[Boltzmann]

:lol: Now even my country is involved in this stuff?

How can people be so obsessed about it? It doesn't even make sense to begin with.

BTW, do you call this “evidence”? Where are the reports of serious scientists and undeniable experimental results?

Can’t you see that this is just a quixotic quest?

People have been talking about UFOs since the 1950s, and the best “evidence” they have is a bunch of blurry/fuzzy pics/videos, a couple of radar anomalies and lots of anecdotal sightings/close encounters/medical experiments. Not to mention the crop circles and cattle mutilation.

As if aliens would travel millions of light years just to mutilate our cattle and make circles in our crops. Yeah, right

 

[Boltzmann]

Make that sick humor, almost-unlimited-resources and chimp-like goal system (or 14-years-old goal system, which is almost the same) and then I’ll agree with you

 

[Boltzmann]

Maybe the cows have something that interests them. Maybe they've been trying to recreate a bovarian ecosystem but seem to fail, so they're doing some sample extractions. In the development of science, scientists have done things which seem ridiculous now, but was perfectly sensible back then. It goes with the problem of expanding our frontiers... we lack knowledge. Eventually, we learn.

Don't try to compare aliens who are able to build ships which travel faster than light to primitive human scientists. Your argument is completely bogus.

If they are this advanced and just want to do some experimenting, they'd simply send a probe to retrieve a DNA sample from our cows (no need to waste resources on a manned mission) and clone all the cows they wanted (even allowing for genetic diversity if they wanted it).

The way you put it, you make the aliens look like 18th century human scientists doing experiments on abiogenesis.

And for them, it might be rather important. Humans go all the way to the deepest, darkest parts of the world for research and experimentation. For them, travel might not be such a bad or difficult idea given their objecttives (which we don't really know, so we can't tell if it's worth it or not)

So they travel thousands of light years to mutilate cattle and make crop circles? And you call this an intelligent species?

If anything, Independence Day got the right idea. They wouldn't come wanting to mutilate our cattle, or talk about how we should stop manufacturing nuclear weapons. They would come to conquer. This is the simplest instinct in nature, and it's not unlikely to happen somewhere else.

 

[Boltzmann]

No, I wasn't attacking the development of science, bud.

I never said you were attacking it.

Essentially, you see the progression of technology and intelligence for that matter in a somewhat linear way, assuming that just because a species is so advanced as to be able to travel light speed means every mode of thought is "advanced" as you think.

Technology does not increase in a linear progression. It's expansion is exponential (well, sort of). Look at the 20th century if you don't believe me. We develop tools that help us create new tools.

But I really made a small assumption. I assumed that any race that developed FTL travel must be a curious race, so that they would do research on all fronts, biology included. And cloning is a small feat compared to FTL travel. See, we already can make clones but we're not even close to FTL travel. But all of this is unecessary, really.

If they're so interested in biology as to come to a far away planet and take samples from their cattle, then their technology is surely advanced enough to include cloning (see my point above about cloning being way easier than FTL travel).

You can argue (as I did in another thread) that curiosity is not necessarly needed for technological development. But if a race does not possess this curiosity, they wouldn't be doing experiments with Earthly cattle, would they?

It may seem "illogical", but really, the train of thought you follow is a thought process developed by humans, developed not as an island on its own but also affected by conditions (cultural, biological etc...) unique to humans.

It's illogical from a game theoretical perspective, and also for engineering reasons. Game theory holds true for everyone in the universe. If a race hasn't discovered it, then they can't do FTL travel... really.

Spending more resources than what is needed to accomplish your goals is always illogical. Unless the aliens have Bush among them, and they want to send a manned mission just for political reasons Anyway, mutilating cattle would still be stupid and unecessary. If we puny humans can see it, why a mighty alien race wouldn't be able to do the same?

Man could've simply waited a bit to develop the most sophisticated tools so there's no need to send a manned expedition out. But in reality, man WANTS to go and experience it, if not only for the difficulty of doing so.

Maybe the need for experience is anthrocentric. But who knows? Maybe it isn't.

Have you seen manned expeditions to Pluto? Do you know why we never sent anyone there (even though many people would be willing to go)? Because it's too costly. And why would aliens waste their time going to another planet to mutilate cattle and make crop circles? Maybe they're intergalactic pranksters?

I'm not saying that aliens did come and create crop circles, nor am I saying they didn't. It's simply more of.. "I won't discount that possibility".

I assign a probability of 10^-20 to it. And I'm being generous

Besides, they could be done with the sampling now and are cloning as we speak :lol:

This sounds too raelian to me :lol:

But really now... a species that can boast of an incredibly advanced civilization, and that can travel light speed, succumbs to the simplest basic instinct of conquest?

I can't see why not. It's very hard to get rid of your instincts. Are you jealous of your GF/wife? That's an instinct. Do you like to have sex? That's an instinct too. I don't see we getting rid of any of these instincts any time soon.

Anyway, this advanced species of yours wants to mutilate alien cattle and make crop circles. Is that really better than conquest?

And I remember someone telling Elly that development is about not falling to the basest, hard-wired instincts of the self (or something to that effect).

It wasn't me who said that. Personally, I like to have emotions (specially now that I truly understand how emotions and rationality can coexist). The only thing that cannot happen is to let emotions cloud your judgement and act against your goals (killing someone in a fit of rage is one example; going to jail is something that I want to avoid). Other than that I'm fine with emotions.

A bloodthirsty species... you call that an intelligent species?

Emotional content and intelligence are orthogonal to each other. Study evolutionary psychology, neuroscience and cognitive psychology and you'll see it.

See how it can go both ways?

No, I can't.

 

[Boltzmann]

Suicide_Jaqie, you're missing the point. No one here's arguing about whether aliens exist or not. We're arguing about whether they visit us to mutilate our cattle and make crop circles (not to mention appear in blurred videos). It's an entirely different questions.

I've written about alien life several times already. Do a search for my posts and you'll see it.

 

[Boltzmann]

"Linear" as in the sense of once you get to FTL travel, you assume that you know pretty much a LOT of other stuff.... ah.. what the heck, you already acknowledged that assumption of yours. I guess "unified" may be a better term. But... anyway....

Considering that cloning is waaaaaaay easier to do than FTL travel. My assumption is not unwarranted if you consider the complexity of the tasks involved (coupled to the assumption that the race in question is curious to begin with, which is a safe assumption as I demonstrated).

Depends, really, on their priorities. We don't have sufficient proof that if we had been able to put much more effort on space travel, at the cost of other sciences, we might be closer to FTL than we are to cloning. What if they had some form of belief which barred genetic research?

Cloning is not even a very costly research (esp. in the first stages). FTL, on the other hand, will be MASSIVELY expensive (especially in terms of energy cost).

Anyway, do you see how you’re making increasingly worse assumptions in order to explain the data? (Aliens with a belief against cloning travelling to a planet millions of light years away just to mutilate their cattle and make experiments with them?) It’s a clear sign that your hypothesis is a flawed one (just like ancient astronomers trying to save the Ptolemaic system had to make increasingly complicated assumptions that made no snese at all).

It would be if it followed a reasoning if resources were scarce and emotions / alien personal preferences were not in play. Besides, they might have a Bush there too. Simply because something is possible in an effecient manner doesn't mean it will be done that way. A lot of factors have to be considered as well.

We’ve massively stupid politicians here, like Bush. Have we gone to Pluto yet? Will we go there in the near future (assuming that the Singularity doesn’t come)? I don’t think so. We could go there if we really wanted to, but the cost is just prohibitive. Not even Bush would want to go to Pluto.

None. But the point is, man would want to go there nonetheless. We don't know the mechanics of the implementation of FTL. We don't know their coping mechanism. Besides, it might not be too expensive for them.

If FTL was cheap enough for us to go to travel from planet to planet, then we’d most certainly want to meet with alien races, not mutilate cattle and make crop circles.

Yeah, but imagine what would happen if humans could not control these instincts. We might not have progressed much if at all. To be human is precisely to be above the carnal instincts.

To be humane is to be above the carnal instincts. These instincts are part of what makes us humans, but not humane. There’s a subtle difference.

BTW, evolution also provided us with the means to control our instincts. We’ve overriding mechanisms in our brains just to do that. Lacking these mechanisms you can’t really control yourself. Go read about neuropathologies and you’ll understand me.

It *might* have a practical use for them, but it's way better than conquest. Would like to die in an alien onslaught?

Of course, all my arguments would come crashing down in the face of an efficient-as-AI intellect. :hdbash:

Anyway.... we're arguing over matters that we really know squat about. It's fun, but let's not get carried away. Unless, there's actually an alien around here already (sounds like Stephen Hawkings' refusal to make a bet on time travel :lol: )

My point is that the simplest hypothesis is that aliens are NOT here, and that all these blurry videos/pictures are fake, and that all the testimonial evidence is either the product of deliberate lies or self-deception.

Seee, you can make round orbits fit the cosmological data if you do a LOT math gimmick (creating VERY complicated models). But elypitcal orbits are much simpler, and require less assumptions. Guess which one proved to be true?

You can either think that all these alien sightings are fake (or mistakes) or that very advanced aliens are traveling millions of light years to mutilate our cattle and make crop circles for some unknown reason that must be beneficial for them (and you need to make a lot of assumptions about their psychology, technology and economy for this model to sound plausible). I wouldn’t bet my money on the second hypothesis; that’s why I assign a very small probability to it.

 

[Boltzmann]

I'm shocked at you!!!!
With all your Scientific stuff, you never thought that they could be US from 1000 Years in the future??? Time travel and all...It could be like todays archeologists, Rozwell, site of Nuclear experiments...would be of prime interest...The Mexican earthquake (Another major close encounter). Cattle could be extinct so that would meake them of interest...

And why would our future selves come in badly designed flying saucers and let themselves be seen by present humans (assuming that they’re trying to conceal their presence, or else how do you explain that they made no formal contact?)?

A thousand years from now cloning technology will be perfected, so there’ll be no need to be worried about extinction of cattle (and even if they wanted samples, why mutilate the cattle?). The crop circles would also be unexplained by the time traveler hypothesis (unless we’re talking about teenager time traveler pranksters )

Besides, and that’s my personal opinion, I think that so far in the future we’ll either have gone extinct or everything will be plentiful (thanks to nanotechnology and other transhuman techs).

BTW, have you heard about MIT’s Time Traveler Convention 2005? It seems like they had no real time travelers there