Aliens: Yes Or No?

[Ryujin]

Aliens: Yes Or No?​

Yes, I am.

(Btw, you humans are dumb.)

I believe the quote is, "See! See! Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!"

 

[Dausuul]

Consequently, if we did receive evidence of intelligent life. Evidence, not scientific or cultural information, just the most basic proof of existence...

There's really no such thing as a "basic proof of existence" for aliens. Every time we encounter some unknown astronomical phenomenon, somebody wonders if it might be aliens -- from pulsars that look like artificial radio transmissions, to a star suddenly dimming in a way that suggests a Dyson sphere. The bar is very high to conclude that yes, this is aliens and not just another oddity of the natural universe. By the time that bar was met, we'd have a wealth of additional information about whatever-it-was.

 

[le Redoutable]

I do think that the main problem is that ( astro ) physicians rely on visibility, so they simply don't have access to the ( Zappa ) invisible army ( lol )

 

[delericho]

Best guess is that there is almost certainly plentiful life out there, of which a ridiculously tiny percentage is intelligent, but that none of that intelligent life has ever been here, or will be here in my lifetime.

Indeed, given out current trajectory, I'm inclined to think no human will ever meet an alien.

 

[CleverNickName]

The poll didn't ask about possibility ("I think it's possible/impossible that there are aliens") or belief ("I believe they exist"). So I voted no. With zero evidence, that is the only conclusion.

 

[Kaodi]

Aliens are unlikely to all be ascetics in the same ways humans are not all ascetics. Contact is not just a matter of, "What do the aliens think of us?" it imay be a matter of "What does an alien with the resources and wherewithal think of us?" Given the principles of convergent evolution I think that any alien civilization is going to be broadly relatable to our own in terms of intellectual capability. They will probably have plateaued, like we did, once they reached a form that could develop technologically rather than biologically.

 

[briggart]

I'm 100% convinced that there are no intelligent aliens with a technology sufficiently advanced as to build an interstellar spaceship, but not advanced enough to prevent such spaceship to crash land on a primitive planet. Also, none of their family, friends, colleagues came to their help, or at the very least to retrieve the bodies.

But all your three options seem plausible to me, with 1 and 2 more likely than 3. And probably in 15-20 years we could make a reasonable guess on whether 1 or 2 is more likely.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm 100% convinced that there are no intelligent aliens with a technology sufficiently advanced as to build an interstellar spaceship, but not advanced enough to prevent such spaceship to crash land on a primitive planet.

We have crashed so many probes on Mars. The amount of stuff that has to go right for interplanetary travel -- to say nothing of interstellar travel -- is impossible to overstate.

 

[payn]

 

[Corinnguard]

I voted yes, but I am inclined to believe that we haven't been visited by them yet. If they are out there, they could be doing the same thing we have been doing for the last couple of years, searching for exoplanets that are within their sun's Habitable Zone. But only a certain percentage of them are close enough to us to pick out our sun from the millions of other stars around it, to notice the telltale wobble of planets transiting in front of it, and to take note that there is only one planet in it's habitable zone. Ours. They may or may not have reached that point in their technological development where they can determine the composition of Earth's atmosphere. But if and when they do, they'll know that something is inhabiting this world.

Zoo hypothesis - Wikipedia The zoo hypothesis speculates on the assumed behavior and existence of technologically advanced extraterrestrial life and the reasons they refrain from contacting Earth. It is one of many theoretical explanations for the Fermi paradox. The hypothesis states that alien life intentionally avoids communication with Earth to allow for natural evolution and sociocultural development, and avoiding interplanetary contamination, similar to people observing animals at a zoo.