iamnotaparakeet wrote:
CrawdiddyJones wrote:
Ancient Aliens is meant to be laughed at, otherwise the History channel would not make it and take it seriously. I believe in aliens, however even I laugh at the "scientific" attempts to persuade that these are alien artifacts. If aliens exist, they would probably be as arrogant as humans, and if contact were made, we would all be dead. Even if they came in peace, we all know how columbus and smallpox went down.
If aliens exist and are not technologically superior to us, but we to them, then what if we develop interstellar travel first and find them first? There are certainly shows like SG1 and movies like Avatar which portray extraterrestrials as native Americans and Minoans and Egyptians and every other past culture and civilization on Earth just about, but often enough we seem to not only blindly assume the existence of aliens but also their superiority. Let's assume here that there are sentient extraterrestrials who understand or can understand mathematics and science if they bothered to try, who's to say that they would? Science was stillborn in Greece here and if it weren't for key people who cared about honesty and about the nature of truth back in the 1500's through the 1800's we'd probably have had the death of science for a second time around. Why should these conjectured aliens have even gotten as far as that? Because "they're aliens" and thereby they are also assumed to be more advanced because they are alien? You mention Columbus and smallpox, and yet did smallpox lead to an intentional biological genocide? If aliens exist, who is to say that they'd even have dioxyribonucleic acid? They could have completely different cellular biology if not completely different biochemical processes. If they were on the other side of the galaxy and were identical to us though, that would have implications for a common Designer though.
Your both right. Its not either or.
If there were ET civilizations some would be the analogs of us at an earlier time, and some would be that of us in possible futures.
I believe it was Edward Teller ( or Oppenheimer- one of the biggies) who said basically what crawdidy said above...during a lunch break during the Manhatten Project.
The great minds in science were all gathered at the picknic table, and the subject of possible ET beings came up. He said "either they dont exist at all, or they would be here already- and we wouldnt."
One ET civilizaton wouldve mastered space travel and wouldve taken over the Galaxy and we would be toast, or their slaves, or such.
Maybe, maybe not.
Anyway its not that people "assume ET's would be more advanced than us" its that people assume that any ET that you or I would likely shake hands with would be more advanced than us.
The reason for that assumption is obvious- we dont have interstellar space travel ability yet, and arent likely too have it anytime soon.
So they would have to come to us, and if they did that then by definition they would have to be centuries more advanced than us.
So the more advanced kind are the only kind worth worrying about.
Although ones on a par with us who were close enough could put out evidence (diliberate or otherwise) via radio and TV without traveling here.
08 Nov 2011, 6:52 pm
