's no wonder you're a laughing stock.

If an alien wanted to contact us, they would use the bloody phone, or even e-mail, and contact someone smart. Isn't it odd that most alien sightings are reported by dumb hicks who live near military bases? Hmm....

I will foresake my 'fanaticism' if setanta, cavfancier, steve and herr timberlandko admit that 1) it can not be excluded that ufos are extraterrestrial craft, and 2) that army generals, astronauts and air force pilots are generally considered to be more reliable witnesses in the domain of aeronautics than your average taco baker.

Alas, I merely await another cynical reply.

wolf, let me state my position on this subject as clearly as I can. First, I don't believe that we are the only life in the universe. Odds are, that cannot be true. Second, I believe that many UFO sightings could possibly be extraterrestrial. That stands to reason. Third, I believe that the US military has more terrestrial things to hide than extraterrestrial, and I think the UFO phenomenon is more likely a military red herring to protect the things they are really working on. A few well-planted leaks to the press are enough to dupe people into ignoring the top-secret aircraft they are working on. The same goes for the supposedly 'declassified' documents that circulate. It's a calculated manipulation of the public psyche, and if you don't think the US army is capable of staging this, you really are more naive than I thought.

No cynicism involved in my appraisal of the issue, there, Wolf. As said before, the quantity and putative quality of witnesses does not obviate the fallacy of Argumentum Ad Populum. The Jury is still out. We just don't know. Some of us actually are openminded.

Cav, I'm the last person on the internet who wouldn't suspect foul play by the Pentagon. Everybody knows that.

Tk: who will you believe? The president? An official declaration? The eight o' clock news? If so, why?

I'll believe the aliens, if and when they deign to disclose themselves, I guess. I'm open to unambiguous external provenance, as well, should that first, or ever, become evident. Untill then, I just don't know. That's what being open minded is all about, IMHO. Some folks have faith, some folks have questions. I have a lot of questions.

truth
Timber, you forgot to tell us how you know the "tens of thousands" of people who saw the face of Jesus on a tortilla were in error. I think the large number would suggest they DID see something other than an aggregate of individual delusions. The problem is their interpretation of the meaning of what they saw. I would ask them how they know it was the face of Jesus. There are no photos of him anywhere that I know of.
Wolf, is it possible/plausible in your mind that perhaps aliens have not come here personally but have sent sensing devices to garner information about us? I'm thinking about a question by someone above that in order to come here personally they would have to sacrifice many years of their lives to travel. Wouldn't it be easier to send unmanned instruments?

There are several projections of human suppositions involved in the question of whether or not there are other technological civilizations living elsewhere in the space we know of as the universe. Another life form which arose on a planet with a significantly higher mass, and therefore a much "heavier" gravitational well could advance far beyond our technological development without having solved the problem of getting off the surface of their planet. Even were they to do so, it may well be that even a brief exposure to a zero gravity environment would do a serious injury to a member of such a species. Conversely, a life which arose on a planet with a significantly lower mass than the earth might be too frail to withstand the gravitational stresses involved in riding a rocket out of their particular "mother well" of gravity.

Another anthropomorphism is to suggest that such a technologically advanced species would be "out there" looking for such another civilization. Were a species characterized by a low reproductive rate combined with a high survival rate, such a species might well advance to a high degree of technological sophistication without ever experiencing the population pressures which have made the human race restless wanderers. In the human equation, for most of the history of our species, life spans were short, and infant and child mortality rates very high, necessitating early and frequent efforts at reproduction. Any developments in argriculture and handicrafts which mitigated toward a lessening of the mortality rates and the lenghthening of life spans have resulted in population explosions, with resultant migrations and strife--the centuries of migration of the German tribes in Eurasia two thousand years ago are a graphic example. But absent such a situation, would another species necessarily want to expend huge amounts of resources on the off chance of contacting another civilization?

And human conceit is a big factor which needs to be reviewed. Galactically speaking, we live in the boonies--we're galactic hillbillies. Why would anyone come here looking for us? And if such civilizations have projects such as SETI, and eschew actual exploration, would they use a form of survey and communication which we would recognize? Are our signals in a form which they would recognize? Certainly radio waves and microwaves seem obvious to us. Is it not a conceit to think that any and all technologically sophisticated civilizations would come to the same conclusions as have we?

This is, in fact, an insufficiently investigated subject, in terms of attempting to remove subjective projections.

wolf, yeah, I thought you'd appreciate that. However, I still lean on the side of the UFO visitations as stories planted by the military, not truth.

truth
Setanta, VERY interesting questions. Now if you Steve and Cephus (all of you intellectually very capable contributors) could only reduce the childish aggressive sarcasm. It embarrasses me to stand by and watch you abuse sincere Wolf as you do. It's just my personality hang-up, I know. But I feel compelled to say something. I'll bet others feel the same.

I came clean, I was honest in my opinions here. Problem is, anything I say now is going to sound sarcastic, no matter how sincere...things like "We should give this topic the respect it deserves"....whether or not that is an honest statement, only I know for sure. I am cool with believing in aliens, but I still think that until proof positive is 'out there', I will continue to believe in my military red herring theory. The stealth bomber history should be proof enough. For years the test models were sited as UFOs.