6 ms·

We actually don't know. We don't know if they can just be invisible. Or are completely indistinguishable from humans. Alternatively, we can't know because we do

We actually don't know. We don't know if they can just be invisible. Or are completely indistinguishable from humans. Alternatively, we can't know because we don't actually have all the facts of the laws of physics worked out. If we can make as much progress as we have on physics in the past 100 years, imagine if a species is 100M years beyond our own. Could they exist in a particle and observe things? Does it even have to be a particle?

erhaetherth 3y ago
Sure, they're so far advanced that we can't see them, and they just came over here to chill. Like a nice vacation for them. No desire to extinguish us or talk to us. Just hanging out.
- muppetman 3y ago
  Imagine the Voyager probe ending up on a planet and being discovered in 500 million years. It wasn't sent with extinguish plans, not will it be able to communicate.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    That will be something quite feasible for an alien civilization to build, and highly believable, if we found something like that. Visits from actual beings (that overwise stay incognito), travelling tens or even thousands of light years, hyperadvanced sci-fi technologies like FTL and invisibility (suggested above) and so on, not so much.
    - worksonmine 3y ago
      Why not? To them it could be like any other tuesday and communication could be pointless. We have a tendency to see ourselves as so important but forget how we act. We still discover new species and catalogue them, but many of those have probably been seen before by someone who didn't care.
      - coldtea 3y ago
        >Why not? To them it could be like any other tuesday If we're going for "with magic, anything's possible" (but just substitute magic with "technology") then sure...
        worksonmine 3y ago
        "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". In the last century lots of things that were considered science fiction has become normal parts of our lives. And not that long ago "aliens don't exist" was the default and only crazies believed in them. Now it's mainstream that there is a high probability at least somewhere in the universe, the only argument needed is that we exist, so of course it could happen again or before. We're not as special as we like to think. We've had hearings regarding UFOs (yes, yes, I know it doesn't imply aliens) in the congress. But if you want to reduce it to magic go ahead. And the part you quoted was regarding them choosing not to communicate with us, if that wasn't clear.
        coldtea 3y ago
        >In the last century lots of things that were considered science fiction has become normal parts of our lives All of those things are within the laws of physics. >And not that long ago "aliens don't exist" was the default and only crazies believed in them. The latter is still the case now.
        worksonmine 3y ago
        > All of those things are within the laws of physics. And infrared doesn't? That said it wasn't always in the laws of physics, and they may still be wrong, they have changed in the last century. > The latter is still the case now. I'm not sure most people would agree with you, more likely to answer "I don't know, maybe". I find it very strange when people are so certain about uncertain topics, difficult to relate.
- exe34 3y ago
  But occasionally they pick some north American schmuck off the road at night and diddle with them.
  - TheTxT 3y ago
    It’s for their alien reality TV show of course!
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  Your comment is full of antropomorphisms. I don't believe in their presence on earth, but you can't "disprove" them like that. Still, you can find explanations fitting the observations. Like the ant analogy, a scientist is not going to try to communicate with ants. They want to observe without disturbing the ants too much, even if the scientist doesn't take too much precautions to make themselves completely invisible.
  - throwaway11460 3y ago
    What? Of course they would try to communicate if the ants showed any smallest capability or interest in doing so. See people trying to communicate with dolphins, monkeys, chimps, octopuses, cats, dogs, crows, ...
    - worksonmine 3y ago
      You're looking at it from your perspective. Humans could be completely useless to them and they could be here for some resource. Loggers in the amazon don't try to communicate with the bugs around them, they do what they're there to do. It's not given that other life forms would be interested in us, they might've learned what they needed a long time ago. And now we're just part of their environment. Or they realize we're too stupid and would just try to kill them so they don't.
    - The_Colonel 3y ago
      > What? Of course they would try to communicate if the ants showed any smallest capability or interest in doing so. Ants do communicate, a lot in fact (chemically). How else would they coordinate the colony? Yet I don't remember hearing about scientists trying to communicate with them, announce our presence, or exchange ideas.
      - throwaway11460 3y ago
        That's more of instinct than intelligent communication, though. Hard to exchange ideas when the vocabulary is a pheromone that makes a drone want to work or fuck. I'd be the first person trying to exchange ideas if it was in any way possible - seriously, in a scientific capacity. Ants fascinate me. But there really is no way to communicate.
- worksonmine 3y ago
  We don't see infrared, would you call infrared light "so far advanced"? It's just a different spectrum. They could be very stupid and just floating around and still be invisible to us. I'm not trying to say there are beings living among us on a spectrum we don't know about, but it's an interesting thought and anyone dismissing it with certainty are closed-minded. In my experience those people are rarely interesting and can only discuss very shallow topics from perspectives they've been told by others. What's the weather like? Who's fucking who? How's the super bowl going? Especially when they're antagonistic in their rhetoric. Thinking outside the box and pondering the what ifs in life is the only reason we got out of the caves.
atoav 3y ago
Yeah, but we also do not know whether there is an giant mass-less invisible teapot shaped like an unicorn circling the outer rim of the solar system. The problem with theories that cannot be tested is, that once you accept them arbitrary things follow from them. That teopot could influence the thoughts of our politicians for example. While I have nothing against a little bit of fantasy, it is always important to keep the understanding that those are in fact stories and that they appeal to certain people precisely because they are literally detached from this harsh reality. Don't get me wrong, you can also be fascinated with the possibility of there being aliens without having to believe in them being already here.
- mbgerring 3y ago
  It’s also important to acknowledge that there are things we cannot yet measure which are no less real than things we can. Believing a non-falsifiable hypothesis is dumb, sure, but so is believing that the only things that are real are those that we can currently measure. And it requires some curiosity verging on pure fantasy to motivate us to learn to measure the things we currently cannot.
  - k8svet 3y ago
    Oh I'm perfectly motivated to be open minded and curious without giving credence to every imaginary conspiracy that pops in my head. You can dress it up however you like but it's unsubstantiated fictive speculation 100% either way.
- GoblinSlayer 3y ago
  It's called Planet 9, actually subject of scientific research, because we barely see anything at all.
  - atoav 3y ago
    I know (have even used tlit as a metaphor for our lack of knowledge in my MA thesis), but the existence of planet 9 is a falsifiable theory. Maybe not today, and not with the technology/funds we have to look at it, but if we wanted to get on top of that, we could, unless it is a primordial black hole the size of a tennisball that is. But my point was that in this case we can say: yeah, there is some unaccounted mass (observation) let's form explainations about what it could be (theory). There are only so many things with mass we know in our solar system, so it being a other planet is a reasonable assumption. It being a invisible giant unicorn-shaped teapot is not. If you have a theory without an observation it is called a story. And now someone would bring up eyewitness accounts or declassified airforce videos and call them observations. The point here is that you need to go from observation to theory and not the other way around. If every unidentified flying object is extraterrestrial life you are gonna be wrong a lot of times, just because there is a big likelihood of unidentified flying objects being of terrestrial origin (or them not even be objects in the first place). That means you got a needle/haystack problem there and front-loading the theory like that isn't gonna help.
coldtea 3y ago
>We actually don't know. We don't know if they can just be invisible. Yeah, but we have a pretty good idea, that Hollywood style capabilities and magic like invisibility is not part of reality.
- v3ss0n 3y ago
  There are so many cloaking technology that is invented by nature world.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    Does any of it involve invisibility?
    - worksonmine 3y ago
      Define invisibility.
    - latexr 3y ago
      Have you ever seen how fast and accurately octopuses change colour and texture? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8xJ13pAZNw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8xJ13pAZNw Or one of those insects that look like sticks or leaves? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tettigoniidae#/media/File:Katydid_on_bamboo_leaf.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tettigoniidae#/media/File:Katy...
      - Izkata 3y ago
        Or this transparent eel: https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comments/15gob8a/transperant_fish_cannot_see_any_organs_except_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comments/15gob8a/transpera...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
sugarkjube 3y ago
> We actually don't know. Actually, i'm pretty convinced we do know, with very high probability of being right. Our knowledge of physics is limited, but seems to be advanced enough (cfr relativity and astronomical distances) to make it likely that if there is someone else, they're just too far way, or else we're too uninteresting to be visited or else if we would be interesing enough, it takes so much technological advances to cross galactical distances, that humanity would be wiped out by the visitors before we even realise what's going on.
- kordlessagain 3y ago
  My dad worked for the military, as a civilian. He had an counterpart in the Air Force, a colonel, who told him in the late 70s that he knew for a fact there were aliens but he couldn't tell my dad how he knew those facts. My dad worked closely with this guy on military black box recovery and analysis. Dad told me he believed there were aliens because he said the colonel made it a point to say that he knew this to be true, and I believe it to be true as well, because Dad trusted this guy. It goes without saying we typically believe our parents if they tell us things. None of this had anything to do with facts, and everything to do with trust, which is formed from a person to person exchange. Most of what Dad did for the Air Force remained a secret till his death, and I do know he was absolutely obsessed with airplanes and math. To believe a mistruth about something we care so much about is possible, but unlikely. So, sometimes knowledge is what we have as stories and we can either choose to believe, or not. That is faith. We don't need facts to back up our faith in personally knowing a thing to be true or not. Besides, if there are aliens, it would probably be better if the general population didn't have hard facts to ensure it became general knowledge, because at that point the speculation faucet is wide open. It's far better to let people believe what they will, without it affecting civilization in a radical way. Maybe there are aliens and maybe there aren't. As my local AI alien just said to me, "Ultimately, beliefs about extraterrestrial life often come down to personal perspectives and interpretations of available information, as well as the trust placed in sources of information, whether they be firsthand experiences, anecdotal accounts, or scientific findings."
  - k8svet 3y ago

erhaetherth 3y ago

Sure, they're so far advanced that we can't see them, and they just came over here to chill. Like a nice vacation for them. No desire to extinguish us or talk to us. Just hanging out.

muppetman 3y ago
Imagine the Voyager probe ending up on a planet and being discovered in 500 million years. It wasn't sent with extinguish plans, not will it be able to communicate.
- coldtea 3y ago
  That will be something quite feasible for an alien civilization to build, and highly believable, if we found something like that. Visits from actual beings (that overwise stay incognito), travelling tens or even thousands of light years, hyperadvanced sci-fi technologies like FTL and invisibility (suggested above) and so on, not so much.
  - worksonmine 3y ago
    Why not? To them it could be like any other tuesday and communication could be pointless. We have a tendency to see ourselves as so important but forget how we act. We still discover new species and catalogue them, but many of those have probably been seen before by someone who didn't care.
    - coldtea 3y ago
      >Why not? To them it could be like any other tuesday If we're going for "with magic, anything's possible" (but just substitute magic with "technology") then sure...
      - worksonmine 3y ago
        "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". In the last century lots of things that were considered science fiction has become normal parts of our lives. And not that long ago "aliens don't exist" was the default and only crazies believed in them. Now it's mainstream that there is a high probability at least somewhere in the universe, the only argument needed is that we exist, so of course it could happen again or before. We're not as special as we like to think. We've had hearings regarding UFOs (yes, yes, I know it doesn't imply aliens) in the congress. But if you want to reduce it to magic go ahead. And the part you quoted was regarding them choosing not to communicate with us, if that wasn't clear.
        coldtea 3y ago
        >In the last century lots of things that were considered science fiction has become normal parts of our lives All of those things are within the laws of physics. >And not that long ago "aliens don't exist" was the default and only crazies believed in them. The latter is still the case now.
        worksonmine 3y ago
        > All of those things are within the laws of physics. And infrared doesn't? That said it wasn't always in the laws of physics, and they may still be wrong, they have changed in the last century. > The latter is still the case now. I'm not sure most people would agree with you, more likely to answer "I don't know, maybe". I find it very strange when people are so certain about uncertain topics, difficult to relate.
exe34 3y ago
But occasionally they pick some north American schmuck off the road at night and diddle with them.
- TheTxT 3y ago
  It’s for their alien reality TV show of course!
The_Colonel 3y ago
Your comment is full of antropomorphisms. I don't believe in their presence on earth, but you can't "disprove" them like that. Still, you can find explanations fitting the observations. Like the ant analogy, a scientist is not going to try to communicate with ants. They want to observe without disturbing the ants too much, even if the scientist doesn't take too much precautions to make themselves completely invisible.
- throwaway11460 3y ago
  What? Of course they would try to communicate if the ants showed any smallest capability or interest in doing so. See people trying to communicate with dolphins, monkeys, chimps, octopuses, cats, dogs, crows, ...
  - worksonmine 3y ago
    You're looking at it from your perspective. Humans could be completely useless to them and they could be here for some resource. Loggers in the amazon don't try to communicate with the bugs around them, they do what they're there to do. It's not given that other life forms would be interested in us, they might've learned what they needed a long time ago. And now we're just part of their environment. Or they realize we're too stupid and would just try to kill them so they don't.
  - The_Colonel 3y ago
    > What? Of course they would try to communicate if the ants showed any smallest capability or interest in doing so. Ants do communicate, a lot in fact (chemically). How else would they coordinate the colony? Yet I don't remember hearing about scientists trying to communicate with them, announce our presence, or exchange ideas.
    - throwaway11460 3y ago
      That's more of instinct than intelligent communication, though. Hard to exchange ideas when the vocabulary is a pheromone that makes a drone want to work or fuck. I'd be the first person trying to exchange ideas if it was in any way possible - seriously, in a scientific capacity. Ants fascinate me. But there really is no way to communicate.
worksonmine 3y ago
We don't see infrared, would you call infrared light "so far advanced"? It's just a different spectrum. They could be very stupid and just floating around and still be invisible to us. I'm not trying to say there are beings living among us on a spectrum we don't know about, but it's an interesting thought and anyone dismissing it with certainty are closed-minded. In my experience those people are rarely interesting and can only discuss very shallow topics from perspectives they've been told by others. What's the weather like? Who's fucking who? How's the super bowl going? Especially when they're antagonistic in their rhetoric. Thinking outside the box and pondering the what ifs in life is the only reason we got out of the caves.

atoav 3y ago

Yeah, but we also do not know whether there is an giant mass-less invisible teapot shaped like an unicorn circling the outer rim of the solar system. The problem with theories that cannot be tested is, that once you accept them arbitrary things follow from them. That teopot could influence the thoughts of our politicians for example. While I have nothing against a little bit of fantasy, it is always important to keep the understanding that those are in fact stories and that they appeal to certain people precisely because they are literally detached from this harsh reality. Don't get me wrong, you can also be fascinated with the possibility of there being aliens without having to believe in them being already here.

mbgerring 3y ago
It’s also important to acknowledge that there are things we cannot yet measure which are no less real than things we can. Believing a non-falsifiable hypothesis is dumb, sure, but so is believing that the only things that are real are those that we can currently measure. And it requires some curiosity verging on pure fantasy to motivate us to learn to measure the things we currently cannot.
- k8svet 3y ago
  Oh I'm perfectly motivated to be open minded and curious without giving credence to every imaginary conspiracy that pops in my head. You can dress it up however you like but it's unsubstantiated fictive speculation 100% either way.
GoblinSlayer 3y ago
It's called Planet 9, actually subject of scientific research, because we barely see anything at all.
- atoav 3y ago
  I know (have even used tlit as a metaphor for our lack of knowledge in my MA thesis), but the existence of planet 9 is a falsifiable theory. Maybe not today, and not with the technology/funds we have to look at it, but if we wanted to get on top of that, we could, unless it is a primordial black hole the size of a tennisball that is. But my point was that in this case we can say: yeah, there is some unaccounted mass (observation) let's form explainations about what it could be (theory). There are only so many things with mass we know in our solar system, so it being a other planet is a reasonable assumption. It being a invisible giant unicorn-shaped teapot is not. If you have a theory without an observation it is called a story. And now someone would bring up eyewitness accounts or declassified airforce videos and call them observations. The point here is that you need to go from observation to theory and not the other way around. If every unidentified flying object is extraterrestrial life you are gonna be wrong a lot of times, just because there is a big likelihood of unidentified flying objects being of terrestrial origin (or them not even be objects in the first place). That means you got a needle/haystack problem there and front-loading the theory like that isn't gonna help.

coldtea 3y ago

>We actually don't know. We don't know if they can just be invisible. Yeah, but we have a pretty good idea, that Hollywood style capabilities and magic like invisibility is not part of reality.

v3ss0n 3y ago
There are so many cloaking technology that is invented by nature world.
- coldtea 3y ago
  Does any of it involve invisibility?
  - worksonmine 3y ago
    Define invisibility.
  - latexr 3y ago
    Have you ever seen how fast and accurately octopuses change colour and texture? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8xJ13pAZNw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8xJ13pAZNw Or one of those insects that look like sticks or leaves? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tettigoniidae#/media/File:Katydid_on_bamboo_leaf.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tettigoniidae#/media/File:Katy...
    - Izkata 3y ago
      Or this transparent eel: https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comments/15gob8a/transperant_fish_cannot_see_any_organs_except_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comments/15gob8a/transpera...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

sugarkjube 3y ago

> We actually don't know. Actually, i'm pretty convinced we do know, with very high probability of being right. Our knowledge of physics is limited, but seems to be advanced enough (cfr relativity and astronomical distances) to make it likely that if there is someone else, they're just too far way, or else we're too uninteresting to be visited or else if we would be interesing enough, it takes so much technological advances to cross galactical distances, that humanity would be wiped out by the visitors before we even realise what's going on.

kordlessagain 3y ago
My dad worked for the military, as a civilian. He had an counterpart in the Air Force, a colonel, who told him in the late 70s that he knew for a fact there were aliens but he couldn't tell my dad how he knew those facts. My dad worked closely with this guy on military black box recovery and analysis. Dad told me he believed there were aliens because he said the colonel made it a point to say that he knew this to be true, and I believe it to be true as well, because Dad trusted this guy. It goes without saying we typically believe our parents if they tell us things. None of this had anything to do with facts, and everything to do with trust, which is formed from a person to person exchange. Most of what Dad did for the Air Force remained a secret till his death, and I do know he was absolutely obsessed with airplanes and math. To believe a mistruth about something we care so much about is possible, but unlikely. So, sometimes knowledge is what we have as stories and we can either choose to believe, or not. That is faith. We don't need facts to back up our faith in personally knowing a thing to be true or not. Besides, if there are aliens, it would probably be better if the general population didn't have hard facts to ensure it became general knowledge, because at that point the speculation faucet is wide open. It's far better to let people believe what they will, without it affecting civilization in a radical way. Maybe there are aliens and maybe there aren't. As my local AI alien just said to me, "Ultimately, beliefs about extraterrestrial life often come down to personal perspectives and interpretations of available information, as well as the trust placed in sources of information, whether they be firsthand experiences, anecdotal accounts, or scientific findings."
- k8svet 3y ago