If you were an English settler in say 1690, how would you describe the Native Americans if you went back to London?
Depends on whether one were a Hobbesian, or a disciple of Montaign's "noble savage" theory, i would think.
Steve I think I would say that the new found land was inhabited by people.
There are alien lives, however not as in the films.
truth
Frank, I think the question is one in which there is enough "statistical" evidence on which to base a guess. Given the size of the cosmos, I think it would be VERY unlikely that we do not have at least equally intelligent life forms somewhere. My problem is how do we measure (even in a thought experiment) the "intelligence" of other life forms? By our standard I.Q. tests? And if there are VERY intelligent forms out there, by any standard) perhaps their intelligence (and culture) is such that they would consider technological development beyond their most fundamental needs to be "irrational." Why assume that they would go through an industrial revolution like ours, or have a spirit of adventure, or ruin their enviornment to the extent that they would have to migrate to some other plantary system? I like, of course, BillW's drawing of the "maritian Buddha", because it suggests different kinds of intelligence and different things to do with it. A higher form may just want to experience its existence (in a deep philosophical sense) and enjoy the enviornment to which its intelligence has adapted it. We are so prone to projecting our culture onto exotic life forms. Just consider how startrek adventurers are depicted as speaking middle class American English with beings in other galaxies, not just using the same language (a translating machine could accomplish that for them) but THINKING in 21st century, middle class American terms. Yada yada.
Another point to be made from statistics and astronomical distances is that unless life is abundantly present in the cosmos, it is unlikely that anyone is "nearby" in terms of practical space flight. Given that circumstance, one needs to ask why anyone would come here--we live next to an unprepossessing star at the outer end of a spiral arm of a galaxy, which galaxy we have no reason to assume has anything particularly alluring about it which would attract intelligent attention. Television signals have only been running outward from our planet since 1936; for another intelligence to know to a certainty that we are here, they would have had to have intercepted such signals, and that would infer that they are looking for them, and looking in those wave lengths. There are a whole host of improbabilities piled one upon the other in the contention of alien visitation so as to justify a healthy scepticism, despite a rather thoughtless mantra about what we can possibly know.
truth
Agreed, Setanta. They probably exist; they probably will not make contact with us.
Which is a shame . . . i had a bridge i was gonna sell 'em.
I had stayed away from this thread for a very long time. Happily I dropped in this morning, for I found a very reasoned, very civilized discussion going on. I think I shall follow along for a while, trying not to get in the way of all those beautiful responses.
no, on second thought (you guys know i can't do that), i might just add, that if any existing alien race/group decided to contact earth, they would do it their way, under their controls, with the benefit of technology beyond our wildest dreams (because they got here, didn't they), and we would/will probably never know about it, unless they want us to.
My First post - I'm a newbie, neeewwwbbbiiieee!!!
Aliens, well this seems like an interesting topic, do they exist? Are the intelligent? Have the visited Earth? I think so, but the question is why do I think this? The anwser is that I spent six years totatlly ingrossed by the subject of human and alien contact. I know a lot of you are now thinking of me as a fool or as a pyscho, but if you really look at some of the data its all a little to good. A good many of the people who report of are involved with the reporting of UFO sitings are very credile individuals with little to nothing to gain a lot to lose by reporting their experience. A well known UFO spotter (he saw one!) was Prez Jimmy Carter (while he was Governer). Anyway I gotta cut this short so... I belive in alien and stuff, I belive in UFO and abductions to a degree and I don't belive even if we find aliens and try to contact them we will be able to communicate. I'll post more later...
Bad spelling 'n stuff
Don't poke fun at my spelling and grammer errors, I just reformated my hard drive because of issuses with madrake linux and have no office suite or word processer... so things may be a little messy from me for a while!
I have a question to ask any one here about aliens.
Over the years I have thought about the may ethnic groups of people living on planet earth. If there is such diversity of physical, outward apperances; color of skin, shape of eyes, etc., how can we all be descended from one mummy found in Africa
I have a question to ask any one here about aliens.
Over the years I have thought about the may ethnic groups of people living on planet earth. If there is such diversity of physical, outward apperances; color of skin, shape of eyes, etc., how can we all be descended from one mummy found in Africa
Maggie, mummy rather specifically refers to the remains of people in ancient egypt who were embalmed according to the practices of the day. I understand what you are saying, but i think there might be a note of contempt in what you write. Differences in skin, eye and hair color can be easily explained by prolonged exposure to certain conditions of climate. For example, dark skin is dark because of melanin in the skin, produced by structures within the skin known as melanin bodies. The melanin and the melanin bodies provide an advantage by giving off heat and absorbing light radiation which might otherwise be harmful. But giving off heat is a disadvantage in a cold climate, and absorbtion of radiation is not useful where there is less sunlight coming down from directly or nearly directly overhead. Dark skinned people living for many generations in a cold climate are going to lose their dark skin, because it has certain disadvantages, and pale skin had definite advantages.
A gentleman in England many centuries ago named William of Occam wrote a rule for the intellectual investigation of that which we do not understand, or do not fully understand. That rule is entia non sunt multiplicanda--causes are not to be multiplied. Meaning the simplest, most direct explanation is best. The existence of life off this planet is possible, and some would contend probable. Visitation of our planet by other life forms is not impossible, but improbable for a vareity of reasons, which have been reviewed more than once in this thread. Given that there are good and sufficient physiological reasons for the slight variations in the appearance of humans, introducing the contention that they may be caused by alien visitation is not intellectually necessary, and in the face of the improbability of alien visitation, more than a little silly.
I wonder, does it bother you to think that white folks may be descended from black folks who left Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago, and, exposed to a cold, low light radation environment, turned pale? I ask because of the remark about "one mummy found in Africa"--it has a contemptuous tone.
Sentana--I have no problem with the color/race or the fact that whites may/are descended from blacks. it just seems improbable even after humans having lived on earth for millions of years. Also, the melain in all human skin reacts to the envoroment the human lives in; this is a given.
My curiosity stems from the fact that maybe there has been some alien intervention at some time-don't you think that at all possible?
I don't deny that it is possible, but it is improbable. No matter what fantasy world one imagines for a sentient life form alien to us, the limits of the physical universe will apply. The planet on which we live is the companion of an unprepossessing star, out in the boondocks of a spiral arm of this galaxy. Wide-ranging interstellar exploration will necessarily be very expensive in terms of energy and materials to make it all happen. Despite science fiction accounts of "worm holes" and "hyper drives," nothing which we know of allows anyone to violate the laws of physics observed by the human race. So one then would ask why a sentient species alien to us would ever have expended enormous resources to visit our neighborhood simply on the off chance of finding sentient life. Even in our times, television signals and microwave radiation have been leaving the planet for significantly less than one century. There is no reason to assume that any sentient speices which is not within less than one hundred light years of us knows we are here. It stretches the credulity to imagine even a single alien visitation, and more than one seems to me an absurdity.
Well, Setanta, you just burst my bubble because I have met many alledged people on my journey that seemed to be from " outer space". That's a joke!
An ironic joke, as well, as i seem to have encountered many of the same folks . . .
