Opinion Poll on Bigfoot, Alien, Ghosts

[SGT]

Funny ghost got more votes than bigfoot

If even 1 spacefaring race managed to colonize mutiliple worlds it would not only greatly improve long term chances of survival but withing a few million years they would essentially own at least the galaxy, even with the present limitations in physics as we know them. Such a race would likely posses godlike powers in our estimation. What are the odds this hasn't already happened? However unlikely it's certainly not 0. Such a race would be unlikely to depend on a planet for providing life support, only raw materials.

Point is that even though by far the greatest probability is that we are essentially alone at least in this galaxy the possibilities are more outrageous than we can possibly imagine. We suffer culture shock just moving around within our own societies and we want to pretend we can intellectualize races millions of years more advanced. It's fun to try though

I agree with you, provided that such a civilization could last millions of years. Our civilization acquired the means to extinguish itself about 60 years ago and we almost did it.
Will we be able to leave the planet before we deplete it from all its resources through exploitation and pollution? I don't really know.
Provided that another race has escaped self destruction and is going where no LGM has been before, would they need to mutilate cattle, draw crop circles and introduce anal probes in human beings? I don't think so! As you said, such a race would be godlike in our eyes and could study the life in our tiny rock with less invasive means.
Besides, escaping self destruction means that they achieved not only advanced technology, but advanced moral principles, so they would not kill and torture living beings, specially sentient ones.

 

[zoobyshoe]

We suffer culture shock just moving around within our own societies and we want to pretend we can intellectualize races millions of years more advanced. It's fun to try though

I don't think a lot of time is any guarrantee of advancement, or, rather, that being advanced has to indicate a long history.

 

[Anttech]

I mean no offence but that is a stunningly egocentric observation, or homosapienscentric would be more accurate. Prove we are the "centre" of the universe and I'll deny inevitabiltiy of life elsewhere in it

Earth is not unique IMO, and atm it is just that, I don't see how a trillion star systems would alow just one Earth. It's fairly unfeasable. Again I'm hypothesising, but it's not a bad hypothesis to supose life is out there elsewhere.

no offence taken.. I am just giving a different view point.. I am sceptical that there is other life forms out there, I see no reason why there should be, as I don't accept that we are a fluke...

 

[my_wan]

I don't think a lot of time is any guarrantee of advancement, or, rather, that being advanced has to indicate a long history.

I don't disagree. I even find the ideas I stated highly unlikely in general. However if a technologicaly advanced civilization is found what are the odds they attained that status within last few million years. Given the estimated age of the universe their technological status will likely be at least that old. The only thing to moderate those odds is that any live planet would likely have a lifespan much shorter than that. Escaping dependence on a particular planet is paramont to truly long term survival.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I don't disagree. I even find the ideas I stated highly unlikely in general. However if a technologicaly advanced civilization is found what are the odds they attained that status within last few million years. Given the estimated age of the universe their technological status will likely be at least that old. The only thing to moderate those odds is that any live planet would likely have a lifespan much shorter than that. Escaping dependence on a particular planet is paramont to truly long term survival.

The idea I'm putting out is that I don't think there's any reason to assume technological advancement is limited to earth-paced advancement. The quality we call "intelligence" which allows for technology might well have evolved much more quickly and to a much more sophisticated level in a different environment, and a given alien may be able to reach, say, Feynman levels of understanding in his first year of life. Rather than the slow, clumsey accumulation of knowledge over generations, with the concommitant fights against the preconceptions of previous generations, aliens might be neurologically wired to see and grasp things extremely rapidy. An alien race might have figured out how to escape dependence on an individual planet in the course of a hundred Earth years.

 

[SGT]

The idea I'm putting out is that I don't think there's any reason to assume technological advancement is limited to earth-paced advancement. The quality we call "intelligence" which allows for technology might well have evolved much more quickly and to a much more sophisticated level in a different environment, and a given alien may be able to reach, say, Feynman levels of understanding in his first year of life. Rather than the slow, clumsey accumulation of knowledge over generations, with the concommitant fights against the preconceptions of previous generations, aliens might be neurologically wired to see and grasp things extremely rapidy. An alien race might have figured out how to escape dependence on an individual planet in the course of a hundred Earth years.

The only examples of life and intelligence we have are those on Earth. To speculate about very dissimilar forms of life will lead us nowhere. I think we must assume that life in another planet is similar to that on Earth: carbon based, with some form of genetic code (not necessarily DNA) and with simple organisms attaining maturity very quickly, being short lived and reproducing fast. More complex organisms should have larger brains (or whatever aliens use to think), mature more slowly and have larger lifespans and smaller progenies.
We don't have to speculate for faster maturity in aliens. In the billions of years of existence of our galaxy it is very likely that if life and intelligence have appeared elsewhere, it could be thousands or millions of years ahead of us. The problem, as I pointed in a previous post, is how long a civilization survives after getting the means to suicide.

 

[zoobyshoe]

The only examples of life and intelligence we have are those on Earth. To speculate about very dissimilar forms of life will lead us nowhere.

The aliens I'm inviting you to imagine aren't basically dissimilar to us. Their ability to advance would be the result of being wired, neurologically, differently in a way that might have happened to us but didn't.

We don't have to speculate for faster maturity in aliens.

No, we don't have to, but we don't have to be limited to speculating in terms of homo-sapiens-paced advancement either.

The problem, as I pointed in a previous post, is how long a civilization survives after getting the means to suicide.

This is only something we'd have to take into consideration if we assume human-like emotions and values for them. That's not something we can definitely assume for other life forms here on earth, much less beings on another planet.

 

[SGT]

The aliens I'm inviting you to imagine aren't basically dissimilar to us. Their ability to advance would be the result of being wired, neurologically, differently in a way that might have happened to us but didn't.

No, we don't have to, but we don't have to be limited to speculating in terms of homo-sapiens-paced advancement either.

This is only something we'd have to take into consideration if we assume human-like emotions and values for them. That's not something we can definitely assume for other life forms here on earth, much less beings on another planet.

Other species on Earth have beeing and will be extinct by external factors. The only species that has the power to extinguish itself is homo sapiens and this has being true only for 60 years.