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[value]

NASA
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NASA's independent study team released a report on UFOs in September 2023, which found no evidence that reported UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena) observations are extraterrestrial in origin.

NASA report finds no evidence that UFOs are extraterrestrial
https://theconversation.com/nasa-report ... ial-213528

Alien life might not be something science can ever ‘discover’
https://aeon.co/essays/alien-life-might ... r-discover

NASA's press release: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa- ... na-report/

What are the implications of this for theories about life in the Universe?

Despite the vastness of the universe and the numerous planets that could potentially harbor life, no definitive evidence of extraterrestrial life has been found so far. This conundrum is known as the Fermi Paradox, named after physicist Enrico Fermi, who first asked, "Where is everybody?" in 1950. The paradox highlights the contradiction between the high probability of extraterrestrial life existing in the universe and the lack of evidence or contact with such civilizations.

Scientists have proposed various explanations for the Fermi Paradox, including the possibility that alien civilizations might not be interested in contacting or visiting Earth. Another theory suggests that we might not be interesting enough for advanced alien civilizations to communicate with or visit. It is also possible that we have not yet developed the necessary technology or observational techniques to detect signs of extraterrestrial life.

JWST so far has not detected any signs of alien life beyond a signature of what is believed to be a molecule that is produced by life. No structures or life-like activities have been detected.

The following article explores philosophical questions and history related to the Fermi paradox in 2021:

(2021) Dolphin intelligence and humanity’s cosmic future
We don’t see evidence of supercivilisations across the galaxy because the only ones that persist are the ones that give up the risky path of technology and instead pursue immersion in nature.

Ageing civilisations either self-destruct or shift to become something like a whale. The Russian astrophysicist Vladimir M Lipunov speculated that, across the Universe, the scientific mindset recurrently evolves, discovers all there is to know and, having exhausted its compelling curiosity, proceeds to wither away and become something like a whale.

By 1978, the philosophers Arkadiy Ursul and Yuri Shkolenko wrote of such conjectures – concerning the ‘possible rejection in the future of the “technological way” of development’ – and reflected that this would be tantamount to humanity’s ‘transformation into something like dolphins’.

The dolphin – that perfect floating signifier – has become a peaceful ‘other’, which we ventriloquise to voice our sense of our own mechanised fallenness.

Plausibly since Homo erectus, our very physiology has been moulded by our inventions. Moreover, it was technology that made humans philosophical. By distancing our ancestors from pressing needs and interests – with crop surpluses and city safeholds – the burgeoning of technological civilisation is what first facilitated disinterested curiosity and enquiry. Without technology, we would be worrying too much about our next meal to be ethicists. We certainly wouldn’t be able to ponder the silence of the cosmos.

Biologist and philosopher Russell Powell and the astrobiologist Kevin Hand, stress that life in an aquatic medium puts major obstructions on the ability to develop tools and technology. This applies here and abroad, to Earth’s oceans as much as Europa’s.

An honorary member of the Order of the Dolphin, philosopher Shklovsky remained adamant that giving up on technoscience would be a fate worse than extinction.

American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars: "it doesn’t matter whether we imagine it happening to a ‘Martian’, a ‘featherless biped’ or a 'whale', but once any being has bitten the apple of knowledge – and awoken to the demand to find a foothold for values in a Universe of mute facts – there’s no turning back. The only resolution is ‘eating the apple to the core’."

Could whales or dolphins be made to 'bite the apple' of science?

Philosopher John Lilly intended to find out and founded the Communication Research Institute in the late 1950's and published research suggesting that his attempts to talk to dolphins were working.
https://aeon.co/essays/dolphin-intellig ... mic-future

More about philosopher John C. Lilly's research into dolphin intelligence:

Dolphin communication: just making sounds?
dolphin.jpg (39.51 KiB) Viewed 17872 times

"In the province of the mind, there are no limits."
https://www.johnclilly.com/


The source on aeon.co writes: "Plausibly since Homo erectus, our very physiology has been moulded by our inventions. Moreover, it was technology that made humans philosophical."

Was the human brain the result of technology?

Orca: more comprehensive conscious experience, why?
orca.jpg (17.54 KiB) Viewed 17872 times

The orca brain structure is more sophisticated than the human brain structure, and it enables them to have a more comprehensive conscious experience than humans.

The orca brain contains more spindle cortical neurons and they have a highly gyrified cerebral cortex, which allows them to process more information in the same time and much faster than a human. Orcas have an elaborated insular cortex, which is involved in consciousness and playing diverse functions linked to emotions that includes compassion, empathy, perception, motor control, self-awareness, and interpersonal experience.

Orcas also have a more advanced set of brain lobes called paralimbic system, compared to humans. Orcas have a larger brain-to-body weight ratio than humans. And orcas have a more advanced paralimbic system and amygdala, which are related to spatial memory, navigation, emotional learning, and long-term memories.

The orca brain is faster and they are aware of more in the same time. Why???

The physiological evolution of whales and orcas was not driven by technology, and yet, their brain became more advanced than that of a human, for a purpose that the human may not yet have discovered.

Could whales be smarter than humans?
https://whalescientists.com/intelligenc ... -dolphins/

Are whales deep thinkers?
Whale and dolphin brains contain specialized brain cells called spindle neurons. These are associated with advanced abilities such as recognising, remembering, reasoning, communicating, perceiving, adapting to change, problem-solving and understanding. So it seems they are deep thinkers! Not only that, but the part of their brain which processes emotions (limbic system) appears to be more complex than our own.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... -us-human/

Why is the Universe not crowded with alien activity? And if the Universe is crowded with life, what is it doing with "a billion years more time on a planet like Earth, compared with a human on Earth today?"

What would whales and orcas be doing with a billion years more time?

Whales are perceived as lower animals, but their brain has developed for millions of years longer and they got further than a human. The first Orca fossil dates from about 5.3 million years ago, the first whale from about 36 million year ago (their first significant brain increase started about 33 million years ago) and the first fossil of a human like creature, the Homo erectus, dates from about 1.8 million years ago.

Questions:

- why is there no evidence that Earth was ever visited by an alien civilization?
- why have today's 2023 technologies not been able to detect alien activity in outer space?
- why do whales and dolphins have a more advanced brain (and conscious experience) than humans?
- what would a whale or dolphin do with a million years more time?
- what will a human do with a million years more time? (and why is that good?)

[Lagayascienza]

Why is there no evidence that Earth was ever visited by an alien civilization

There are many possible reasons.

- Maybe there are no extra-terrestrial civilizations
- If there is other intelligent life out there, maybe they haven't had the technological ability to visit earth.
- Maybe they have better things to do
- Maybe they have visited earth, perhaps millions of years ago, and maybe they left artifacts but over geological time the evidence has been erased.
We have plate tectonics, a thick, highly oxidizing atmosphere, weathering, erosion, sedimentation ... On geological timescales things don't hang
around long of the earth's surface.

Why have today's 2023 technologies not been able to detect alien activity in outer space?

- Maybe there's nothing out there to detect
- Maybe our technology is not yet powerful enough to detect it if it does exist.
- Maybe they don't want to be detected and have taken measures to avoid detection

Why do whales and dolphins have a more advanced brain (and conscious experience) than humans?

There is no evidence that their brains are more "advanced' than ours. They are different, certainly, but "advanced" is not the right word. They are social mammals with large complex brains and I'd say they are almost certainly conscious and experience the world through their senses as we do.

What would a whale or dolphin do with a million years more time?

-Evolve.
-Become extinct.

What will a human do with a million years more time? (and why is that good?)

As above. That would be neither good not bad in any objective sense.

[Alan Masterman]

I agree with much of the previous... Fermi's Paradox fails in the same way that Anselm's Ontological Argument fails: you can't prove a matter of empirical fact by means of purely logical arguments. At some point, the argument has to hinge upon factual data which cannot be denied. There are many reasons why we might not yet have evidence of extra-terrestrial life. To begin by stating the obvious: we ourselves are not yet able to detect life in other solar systems (let alone, on other planets within our own). So what of intelligent life in other planetary systems?

(1) If there are only 10,000 civilisations in our galaxy, the distance between each would be so great that the chances of one stumbling upon another would be very slight.

(2) they have discovered us, but we are not sufficiently interesting to be worth their special attention (Gasp! Do you mean we AREN'T as special and fascinating as we think we are?)

(3) they have discovered us, but we are not sufficiently intellectually or technically advanced to be aware of it (think in terms of human research into the lifecycle of a bacterium species).

(4) they have discovered us, and our propensity for exterminating each other. You, dear reader, are more intellectually sophisticated than an alligator. But would you jump into a swamp, and say to the nearest alligator, "take me to your leader"?

(5) they have not discovered us because, barring the discovery of an alternative physics, interstellar travel will never be practical for beings with a finite life expectancy.

(6) they have discovered us, but their environmental laws forbid them from interfering with (what they take to be) a pristine natural enviroment.

(7) they have discovered us, and been discovered, but science has chosen to impose a blanket denial upon the accounts of human witnesses.

Let's not go on...

[Lagayascienza]

I agree with much of the previous... Fermi's Paradox fails in the same way that Anselm's Ontological Argument fails: you can't prove a matter of empirical fact by means of purely logical arguments.

Yes, agreed.
I get the feeling some people think there is something odd about us having not so far found solid evidence for even simple life, let alone ETIs. But I think that is to be expected. We have only just recently the technology to even begin addressing these questions.

[value]

Lagayscienza:

Thank you for your insightful reply!

You describe the purpose of life as "to evolve or to become extinct" and that there is no morality involved.

Can you please substantiate that claim?

Evolve into what, for what? Should evolution be considered in the face of the risk of extinction solely, as an escape attempt as it were?

About the brain of orcas you wrote:

There is no evidence that their brains are more "advanced' than ours. They are different, certainly, but "advanced" is not the right word.

1. The orca brain contains more spindle cortical neurons and a highly gyrified cerebral cortex, which allows them to process more information in the same time and much faster than a human.
2. The orca brain has an elaborated insular cortex, which is involved in consciousness and playing diverse functions linked to emotions that includes compassion, empathy, perception, motor control, self-awareness, and interpersonal experience. This is the most elaborated insular cortex in the world.
3. The orca brain has a more advanced set of brain lobes called the paralimbic system, compared to humans, which are related to spatial memory, navigation, emotional learning, and long-term memories.
4. The orca brain has a more advanced amygdala, which is associated with emotional learning and long-term memories.
5. The orca has a larger brain-to-body weight ratio than humans.
6. Orcas have a paralimbic cleft, which is a highly developed set of lobes that may enable some brain function that humans lack. Scientists who examine their brains are often astonished at just how heavily folded these brains are, by which the human brain seems more primitive.
7. Orcas paralimbic system has much more intricate folding and detail than human brains do, which helps combine information from the parts of the orca's brain that process emotions with those in charge of higher-level thinking.

These statements come from neuroscientists.

I am interested in the question why.

If the orca just wanted to escape extinction, why would it need a more advanced brain than a human?

Perhaps the human is missing something of 'the equation' when it comes to the purpose of life. In a way, the human is pretty much locked-in within the boundaries of language and has even mentally developed itself to principly reject anything that cannot be enclosed within that boundary.

Some ancient stories about orca's:

The Haida people of the Pacific Northwest have a legend about a boy who was raised by orcas and learned their language. The boy was able to communicate with the orcas and learned their secrets, which he shared with his people.

The Tlingit people of Alaska have a legend about a boy who was taken by orcas to their underwater village. The boy was able to communicate with the orcas and learned their secrets, which he shared with his people.

The Ainu people of Japan have a legend about a god who created the orcas as his helpers. The orcas were able to communicate with the god and learned his secrets, which they shared with the Ainu people.

The Maori people of New Zealand have a legend about a boy who was saved from drowning by an orca. The boy was able to communicate with the orca and learned their secrets, which he shared with his people.

The Apatani tribe of Arunachal Pradesh, India, have a tradition of fishing with the help of orcas. The tribe believes that the orcas are their ancestors and that they have a spiritual connection with them.

The Inuit people of the Arctic have a tradition of hunting with the help of orcas. The orcas help the Inuit by driving seals towards the hunters, and the hunters in turn offer the orcas a portion of their catch. The Inuit believe that they have a spiritual connection with the orcas.

The Karajá people of Brazil have a tradition of fishing with the help of orcas. The orcas help the Karajá by driving fish towards their nets, and the Karajá in turn offer the orcas a portion of their catch.

Returning in each story: spiritual communication.

In modern times that still comes forth.

In 2018, a man named Kevin Hines claimed that he was saved from drowning by a pod of orcas off the coast of California. Hines reported that he felt a connection with the orcas and that they communicated with him in a way that he could understand.

In August 2005, a 12-year-old boy named Ellis Miller was swimming in four feet of water in Helm Bay, near Ketchikan, Alaska, when he was bumped in the shoulder by a 7.6-meter (25 ft) orca. The boy was not bitten or injured in any way. As the orca returned to deeper water, another six orcas surfaced near the beach. The orcas swam along the beach for a hundred yards or so and then returned. They swam back and forth several times. On the last pass, the largest orca rolled onto its side, raised a pectoral fin and smacked the water about five times. Then it hit the water with its tail. The other whales followed in a line and began doing the same. “It was like they were signaling us.”

In Hawaiian mythology, dolphins are viewed as bridging the world of the living and the divine. Legends tell tales of dolphins saving fishermen lost at sea or to communicate messages from the spiritual realm.

It seems a case of experiential perception of a spiritual realm. Perhaps it is there that one can find the reason of the development of an advanced brain.

Perhaps the spiritual realm is also a key to (more efficiently) discovering intelligent life in the Universe.

While rejected by science, and perhaps even actively suppressed, so called 'remote viewing' allows for conscious perception across both space and time, e.g. far into the future or far into space.

How to Escape the Confines of Time and Space According to the CIA
https://www.vice.com/en/article/7k9qag/ ... to-the-cia

https://irva.org/ (organization for remote viewing)

A scientific article on the matter by parapsychologist Courtney Brown who used remote viewing to discover alien life in the Universe:

Probing Well Beyond the Bounds of Conventional Wisdom
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2111782

And commotion in the scientific community about it:

The Courtney Brown affair and academic freedom
In one of the book's more remarkable chapters, " The Grey Mind," Brown claims to have "entered the mind" of an extraterrestrial and investigated its psychological make-up. Brown, who directs the "Farsight Institute" in Atlanta
https://www.emory.edu/EMORY_REPORT/erar ... erson.html

Cosmic Explorers
Screenshot 2023-10-22 at 16-48-03 Cosmic Explorers.png (278.91 KiB) Viewed 11790 times

Cosmic Explorers: Scientific Remote Viewing of Extraterrestrial Life
https://books.google.com/books/about/Co ... k_AG9iJ20C

What does it take to understand orca intelligence? How would one recognize an intelligence that developed for billions of years longer?

[popeye1945]

Personally, I believe it's all ********, it is government organized distraction, feed to the public so they won't notice all the crazy **** the government is doing in the publics name. The elite deep state thinks your cattle, and perhaps they are right. The American empire is in decline, its dream of world domination collapsing before its eyes. It is committing atrocities across the board based on the preconditioning of the public, and distraction is to maintain said preconditioning, the world is at stake. Only the public can disarm this aggression towards the world. America, take your country back from these elite psychopaths, it does not have to continue in this way. Long live the BRICS!!

[Lagayascienza]

Personally, I believe it's all ********, it is government organized distraction, feed to the public so they won't notice all the crazy **** the government is doing in the publics name. The elite deep state thinks your cattle, and perhaps they are right. The American empire is in decline, its dream of world domination collapsing before its eyes. It is committing atrocities across the board based on the preconditioning of the public, and distraction is to maintain said preconditioning, the world is at stake. Only the public can disarm this aggression towards the world. America, take your country back from these elite psychopaths, it does not have to continue in this way. Long live the BRICS!!

Do you really believe this conspiracy theory? Do you really think that things like the space program are fraudulent distractions? What is "all the crazy **** the government is doing in the public's name? Who are the elite psychopaths you speak of?

You may be right that "the American empire is in decline, its dream of world domination collapsing before its eyes" but is that necessarily a bad thing? I don't want to be dominated any an American or any other empire. And most certainly not by a Russian or Chinese empire. Russia and China are the dominant members of the BRICS and the most dangerous threats to American imperialism. Therefore, it is unclear to me why you say "Long live the BRICS'.

Getting back to the topic of the OP, I think NASA and the space program are wonderful. If there is life out there (I think there probably is) science will eventually detect it.

I love cetaceans. They are, most likely, conscious creatures. We should be concerned about their wellbeing.

[Sy Borg]

There would definitely be cases where secret military tests were passed off as UFOs.

Orcas need extra neurons because, partly because they have an entire extra sense - echolocation. Compared with humans, they are not even up to the stone age, being more akin to tribes of nomadic hunters. Orcas don't even have to deal with the complexity of gathering (resources) as humans have always done. All orcas need to do is hunt, kill and eat. Not surprisingly, they used their intelligence to make a fine art of those three activities. They have different strategies for murdering different species.

It's no disgrace to be behind stone age humans, who were already extremely smart and their brains were larger than ours too. Why? Extra processing is needed to handle a wide variety of unpredictable stimuli/threats/opportunities. Once we specialised, we only had to do a few things really well rather than having to be able to everything ourselves.

However, while the extra flexibility and capability of cetaceans and early humans are impressive, it comes at a cost. Civilisation allowed humans to do more interesting things than hunt, kill and avoid being killed. Peace brings development. A tribe of nomadic hunters can never know peace and, thus, can never develop.

The Fermi Paradox seems to be fairly well covered. Interstellar distances are too great for biology. Generation ships are a recipe for dysfunction and madness. If you find conspiracy theories strange, imagine the kinds of conspiracy theories that would emerge on a generation ship after half a dozen generations. You can't do business at interstellar distances. Any colony would be impossible to control or monetise, so it's hard to know where the funding would come from.

If AI becomes sentient, perhaps all that could change. Machines are much better suited to space. Still, if you see strange lights in the sky and wonder if it's a UFO/UAP, you need to ask yourself why a craft that has travelled through empty space for many years would need air traffic control lights.

[Lagayascienza]

I'd like to know about these definite cases where secret military tests were passed off as UFOs.
Oh, wait, there secret, right?

I agree that machines are better suited to space than bags of biology like us. If we are going to explore other planetary systems that is how we'll do it. As for detecting signatures of life, we're getting better at making observations of extrasolar planets. Atmospheres out of equilibrium are a good first sign.

[popeye1945]

Personally, I believe it's all ********, it is a government-organized distraction, fed to the public so they won't notice all the crazy **** the government is doing in the public name. The elite deep state thinks your cattle, and perhaps they are right. The American empire is in decline, its dream of world domination collapsing before its eyes. It is committing atrocities across the board based on the preconditioning of the public, and distraction is to maintain said preconditioning, the world is at stake. Only the public can disarm this aggression towards the world. America, take your country back from these elite psychopaths, it does not have to continue in this way. Long live the BRICS!!

Do you believe this conspiracy theory? Do you think that things like the space program are fraudulent distractions? What is "all the crazy **** the government is doing in the public's name? Who are the elite psychopaths you speak of?
You may be right that "the American empire is in decline, its dream of world domination collapsing before its eyes" but is that necessarily a bad thing? I don't want to be dominated any an American or any other empire. And most certainly not by a Russian or Chinese empire. Russia and China are the dominant members of the BRICS and the most dangerous threats to American imperialism. Therefore, it is unclear to me why you say "Long live the BRICS'.

Getting back to the topic of the OP, I think NASA and the space program are wonderful. If there is life out there (I think there probably is) science will eventually detect it.

I love cetaceans. They are, most likely, conscious creatures. We should be concerned about their wellbeing.

America has always claimed to be a democracy and interested in the peace and freedom of the peoples of the earth, when nothing could be further from the truth, it has always been an imperialist power. After World War I, it slowly took over the power of the British Empire. When a government is capable of deceiving its people to the degree that the American government has proved capable, you just cannot trust them about anything. You question who are the elite psychopaths. They a called the deep state, and their anonymity is part of their power, but one could bet these power brokers are the industrial military complex Eisenhower warned the American people about in the early sixties. Taking over the power of the British Empire meant keeping alive the tradition of colonial oppression as slavery of much of the world, whether that be overt violence or economic warfare. America has been making economic war on Cuba for over sixty years, and the world is unanimous that it must stop, all but America and Israel. I like to quote president Bush senior to make my point, "The world is just going to have to get use to the idea that what we say goes."

The American and European mindset is still colonial in nature, subdue and enslave, and they are good at it, America slightly more subtle than was the British Empire, but it still the white man's burden as far as America are concerned. The BRICS is of a different mentality, as past victims of colonialism they are not inclined to suppress and enslave, but believe in a win-win scenario, and they are changing the power structure of the world. One should rejoice, for with the BRICS nations a better world is possible, this is not the case with the Western mentality and it sense of superiority. LONG LIVE THE BRICS.

[value]

There would definitely be cases where secret military tests were passed off as UFOs.

That would suggest that there are 'other' cases, so you would disagree with NASA's disclosure that there is no evidence that any of those UFO cases involved extraterrestrial life?

Orcas need extra neurons because, partly because they have an entire extra sense - echolocation. Compared with humans, they are not even up to the stone age, being more akin to tribes of nomadic hunters. Orcas don't even have to deal with the complexity of gathering (resources) as humans have always done. All orcas need to do is hunt, kill and eat.

That assertion cannot be accurate since the described 'more advanced' brain parts of an orca do not just involve 'extra neurons'. It concerns brain parts that in humans have been linked to 'what makes them different from other animals', the neurological source for 'thinking, reasoning, memory, emotions' etc.

Therefore, scientists are officially asking the question, are orcas more intelligent than humans?

It is interesting to consider your notion about the animal: the orca just swims a bit in the ocean for a few million years, eating and sleeping and that would be about it. So the orca, if it were to be intelligent at all, must be on a level of stone age humans that did not think beyond their next meal.

How could such a notion be disproven?

I shared a story about the experiential perception of an animal spirit in another topic in which you suggested that the bird might just have been interested to get food.

My guess is that someone has been feeding the robin.

I asked the following question:

Why care for an animal spirit when the following cannot be disproven using words: "It's just a bird that wants some food"

Can the orca's intelligence and purpose of life be reduced to human language?

I wrote the following a few posts back:

Perhaps the human is missing something of 'the equation' when it comes to the purpose of life. In a way, the human is pretty much locked-in within the boundaries of language and has even mentally developed itself to principly reject anything that cannot be enclosed within that boundary.

What does it take to understand orca intelligence? How would one recognize an intelligence that developed for billions of years longer?

Perhaps language per se isn't able to address these questions.

It's no disgrace to be behind stone age humans, who were already extremely smart and their brains were larger than ours too. ...

Peace brings development. A tribe of nomadic hunters can never know peace and, thus, can never develop.

The orca is an apex predator and has all the peace it can ever dream of. Orcas even predate the great white shark to remove their liver. Scientists describe the event as involving 'near-surgical precision'.

The orcas have been observed to perform near-surgical precision in removing the livers of great white sharks, leaving the rest of the body to rot in the ocean.

So the orca has time to dream and philosophize. And it has a brain capacity that surpasses that of a human in many regards, of which neuroscientists say that those parts in humans are linked to what makes them special compared to other animals: higher level thinking.

The Fermi Paradox seems to be fairly well covered. Interstellar distances are too great for biology. Generation ships are a recipe for dysfunction and madness. If you find conspiracy theories strange, imagine the kinds of conspiracy theories that would emerge on a generation ship after half a dozen generations. You can't do business at interstellar distances. Any colony would be impossible to control or monetise, so it's hard to know where the funding would come from.

If AI becomes sentient, perhaps all that could change. Machines are much better suited to space. Still, if you see strange lights in the sky and wonder if it's a UFO/UAP, you need to ask yourself why a craft that has travelled through empty space for many years would need air traffic control lights.

I've been making a case for years that the idea that humans can fly off into space might be ill conceived philosophically. The idea that the human is an independent biochemical bundle of matter that is independent of the solar system, might be wrong.

The fact that no alien life has been discovered as of today, more specifically intelligent life that would seek a connection with humans for whatever purpose that lays beyond, would add to plausibility of the idea that life might not naturally fly off into space to build complex structures or to perform 'its business' in deep space.

[Sy Borg]

It's no disgrace to be behind stone age humans, who were already extremely smart and their brains were larger than ours too. ...

Peace brings development. A tribe of nomadic hunters can never know peace and, thus, can never develop.

The orca is an apex predator and has all the peace it can ever dream of. Orcas even predate the great white shark to remove their liver. Scientists describe the event as involving 'near-surgical precision'.

Scientists could also cite countless instances where humans operate with actual surgical precision.

It's not even close. Humans pulled ahead. Far ahead. Humans are bizarre.

My issue is that intelligent creatures can be treated as if they are not, hence the cruel way of raising food mammals. Ditto the underestimation of of feeling animals, eg. cruel preparation of lobsters.


But yeah, I don't see any chance at all of biological alien life visiting Earth, and I'm dubious about any visitations per se.

The only point of travelling interstellar distances is for sheer exploration's sake, which is not a great motivation for investment, aside from the novelty/publicity value of a first launch. So it would have to be AI that has nothing better to do, and a very long time to do it. Still, there's no evidence. Some sightings are unexplained, but the chances are that there's an Earthly explanation.

[value]

Interesting Engineering is holding a series on the subject with part 1 dating November 6th.

Part 1: Aliens are silent because they may be going extinct
Advanced civilizations might go extinct, which could be why we haven't heard from any!
https://interestingengineering.com/scie ... nct-part-1

The Drake equation

According to the Drake Equation, the number of civilizations in the Milky Way that humanity could communicate with (N) could be calculated by multiplying the rate of star formation (R*), the fraction of stars that have planets (fP), the mean number of planets that could support life (ne), the fraction of habitable planets that develop life (fe), the fraction of planets with life where life develops intelligence (fi), the fraction of intelligent civilizations that develop transmission technologies (fc), and the mean length of time that civilizations can communicate (L).

c8mniiI5VlOisw53PNDoUc77SYe9J8tbSUKtVxOe.jpg (697.61 KiB) Viewed 2673 times

It turns out that including this last parameter had significant implications that went beyond the field of SETI research. The L parameter encapsulated the growing existential fears of the 1960s, characterized by the potential for nuclear war and growing environmental awareness. By suggesting that ETIs have a limited communication window, Drake effectively said that human civilization also had a finite lifespan.

Dr. Drake is said to have considered this parameter the most important variable in his equation, partly because it is the most difficult to constrain. As he indicated in an interview with the SETI Institute in 2012:

“The accuracy of its result, which is a prediction of the number of detectable civilizations in the galaxy, is actually dependent on the factor that is least well-known. And unfortunately, that one - which is the longevity of civilizations in a detectable state - is still unknown and will be until we detect other civilizations.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

Are we alone in the universe? Revisiting the Drake equation
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1350/a ... -equation/

Next part: how evolutionary development might make ETCs "go silent.". Author of the series: Matthew S. Williams, https://interestingengineering.com/auth ... s-williams

[Lagayascienza]

It's no disgrace to be behind stone age humans, who were already extremely smart and their brains were larger than ours too. ...

Peace brings development. A tribe of nomadic hunters can never know peace and, thus, can never develop.

The orca is an apex predator and has all the peace it can ever dream of. Orcas even predate the great white shark to remove their liver. Scientists describe the event as involving 'near-surgical precision'.

Scientists could also cite countless instances where humans operate with actual surgical precision.

It's not even close. Humans pulled ahead. Far ahead. Humans are bizarre.

My issue is that intelligent creatures can be treated as if they are not, hence the cruel way of raising food mammals. Ditto the underestimation of of feeling animals, eg. cruel preparation of lobsters.


But yeah, I don't see any chance at all of biological alien life visiting Earth, and I'm dubious about any visitations per se.

The only point of travelling interstellar distances is for sheer exploration's sake, which is not a great motivation for investment, aside from the novelty/publicity value of a first launch. So it would have to be AI that has nothing better to do, and a very long time to do it. Still, there's no evidence. Some sightings are unexplained, but the chances are that there's an Earthly explanation.

I think this is right. Of all the thousands of so called "sightings" most have been explained. And the few that are as yet unexplained are likely to be explicable. They are most unlikely to be ET.

That is not to say that there is not life out there, perhaps intelligent life, but we can be confident there is none in our solar system except us, and if they do exist in other systems, they are likely to be very widely dispersed and the difficulties of them getting here from other star systems are formidable. They would need a very good reason to undertake such a voyage. And maybe most will have better things to do.

So I don't think it's surprising that there is no evidence of visitation by extra-terrestrial intelligences. There is no physical evidence of them, nor any convincing evidence of electromagnetic signals from them. If they exist on the other side of our galaxy or in other galaxies, signals from them could take millions or billions of years to reach us. And the idea that ET is just dying to contact us is just anthropocentrism. No one out there cares about us. For now, there's just us and all the other species who share this little planet with us. And if we want to survive, we'd better look after the earth, our home, because no one is coming to rescue us. We have no other option. There is simply no conceivable plan B for the foreseeable future.

[Lagayascienza]

There is no plan B. Not even for the Musks, the Bezos, the Bransons, the Kochs, the princes, the presidents ... They're all in the same boat as the rest of us. I kinda like that.