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To me a plausibile answer is that we can at least observe specific dynamics within our own life based world where we keep ants (based on dna like us) in a cage
by sktrdie 5y ago
To me a plausibile answer is that we can at least observe specific dynamics within our own life based world where we keep ants (based on dna like us) in a cage and they’re totally unaware they even are in a cage. For them that’s their universe. They go along and discover new things thinking in their own way why no other life form has contacted them. Even though we literally lift them using our hands. They simply think that’s a natural phenomenon.
To me it seems plausibile that other life forms that are probably not even based on dna are very likely to be imperceptible to us, the same way we are to ants.
Thus I’d like to think the universe is probably our cage and we’ll never possess the mental capacity to distinguish alien beings from actual natural phenomena.
- scomelirag 5y agoIf anyone finds this perspective intriguing, you may be interested in the novel "Roadside Picnic" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. In the story, a character proposes that humans are effectively like frightened forest critters with no ability to understand the nature of the seemingly magical rubbish that extraterrestrial picnickers could have left behind after a brief stop on Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic#Plot_introduction_and_setting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic#Plot_introduct...
- BatteryMountain 5y agoEven worse than that, the ants know nothing about the ocean and fish nor space and the moon. Those things are not even near their scope, even if they are aware of us. What about math? And time (time keeping and calendars, tenses)? What about music and art? The ants are simply not able to comprehend any of it. So if we are like ants in the universe, then the reality we are in is probably insanely complex - we are just interacting with the little slice of it we can interpret, just like the ants.