<p>Do you think they exist? If so, what do you think they are like? Do you think they have been here? Do you think we will ever contact them?</p>
<p>I don’t believe in aliens but I do believe in jinn. I think they can shapeshift into weird creatures…some are even human beings that leave among us.</p>
<p>so aliens=jinn</p>
<p>Ever wonder how how fortune tellers get their info from? They get them from djinns/jinns.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>^ Well, most fortune tellers get their info from educated guess and predictions that are open for interpretation. But yeah. I do believe that spiritual beings exist, and I would guess that most supposed “alien encounters” are really either something of that nature or misidentification of human-made or natural phenomena.</p>
<p>IF thre are alien civilizations out there, why should they be so much more advanced than us? And IF they are so much more advanced, why would they want to come here?</p>
<p>of course i think they’re out there. i think it’s kind of silly to believe that there is really NOBODY else in the huge universe we’re in. i think eventually we will contact them, eventually being in a few hundred years.</p>
<p>I’m a trekkie, of course I believe.</p>
<p>
Don’t they live in holes?</p>
<p>As for extraterrestrials, I do think that it is overwhelmingly likely that there is/has been/will be another intelligent civilization.</p>
<p>Of course there are aliens. They are all over the universe. And there’s a man in a little blue box. He saves planets, rescues civilizations, defeats terrible creatures… and runs a lot. Seriously, there is an outrageous amount of running involved.</p>
<p>I <3 Doctor Who.</p>
<p>I also agree with Bayhawk.</p>
<p>There has to be extraterrestrials. Since the sun is a star, there’s trillions of stars in the universe. So, there’s a high chance that one planet revolving around the another star, is a good enough distance away from the sun to produce life. So yes, there’s a 50% chance that there is life. If there isn’t wouldn’t this universe be a sad empty space.</p>
<p>
Eh, what?</p>
<p>
Please, show your work.</p>
<p>Yes.</p>
<p>I think it’s incredibly stupid and egotistical to believe that we are the only intelligent beings in the infinite universe. We’re not that special, sorry folks.</p>
<p>Now, arguing whether or not they have visited us is a different matter entirely. But fwiw, I think they have been here for thousands of years and I believe that they will continue to come.</p>
<p>At a debate tournament once, I was doing Spontaneous Argument (you and your opponent are given a topic and sides, and have 30 minutes to write opening speech), and had to argue in favor of “Resolved: Aliens Exist”. I didn’t want to squabble over the chances of there being extraterrestrial life, so I just defined “aliens” as “outsiders” and wrote a speech about how there are outsiders to certain groups. When we were about to start, I noticed my opponent’s paper had the word “UFO” on it like 50 times. After my speech (which included the sentence, “If aliens didn’t exist, there would be nothing to make Lou Dobbs’s head explode.”), I got to watch my opponent begin with “Uh… uh…”</p>
<p>I don’t think so (at least not the sense of organisms comparable to humans).</p>
<p>IMO the Drake Equation is an epic example of saying nothing in an intelligent sounding way. there’s no data to support any of the assumptions between “number of stars” and “number of contactable civilzations”.</p>
<p>AFAIK, out of the 200 Billion or so stars in our Galaxy, we know of less than 500 planets. Of the planets we know of, only one (1) is known to be able to support life. Only a couple of the others are even in the “maybe” category.</p>
<p>One planets that can support life, only one (1) actually has life, as far as we know. Anyone with a little knowledge of statistics will tell you that this is far to small a sample to provide any useful information about the odds of life developing.</p>
<p>Ditto for intelligent life.</p>
<p>Ditto for technology level.</p>
<p>As for the amount of time intelligent technologically advanced life survives, we do not as yet have a single measurement of this value.</p>
<p>When you add up all the unknowns, and apply statistics, you find that the margin of error is so huge that the equation provides nothing useful.</p>
<p>Not to mention that all this assumes that life develops randomly through evolution, which is a dubious claim itself (see other threads :P).</p>
<p>If, on the other hand, naturalistic evolution is false, and there is some sort of creator involved, then the number of alien civilizations depends entirely on this creator’s whim, and there is absolutely no way for us to know besides going and looking.</p>
<p>Of course. The events on earth that led to the emergence of life happened on an infinite number of other planets. It would be ludicrous to claim that it’s impossible for similar events to those that happened on earth didn’t occur on other planets. </p>
<p>As for whether or not they’ve been here… who knows? Though I don’t see why they’d want to visit earth.</p>
<p>
See this? This is called the danger zone.</p>
<p>The events on earth that led the emergence of life either were an arbitrary creation event (in which case there’s no reason why they should or shouldn’t have happened elsewhere), were based on as-yet unknown science (in which case there’s no grounds for making assumptions about them), or were the result of such a unlikely coincidence that the odds are very small that they happened anywhere else, even given the imminse size of the galaxy.</p>
<p>
How do you know how unlikely or arbitrary it was?</p>
<p>^ I don’t. And neither does anyone else. hence it is silly to “calculate” how many alien civilizations are out there, since these “calculations” are based almost entirely on unconfirmed assumptions.</p>
<p>But you said it was so unlikely that the chances are very small that it happened twice within our galaxy. How is this different from saying that it is likely that life is common?</p>