reply to post by andre18
Forgive me for not having read the entire 27 pages of posts leading up to mine, so I may end up reiterating earlier points.
We need to make some assumptions first, that extra terrestrial life does exist, that it is sentient, and that it's society has existed longer than
ours, and much more technologically advanced.. Also, we must assume that their motives are similar to ours.
Two things at the core of humans drive us to create and invent, one reason is simply to make our lives easier, the other is our natural curiosity as
to why things are.
I'm not sure why you're only using a timeframe of 50 years, the Earth has been here for best guess estimates of around 4 billion years, more or less
occupying the same orbit. And we are fortunate enough to have this planet in that so called goldilocks zone where water exists is in all three states,
it's a comfortable environment to live in, for us at least.
It would be safe to assume that a society so advanced to ours that it can perform interstellar travel within relatively short time frames, would be
able to identify our planet as a potential harbinger for life from a very early stage. So if at any point in the past 4 billion years any ET craft
have gone by our planet I'm sure it would take note that we have the potential for life here.
Even if life is so abundant in the universe that every single star system harbours life, perhaps even some civilisation, it wouldn't make life
arising here any less interesting, at least not for some. We have scientists who dedicate their entire lives to the study of a single species of
plant, that noone else could seemingly care about.
I like to think that our entire reason for going into space is solely for a greater understanding of the universe, and to hopefully make contact - and
I know that's the reason the scientists who put us there did it, but politically it's funding was for military dominance, or at least a penis
measuring competition between the Soviets and the USA. Perhaps that's why they'd show interest in us, just to dominate,
I can't begin to comprehend how abstractly different or suprisingly similar another sentient beings mind may work to ours, sometimes I have
difficulty relating to other people - but one can only assume that the reasons for reaching out into space for any society would be based on improving
your quality of living and sheer curiosity.
So they're my assumptions I'm making, I'm also going to assume that they have indeed been visiting.
Would the Government cover it up and why? Well I don't want to use any specific examples, because it's not been proven, but we know the US
Government has been aware that there may be things flying about that aren't of human origin for the past 60 years.
As Stanton Friedman said, no way anyone could deal with the reality of it back in the 40's - he thinks however that we're ready for it now. Long
term of course it would be good to have disclosure, but short term? People would be scared, they would be angry, they would want their tech, their
medicine, and everything else an advanced civilisation has that we're just not yet ready to have. Religion would be put into question, and however
open minded people on ATS might believe themselves to be - the rest of the world isn't THAT open minded.
And Governments are notoriously short term, they want their time in office to run smoothly, who wants to spend a 4 year term telling everyone not to
panic (I know they do that a lot anyway). And then you talk about media blackouts, or how there wouldn't be able to be. Well you're right, they
don't stop it, but it's engrained in everyones head that the possibility of extra terrestrial life visiting us is somehow as absurd as Vampires and
Fairies and The Loch Ness Monster (apologies to any forum members holding a candle for any of those myths, but lol imo). It's become quite a trend in
the forums the past few days to post links to UFO related news via Dailymail.co.uk, and god knows why as it's a vile publication, and you need to
read an article on there to come away thinking it's a big joke. Some of the stories may be entirely true, but the prose in which they're written,
and then having every single UFO article accompanied by the proven-to-be-fake Alien Autopsy photos just knocks any semblance of creedence right out of
the news item,
And to address your last point, who knows what aliens look like - we can only go off of what we know of ourselves, but to assume the ability to create
technology (a stick with a stone strapped to it is technology), then ideally forward facing eyes for depth perception, opposable thumb for dexterity,
bipedal would probably help too.
I don't know why you assume the creation of artificial intelligence would somehow replace us, perhaps it would but I can't see it happening - it
will be used for entertainment, calculations and everything it's already being used for, but some humans will always enjoy doing things for
themselves, I wouldn't enjoy a world where everything is done for me. And I'm not sure we'd ever try and assimilate ourselves into robots, yeah a
bionic arm would be cool but sex wouldn't be the same when you're a machine would it? I think genetic modification would be a more likely candidate
for enforced evolution rather than turning yourself into a robot.
The Universe is old and it is massive, if more technologically advanced societies exist, they will know about us. I can't lend creedence to little
grey men and people being abducted, various species of aliens and galactic federations of light - I think most of the people on this site are pretty
crazy (although fun to read through) and most of the stuff I hear on C2Cam is fanciful dribblings from lonely people who want attention, or to take
your money.
I