Skeptic Project

Crop circles are the lamest "evidence" for aliens ever. It's hard to believe that anyone is still wasting their time with them, let alone a science academy.

I think you mean the Bosnian Pyramids, unless they are claiming them in Croatia now too.

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/nov/22-the-man-who-went-up-a-hill-and-came-down-a-pyramid

in my mind i think it would be impossible that we were the only sentient species in the universe. but of course my minds thoughts aren't fact. only an empirical result.
but people do use the idea of aliens too often to create a fantasy of which they can stir some excitement and it's just stupid.
but the invention and now use of the lie will always be used.
and with that this post was pointless. heh.

We can't communicate with any other living creature on our own planet, but we managed to apparently do it fairly easily with aliens.

I don't think it's impossible that life forms could have reached us. I mean if there are other sentient species in the universe (by mathematical probability) then it'st 50% likely that they are more advanced and 50% likely they aren't, cause they would either be smarter or the latter.

It is all speculation because we don't know most of the values to use in the Drake Equation. There is know way to know what percentage of planets develop life, what percentage of lifeforms develop intelligence, what percentage develop technology, ect. However, I don't think 50% of sentient life would be more technologically or biologically advanced then humans because the more advanced they would be, the less common they would be. The most common form of life would probably be single celled organisms. Only a percentage of these would evolve into more advaced lifeforms, and only a percentage of lifeforms would evolve intelligence. Then when you get to sentient life, only a percentage of it would ever become more advanced then humans, because of all the civilizations that would die off or just stop advancing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

Most humans can't easily acquire the sort of abstract thinking necessary for scientific and technological progress, unless you consider the rise of high-functioning autism or Asperger's syndrome as an adaptation to an environment which values these disciplines and rewards individuals who can master them. (Aspies seem to thrive in science and tech, though they have trouble finding mates to pass along their genes. Refer to Simon Baron-Cohen's writings on assortative mating and autism.)

The ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes, for example, arguably displayed an autistic neurology and probably made the neurotypical people he met uneasy. The human population produced so few people like him at the time that their theory of mind,. used to dealing with the minds of slaves, peasants, warriors, aristocrats and other standard characters in premodern societies, didn't know how to infer what went on in Archimedes' mind; the bafflement probably resulted in some anxiety in dealing with him.

Now you can find hundreds, if not many thousands, of Archimedes-like people in the top university math departments, software companies, the staff of the Large Hadron Collider and so forth. And we have social mechanisms for finding and cultivating more like them (national school systems, IQ and aptitude testing, college scholarships, etc.). Yet this effort to locate and employ people like Archimedes happened only in the last few generations, an effort which has paid off in all the scientific and technological wonders of the modern world.

But none of this necessarily had to happen. And in fact most of the world just doesn't bother with the search for people adept at such thinking, either because of poverty and social underdevelopment, or else because their cultures don't recognize the value of such people. (Mexico, a middle-income country near an advanced one, doesn't seem to care much about developing the potential of its smartest people, for example. China, by contrast, with its lower per capita GDP, has invested aggressively into educating its population and finding the smart ones for further training.)

Any way, I brought this up because it bears on SETI. The Copernican principle suggests that extraterrestrial species arguably comparable to ours would more likely than not stay stuck in neurotypical thinking, which has dominated human life throughout most of its existence, and which could dominate it again if our civilization collapses to a less complex state which can no longer maintain scientific and technological traditions based on abstract reasoning. The idea from science fiction that our galaxy has filled up with advanced Aspie civilizations doesn't seem all that likely, though lower-tech, planet-bound ones living out their neurotypical soap operas might exist.

The galaxy is one really big place....200/400 billion stars or so!!!

Astronomers have estimated that there are between 200 and 400 billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. Though we can only see around 2,500 stars with the naked eye.

To give an idea of the magnitude of the number:

An average A4 page contains 3,000 letters. If we put a star as each character, we would need about 66,666,666 pages or 33,333,333 double sided pages.

The Webster dictionary has about 7,000 pages, so you would need 4,761 to equal the amount of stars in our Galaxy. (And that is the low end - double it for the high end).

Interesting related trivia: Your body contains one thousand times more cells than there are stars in the Milky Way.

BUT.... there is an infinate number on galxies......... holy shit!! INFINATE!!! Yes ofcourse theres life out there, dont talk to me if you think otherwize!! All possibilities are played out infinatly ..... time is a spiral and space is a curve!

Anyway watch this it was on the news in england

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3MDPD5TF7Q

Yes, there are a lot of stars and a lot of planets out there, but there's also a lot of distance between them

"Extraterrestrials are critical of the people's amoral behavior referring to the humans' interference in nature's processes."
Found in the article. Quick answer to our friends up there; man-bear-pig. So get off my ass.

Frankly it wouldn't surprise me, however it wouldn't surprise me to be false either. It's so human to just try and get attention or play a practical joke that I stay indifferent to these things.

Let me put it this way. When I see UN talks being held with these representatives of these extra terrestrial beings, then I'll have more of an opinion about it. But for now, okay. Great. Cool. d-_-b

A whole 30 questions?