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Awesomelyglorious
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02 Jun 2010, 10:35 pm

Some people think that aliens are a realistic possibility for visiting this world and altering it. The question though, is even though aliens are naturalistic, are they really a likely or ontologically parsimonious possibility? I mean, if you had to use Occam's razor today on the question of "who took my apple?" which idea would go first: a neighborhood kid/local crackhead, or ALIENS?

I would go with the kid, and the reason is simple. We have observed kids and crackheads in our every day lives, but rarely do we see aliens. In fact, I have never seen one. The problem is that invoking aliens as an explanation thus threatens our intellectual honesty. Even further, if aliens are like any animal that we see on our world, then if they ever visited, they would be taking us away as slaves, using us as pets, eating us, killing us, or farming us, just like we do with other animals, so that way they can get the rich minerals of our planet. Doing otherwise would make no sense, and instincts otherwise would undermine the possibility of survival.

Why is this important? Well, intellectual honesty and reductionist perspectives should ideally be synonymous with atheism. Now, I am aware that one of the major contenders for "most strident atheist", ruveyn, invokes aliens as a historical explanation, and my effort is to show that this is wrong and deeply problematic due to the common sense we all share. Atheism should be about rationality, and good old fashioned common sense to beat back the mystery beings of the world, not just invoking all sorts of ad hoc hypotheses because they are "natural", that is to misunderstand the basic idea.

This is part of the Awesomelyglorious initiative to promote reductionism and common sense and to STRIDENTLY show the flaws in some ideas.
(This message has been paid for by the commission to awesomize Awesomelyglorious)



Sand
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03 Jun 2010, 12:32 am

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Some people think that aliens are a realistic possibility for visiting this world and altering it. The question though, is even though aliens are naturalistic, are they really a likely or ontologically parsimonious possibility? I mean, if you had to use Occam's razor today on the question of "who took my apple?" which idea would go first: a neighborhood kid/local crackhead, or ALIENS?

I would go with the kid, and the reason is simple. We have observed kids and crackheads in our every day lives, but rarely do we see aliens. In fact, I have never seen one. The problem is that invoking aliens as an explanation thus threatens our intellectual honesty. Even further, if aliens are like any animal that we see on our world, then if they ever visited, they would be taking us away as slaves, using us as pets, eating us, killing us, or farming us, just like we do with other animals, so that way they can get the rich minerals of our planet. Doing otherwise would make no sense, and instincts otherwise would undermine the possibility of survival.

Why is this important? Well, intellectual honesty and reductionist perspectives should ideally be synonymous with atheism. Now, I am aware that one of the major contenders for "most strident atheist", ruveyn, invokes aliens as a historical explanation, and my effort is to show that this is wrong and deeply problematic due to the common sense we all share. Atheism should be about rationality, and good old fashioned common sense to beat back the mystery beings of the world, not just invoking all sorts of ad hoc hypotheses because they are "natural", that is to misunderstand the basic idea.

This is part of the Awesomelyglorious initiative to promote reductionism and common sense and to STRIDENTLY show the flaws in some ideas.
(This message has been paid for by the commission to awesomize Awesomelyglorious)


Although your devotion to logic is usually unassailable, there is no logic functional with aliens. To assume they use human values and methods is to more or less deny that they are alien, I doubt an invasion of extraterrestrial starfish would be much interested in humans. Perhaps we should keep a sharper eye on native starfish.



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03 Jun 2010, 12:43 am

Sand wrote:
I doubt an invasion of extraterrestrial starfish would be much interested in humans. Perhaps we should keep a sharper eye on native starfish.

If aliens exist and based on the history of this planet about men conquering lands, I think there could be a possibility that they could want to conquer the earth if they find resources here that they need or perhaps just for greed and power, which I'm using our own history as a basis for the idea of the possibility.

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To assume they use human values and methods is to more or less deny that they are alien

well, it would depend on how they evolved on their home planet, if their physical attributes as well as their brains function similarly to us or not, and their history and culture, I suppose that if their history is different than ours then their values would also be so different, which we are assuming they would be intelligent beings.


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Sand
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03 Jun 2010, 12:51 am

greenblue wrote:
Sand wrote:
I doubt an invasion of extraterrestrial starfish would be much interested in humans. Perhaps we should keep a sharper eye on native starfish.

If aliens exist and based on the history of this planet about men conquering lands, I think there could be a possibility that they could want to conquer the earth if they find resources here that they need or perhaps just for greed and power, which I'm using our own history as a basis for the idea of the possibility.

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To assume they use human values and methods is to more or less deny that they are alien

well, it would depend on how they were evolved in their home planet, if their physical attributes as well as their brains function similarly to us or not, and their history and culture, I suppose that if their history is different than ours then their values would also be so different, which we are assuming they would be intelligent beings.


The assumption that human intellect is the only form that intellect could take betrays a lack of imagination. Aliens with different types of sense perceptions and needs would probably be radically different from humans and "conquering" a planet might well be meaningless in their terms. They could well have all sorts of aims as to planetary utility which have no parallels in human practice.

To carry the analysis a bit further, how could you distinguish an alien from a genetic mutation of a plant? How would you attempt to communicate with a potato? The most realistic alien invasion I have seen from Hollywood was the "Invasion of The Body Snatchers" with Donald Sutherland.



Awesomelyglorious
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03 Jun 2010, 11:33 am

Sand wrote:
Although your devotion to logic is usually unassailable, there is no logic functional with aliens. To assume they use human values and methods is to more or less deny that they are alien, I doubt an invasion of extraterrestrial starfish would be much interested in humans. Perhaps we should keep a sharper eye on native starfish.

Here's what I said:
"if aliens are like any animal that we see on our world"

This is to say that aliens are like humans and that humans are like other animals. All have evolved and evolution picks what will ruthlessly survive. As it stands, to say that these creatures will teach us is far more anthropomorphic than anything I have written. (A point that should settle the dispute between you and GreenBlue)

"Alien" is just a term for creatures that are not from our planet.

Also, Stephen Hawking made the same point about the dangerousness of aliens as I am making: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/s ... 107207.ece



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03 Jun 2010, 12:37 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Also, Stephen Hawking made the same point about the dangerousness of aliens as I am making: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/s ... 107207.ece


That episode was probably the worst of the series. Proposing an element as a substitute for a compound just because it's liquid is absurd. It isn't simply that water is liquid that is beneficial to us. It's the chemical structure and shape that makes it necessary for life, not simply that it's a liquid.

Water /= liquid.

Water = H2O


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Overkill
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03 Jun 2010, 2:10 pm

greenblue wrote:
Sand wrote:
I doubt an invasion of extraterrestrial starfish would be much interested in humans. Perhaps we should keep a sharper eye on native starfish.

If aliens exist and based on the history of this planet about men conquering lands, I think there could be a possibility that they could want to conquer the earth if they find resources here that they need or perhaps just for greed and power, which I'm using our own history as a basis for the idea of the possibility.

Quote:
To assume they use human values and methods is to more or less deny that they are alien

well, it would depend on how they evolved on their home planet, if their physical attributes as well as their brains function similarly to us or not, and their history and culture, I suppose that if their history is different than ours then their values would also be so different, which we are assuming they would be intelligent beings.


Don't you think that if an intelligent species of aliens had the capability to traverse across star systems with the same ease we go across the atlantic, they would have given up on most, if not all of their primitive desire for conquest? I mean, wouldn't they have destroyed themselves before they ever had the opportunity to come here?



Awesomelyglorious
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03 Jun 2010, 2:15 pm

Overkill wrote:
Don't you think that if an intelligent species of aliens had the capability to traverse across star systems with the same ease we go across the atlantic, they would have given up on most, if not all of their primitive desire for conquest? I mean, wouldn't they have destroyed themselves before they ever had the opportunity to come here?

Conquest is an idea, there is no scientific development proving it "primitive" though.

Even further, there is no reason why they would have had to destroy themselves if they still upheld conquest. As it stands, the game theoretic view of the matter just requires internal stability for them to be so advanced, not a kind treatment of outsiders, and as it stands, it is generally more efficient to be untrusting, or even aggressive to outsiders for fear that they'll act that way to you first.

The only way I can see you talking about "primitive" is if you put this in economic terms, and I don't see "killing off a race of primitives to steal their land" as overly uneconomical.



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03 Jun 2010, 2:32 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Overkill wrote:
Don't you think that if an intelligent species of aliens had the capability to traverse across star systems with the same ease we go across the atlantic, they would have given up on most, if not all of their primitive desire for conquest? I mean, wouldn't they have destroyed themselves before they ever had the opportunity to come here?

Conquest is an idea, there is no scientific development proving it "primitive" though.

Even further, there is no reason why they would have had to destroy themselves if they still upheld conquest. As it stands, the game theoretic view of the matter just requires internal stability for them to be so advanced, not a kind treatment of outsiders, and as it stands, it is generally more efficient to be untrusting, or even aggressive to outsiders for fear that they'll act that way to you first.

The only way I can see you talking about "primitive" is if you put this in economic terms, and I don't see "killing off a race of primitives to steal their land" as overly uneconomical.


Well, you may be right. My question was more rhetorical than anything else. Personally, I'm skeptical of the idea that an advanced alien species would have much of a desire of pillaging an inhabited planet for its resources and killing its inhabitants, but I could be wrong.



Awesomelyglorious
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03 Jun 2010, 3:10 pm

Overkill wrote:
Well, you may be right. My question was more rhetorical than anything else. Personally, I'm skeptical of the idea that an advanced alien species would have much of a desire of pillaging an inhabited planet for its resources and killing its inhabitants, but I could be wrong.

I don't see the problem with the idea. I find it more doubtful that we'd have good contact. Too many differences in psychology, and too much that makes the possibility of pillaging make sense.



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03 Jun 2010, 3:17 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Overkill wrote:
Well, you may be right. My question was more rhetorical than anything else. Personally, I'm skeptical of the idea that an advanced alien species would have much of a desire of pillaging an inhabited planet for its resources and killing its inhabitants, but I could be wrong.

I don't see the problem with the idea. I find it more doubtful that we'd have good contact. Too many differences in psychology, and too much that makes the possibility of pillaging make sense.


If a civilization has the capability of sending a major force across light years their technology probably could find little of interest in mere raw materials. But if they came as biological entities drifting through the cosmos like a cloud of seeds infecting any planet they encountered they might do real damage to an ecology with no inherent intellect involved.



Awesomelyglorious
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03 Jun 2010, 3:33 pm

Sand wrote:
If a civilization has the capability of sending a major force across light years their technology probably could find little of interest in mere raw materials. But if they came as biological entities drifting through the cosmos like a cloud of seeds infecting any planet they encountered they might do real damage to an ecology with no inherent intellect involved.

That might be true that they wouldn't care, or it could be true that they consumed resources like a plague.

It could even be that they would instead study creatures on other worlds, but they probably wouldn't interfere with the processes like good scientists.

That being said, the ability to travel this far is not likely to emerge in many creatures, and if they did develop it, it is still unlikely they would ever arrive here.



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03 Jun 2010, 3:33 pm

It does seem unlikely that aliens capable of interstellar travel would want to raid our world for resources, down here at the bottom of a massive gravity well, when they could mine asteroids or Saturn's rings so much more easily. The only thing you can get more easily on Earth than elsewhere in the System is human beings.

However, back to the original point - if we employ Occam's razor, then intelligent alien invasion that somehow left no trace except for one or two engineering marvels (but not the science which supposedly created them) is hardly the parsimonious explanation, as it requires one to invent entities, in this case the alien life forms, with no evidence other than the existing marvels - all of which turn out to have been within the capabilities of local civilizations, particularly those which didn't especially care how many people died in the process (the slaves building the Egyptian Pyramids, the serfs working on the Cathedral at Chartes, etc). In each case with which I have been presented, the parsimonious explanation was indeed that humans did it - just because our ancestors didn't boast our levels of technology doesn't imply that they were stupid, after all...


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03 Jun 2010, 3:57 pm

i believe aliens like to have sex. and do other various sinful activies


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Sand
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03 Jun 2010, 7:22 pm

richardbenson wrote:
i believe aliens like to have sex. and do other various sinful activies


Having sex with an alien is most likely of the order of a human having sex with an oyster. Impractical and unrewarding. If you believe sex is sinful and should be avoided you can look forward to an unenjoyable life.



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03 Jun 2010, 8:33 pm

I'd have to say that Rael isn't too parismonious, so I'd agree with your point.

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