Would aliens be similar, or Are we super egocentric??

Why do we think like we do? What I mean is, why do we always have the impression that any other extraterresrial being of any sort would be similar to us in any way?
Consider the following things: To start, even here on Mother Earth, creatures can see in different spectrums of light, things can been seen by one species that cannot be detected by others! We (Earth creatures) are all bound by our own laws of physics, notably gravity, which restricts our physical forms in many ways.

Therefore, is it maybe a possibility that any other creatures that are not from our Earth may not have those restrictions? Maybe they are right in front of us, yet we cannot perceive them!? Would they even be a 3 dimensional being as we know it?

So many people seem really hung up on Greys, Reptilians, Nordics, etc.. Not to discredit those accounts, but maybe we should open up the possibilities!

I once heard a quote, "A finite being cannot understand and infinte being."
Maybe we just don't get it yet, not time yet, or cannot see the forrest for the trees!
Your thoughts are appreciated!

in that video I watched the other day "UFO the greatest story ever denied" I was fascinated how a particular ufo or possible lifeform viewed with borth infra-red and regular cameras totally disappeared from the regular camera view and was only visible in IR. Perhaps a evolutionary mechanism of camoflouge

We're basically the same meaning all alien races because the universe is basically the same where they come from?

There's the story about when Columbus came to America - the Aboriginals were mystified by strange water behavior but they could not see the ships. Since they had never seen anything like it before, the ships didn't register in their visual processing until the vessels were very close, although they could detect the water behavior. The same phenomenon occurs in kittens raised in environments where there are no vertical lines. When they are put into a normal environment they behave as though they cannot see vertical lines and continuously walk into table legs etc.,. If Aliens were far outside of our perceptual experiences we would probably not see them at all.

I think the way that our popular fiction almost always depicts aliens to have 1 head, 2 arms, bipedals is less down to costume restrictions and more to do with public ego or imaginations .

In the 30's and 40's films showed aliens as blobs with eye stalks , or hairy giants , all completely different to todays films. For some reason though todays public will just not accept this .

The other day I had a dream that I wish to share.

I riding with my wife who was driving our car. We were on a rural road and I noticed some strange vehicles in the sky. They almost apeared to be tractors in the sky and they were spraying a pinkish red mist on everything.

We drove to the nearest town and saw that it was under attack I looked to my right out the passenger window and saw a craft. A classic UFO, and when I say classic, I mean classic. Simple disk shape with a ramp, similar to the one in The Day The Earth Stood Still.

I saw what I can only describe as Purple Tenticles (Older Gen X'ers probably know what I am referencing there, Ha ha.) I looked over at my wife who was also looking at the beings and I told her to floor it, but before she did, a tenticle had attached itself to her driverside door and then I woke up.

It was all pretty wild, but it made me think about this very issue. How are we so arrogant to assume that the aliens are even SHAPED like us?

Originally posted by Thinker_1
The same phenomenon occurs in kittens raised in environments where there are no vertical lines. When they are put into a normal environment they behave as though they cannot see vertical lines and continuously walk into table legs etc.,. If Aliens were far outside of our perceptual experiences we would probably not see them at all.

What you suggest and I strongly agree with is that it is a mental block. This block results from experience and an ATTITUDE. This block prevents a person from perceiving evidence as that.. evidence of something not understood or as being foreign. Abnormalities are written off as imagination or abberations.

Hello.

It is an old issue and I agree with you in the fact that it is hard for us to imagine anything that does not relate in any way to anything that we haven't met or experienced on one form or another - we see the world through our own existence and are uncapable of a perception that goes beyond it.

Years ago in college we were put to an exercise that was focused exactly on that issue - to try and figure out how an alien would look using knowledge other than our most obvious notions of an organism. It was interesting to see that when that barrier was crossed another came up - all the suggestions were trying to escape the humanoid form by trying to apply the chemical and biological patterns that we know. It was fun to see that as people were escaping a resemblance to humans they began going for all other species on earth. Traces of vegetable, traces of jellyfish and then even traces of light, traces of electricity. Eventually we just cheated and presented a blank page stating that with our physical and technological abilities we couldn't see it but we were sure it was there.

My personal conclusion was that it really does not matter. Extra-terrestrial life whether it is humanoid in shape or not isn't exactly dependent on human imagination. It kind of felt like the whole exercise was more focused on finding out more about my perception of the world around me than actually coming to a conclusion regarding the forms, shapes and colors of life in outter space.

However, as a side note it is also important to keep an open mind to the fact that our current theory of random evolution is still has a missing link. Should Darwinism fall we'd have to come up with a whole different view on how species originate and evolve which would undoubtedly mess with our view of what life in other planets would be like.

So who knows?

Well I am not a believer per se but since I have never seen an alien and there are people that claim they have (as you mentioned the whole Grey, Nordic, Reptilian, etc. scennario)... benefict of the doubt goes to them.

Cheers.

hey

i think they gonna be kinda similar 2 us, in a way that they need eyes/radar, something like ears, something like hands, something like feet, some taste and smell. but like u say, it doesn't have 2 match the human race! Maybe on a other planet they look like the Hindoe god :
somewhat close 2 us but with a other skin and 4 arms

Great respones to all so far! The kitten story is fantastic by the way!

Another thing to keep in mind is that our human mind cannot always grasp what is happening to it! Just like the body going into shock due to extreme pain that the mind does not what to remember! I think that as humans, we are pretty much limited to the information that we can take in. The more knowledge and experience a person has, the more open their mind is and therefore, the more that their mind can handle without being overloaded. Information, especially at a shocking rate, has to be presented slowly at first, otherwise we run the risk of just not being able to handle what is being shown to us....
This is commonly called a, "Head Fire", or "Mental Meltdown" due to extreme stresses of irrational occurences.

Consider how we must learn to crawl before we walk.........

I have to agree that all aliens are'nt going to look exactly like us,
nor have psychologies that would be normal by our societal
standards.

If they devloped on a planet similiar to ours, that is Earth standard
gravity, oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, carbon basing, they may
evolve in ways similiar to life on Earth.

However, life in the universe is most likely incredibly diverse when
it comes to the frm life takes.

I mean there may be giant space amoebas that live in nebula, a bit
extreme, but it makes my point quite nicely.



Just one thing though..

We (Earth creatures) are all bound by our own laws of physics, notably gravity, which restricts our physical forms in many ways.

Well, unless they evolved on a planet subject to extremely exotic
forces, they are bound by the same laws of physics, most physical
laws are Universal, and none of them are only Earth local.

Good point about the laws of physics!
Guess what I meant is that the understanding of physics seems to be opening up quite nicely and that there may be some forms that do not adhere to the type of understanding that we could comprehend!

I think the Aboriginal story is a folk tale, meaning that I don't think that it is very realistic. But there is something very strong about perceptual psychology. So I agree with the general point. The kitten story is interesting, I've never heard that one before.

I would argue that rather than 'not seeing the ships' we tend to resolve them as something else we are more familiar with.

For example, the idea that certain SW US tribes see only two colors because they have only two color words turned out to be wrong in both respects. So we have to be careful with the stories of concept-dominated perceptions. They tend to mystify, and then turn out not to be true.

On the other hand,I think we regularly misidentify uncommon phenomena.

For example, there isa story from some cop who claims to have confronted a few people in a ship on the ground. As he was approaching, he thought it was some foreigners standing next to an overturned car. When the overturned car fired up some rocket engines,boosted itself, then went silent and took off for the horizon, however, he suddenly realized that what he had perceived as a car was far from it.

If you see fiery chariots, you probably live in a chariot-using civilization.

If you see a wheel within a wheel, well, I guess a wheel is the machine of motion with which you are familiar.

If it looks like an overturned car,well, its probably because you usually associate metal things by the road with cars.

How we describe the things we see today, "glowing lights" fast moving 'craft', etc, continues to show our bias towards the idea of an encapsulating vehicle.

As for what an alien may be like, I enjoy the Russian movie Solaris, and the American remake, where an alien lifeform isa barely tangible thing that haunts us more than interacts with us.

Not your typical bug-eyed anthropod. Its true, there is 'convergent evolution' and the like. So it is possible that things would be similar.But we know so little about origins that we can only rely on either a culture's creation myth or rough guesses from eager-to-explain scientists.

[edit on 3-11-2006 by Ectoterrestrial]

While I think that there are common processes in the universe that prefer a bipedal type of humanoid, once a highly sentient species passed through the third level of civilization as described by those folks in MIT, I think their ability to alter themselves does need to be taken into account.

Ectoterrestrial,

I am digging what you have said, I think you are right on.

We, all species, are victims of our own circumstances and our minds will fill in the blanks that cannot be imagined or comprehended!

By the way, your signature quote is nice!!!

Originally posted by Ectoterrestrial
I would argue that rather than 'not seeing the ships' we tend to resolve them as something else we are more familiar with.


For example, there isa story from some cop who claims to have confronted a few people in a ship on the ground. As he was approaching, he thought it was some foreigners standing next to an overturned car. When the overturned car fired up some rocket engines,boosted itself, then went silent and took off for the horizon, however, he suddenly realized that what he had perceived as a car was far from it.

If you see fiery chariots, you probably live in a chariot-using civilization.

If you see a wheel within a wheel, well, I guess a wheel is the machine of motion with which you are familiar.

If it looks like an overturned car,well, its probably because you usually associate metal things by the road with cars.

How we describe the things we see today, "glowing lights" fast moving 'craft', etc, continues to show our bias towards the idea of an encapsulating vehicle.

I think you make a very valid point here, Ecto; it also appears regularly in the UFO abduction literature and is referred to as a "screen memory", although there is much conjecture on whether we initially observe ufos and aliens as men beside an overturned car or as McDonalds restaurants or whether it is a defense mechanism that our mind uses to deal with highly traumatic events. So it is that what comes out under hypnosis as an alien encounter is orginally remembered as seeing a deer with large black liquid eyes, because it is more identifiable in our human experience.

getting back to the original subject, though, I doubt that intelligent creatures that developed on an ocean world would develop the technology of radio and astronomy or even that any more evolved species than us would even want to contact us if they could.

Great thread, BTW.

Cheers,

[edit on 3-11-2006 by Ectoterrestrial]

They exist as disassociated hyper normal future memory replay's of our higher selves, the fact that they display Cerebral Spinal Fluid's & Spine's mean's they are not very highly evolved they should be spineless and not needing womb amniotic shell suit's to hide and breed in, ie UFO's.

Go read "Project Majestic" for the Autopsy write up.

I find they are like Elemental's as in Goblin's, Elve's, but from the Future Memory Air Element's, as in the Galactic Noosphere/Memesphere.

Stormrider,

Thanks for the kudos on the thread by the way!

I wonder though, as your post mentioned the deer with dark watery eyes scenario, is it that we cannot really grasp the "alien idea" and so the mind superimposes the deer thing?
Seems to be two schools of thought on the hypnosis thing, either it really is a supressed memory, OR, it is an impressionable memory that the hypnotist and or hypnotee can be persuaded to remember!?
I for one really have no opinion on that part, what are your thoughts on this portion of the ordeal?

Peace, Mondogiwa

Originally posted by Mondogiwa
Stormrider,

Thanks for the kudos on the thread by the way!

I wonder though, as your post mentioned the deer with dark watery eyes scenario, is it that we cannot really grasp the "alien idea" and so the mind superimposes the deer thing?
Seems to be two schools of thought on the hypnosis thing, either it really is a supressed memory, OR, it is an impressionable memory that the hypnotist and or hypnotee can be persuaded to remember!?
I for one really have no opinion on that part, what are your thoughts on this portion of the ordeal?

Peace, Mondogiwa

I think it boils down to this question: is what the "abductee" remembers under hypnosis true, ie the memory of an actual, factual, event or are they the product of suggestion/s by the therapist. Just going by transcripts that I have seen in books by Bud Hopkins and other investigators, I don't believe that these memories can be attributed solely to suggestion. That leaves us with little help, though, in decideing whether those memories are the product of our brains/psyches, or projected by the aliens themselves.

As far as being able to "grasp" the idea of aliens is concerned, it's my opinion that our culture has been so saturated with the idea that aliens exist that it is more likely that these screen memories are something that the aliens utilize in hiding their existance from us. That is, if aliens actually exist and have visited our world. I tend toward believing that all of the abduction and close encounter reports over the last several decades would indicate that they are.

I like the story of the policeman and the overturned car , makes complete sense . I'm sure most people have had similar experiences with much more down to earth objects though.

There has to be a percentage of our society though , where this would work in exactly the opposite direction. That there total belief and wish to see otherworldly things would make them see things that were quite mundane in a new light . This must make up for some sightings unfortunately.

Our mind evolved to it's present condition in order for us to outsmart the lions on the African plains... lol. This is how our perception of reality was formed. Other beings on this Earth evolved to fit specific niches, and their physical and mental traits adapted coorespondingly. Now that there is really no NEED for us to be as smart as we are today, I beleive a "de-evolution" could be in the works. I'm not exactly sure what that means for humanity myself.

I hold to the principle that if life can exist, it will exist. We, as humans, may not recognize the form as being a "living organism" though. The chances that life out there adapted to conditions much like our own and fit into the exact same niche is inevitable, though not probable. So the answer to your question is no, the aliens we find will likely neither think nor look as we do.