07/09/2010 06:48:19 AM EST

If there is an ET presence

posted by kemstone

When Cenk guest-hosted for Dylan Ratigan this past week, one the segments he did was a quick little oddity about UFO lobbyists that got me thinking.

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Apparently the group “Exopolitics” is lobbying the government to release the truth about extra-terrestrials. Stephen Bassett, a lobbyist for the group, claims that the government has known about the “ET presence” since the 40s, that they sequestered the information for justifiable public security reasons, but once the Cold War ended there was no longer a good reason to keep the truth from the people.

First of all, I don’t believe that extra-terrestrials have ever visited earth. As Carl Sagan used to say, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” and there is no extraordinary evidence of an ET presence on Earth. That said, there is a plethora of unconvincing evidence that when taken as a whole might lead one to believe that it may be true. After all, if ETs were around, wouldn’t they try to be as discreet as possible?

But watching this segment just got me thinking about how monumentally awesome it would be if it were true. If the government just decided one day to let everyone know that humans are not, in fact, alone in the universe, that the galaxy is brimming with life and interstellar empires—I think my biggest sensation would be one of relief.

We live at what must be a relatively unique time-period in the history of an intelligent species, at which we know how vast the universe is and how incredibly small we are in relation to it, but we still know too little about the formation of life and DNA that we must still face the possibility that we could be the only planet with life—or at least the only planet with intelligent life—in the entire cosmos.

And if that’s the case, think of the tremendous responsibility we have. Through us, the universe has become aware of itself. We could be a miracle of existence, the unlikeliest of unlikely phenomena that arose only because given enough time and enough planets on which organic compounds are floating around, there’s bound to be one in which a DNA molecule forms, replicates, and sets the process of biological evolution into motion, and we just happen to be the result of that process.

If that’s the case and we snuff ourselves out, it would be a tragedy of cosmic proportions. To think of our enormous potential—to go out and explore and experience the entire universe—squashed by our own short-sightedness and thus limiting the universe’s self-awareness to a mere blink of an eye on one speck of dust in the void.

But if intelligent species are the norm, if interstellar empires abound throughout the cosmos, then we’re off the hook in a big way. Even if we go extinct, awareness will continue in other forms and life in the universe will go on without us.

If there are ETs around and the government does know about them, I wish they would tell us. Not only do I think it would create a sense of global community in a way never before imaginable, but it would provide us with a cosmic peace of mind that we’ve never before been capable of.

< Lady Gaga and Belladonna | Another example of embarrassingly bad US journalism >

Poll

Which statements do you agree with?
ETs are among us. 20%
ETs probably exist but have never visted earth. 66%
Earth may be the only planet with intelligent life. 13%
If ETs exist, the government should tell us. 40%
If ETs exist, the government should keep it secret. 6%
It would be awesome if ETs exist. 46%
It would be terrifying if ETs exist. 20%

Votes: 15
Results | Other Polls
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If there is an ET presence | 13 comments (13 topical, 0 hidden)
Reminds me of something: (none / 0)
Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature.

"The first thing Fascists usually try to do is silencing the opposition."

by opposition on 07/09/2010 06:55:45 AM EST

... we would all be fucked (none / 0)
ET=European colonists/settlers.
us = Native Americans.

'nuff said.

by fgoyeau on 07/09/2010 09:07:59 AM EST

exactly (none / 0)
All you have to do is examine the historical record.

Contact between a relatively primitive people and an advanced technological civilization is always and uniformly disastrous for the primitives. That disaster is only eventually mitigated when their culture and way of life have been destroyed and the survivors are partially assimilated, albeit at the lowest socio-economic level of the dominant society.

Every time.

I defy anyone to name even a single exception.

by RedPossum on 07/09/2010 10:20:27 AM EST

[ Parent ]
The argument (none / 0)
The argument to this is if ET exists and can actually get here, they have probably survived millions of years.  Therefore, they have made it without destroying themselves and understand how to keep the peace.  AND they are so technically savvy that there isn't really anything they need from us, so why would they even bother?

Just thought I'd offer a counterpoint although it's a strong argument that ET is war like.  That's what Hawking thinks as well.

by reba on 07/09/2010 11:28:55 AM EST

[ Parent ]
interesting topic (none / 0)
For starters, it's unlikely that only the US government and no other scientists from around the globe know about ETI.  Just thought I'd point that out.

If you are interested in the topic of the likelihood of ETI, I recommend a book I read recently, The Eerie Silence by Paul Davies.
http://www.amazon.com/Eerie -Silence-Renewing-Search-In telligence/dp/0547133243/re f=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF 8&qid=1278688671&sr =1-1

by reba on 07/09/2010 11:23:20 AM EST

Recommendation (none / 0)
Watch "Ancient Aliens".  I forgot what channel it's on - Discovery, Nat Geo, something like that.  There is certainly plenty of curious evidence that we have been visited by alien cultures all the way back to Egyptian times.  Likewise, there is evidence of hoaxes and fraud.
But, you can't honestly think we are the only intelligent life in the Universe...

by TJD on 07/09/2010 11:58:38 AM EST

It's hard to decide (none / 0)
Which is worse? Your advice or advising to read books by Erich von Däniken?

"The first thing Fascists usually try to do is silencing the opposition."

by opposition on 07/09/2010 12:03:38 PM EST

[ Parent ]
LOL, von Daniken (none / 0)
Von Daniken was a crackpot, and a shameless sensationalist.

That said, I do suspect that there may be a core of truth to the idea that our planet was visited by something or someone in the distant past. This comes back to the old "absence of proof is not proof of absence" issue, though.

So, who knows? I don't see any grounds to dismiss the idea out of hand.

by RedPossum on 07/09/2010 12:26:49 PM EST

Panspermia anybody? (none / 0)
Sure, we should always keep an open mind.
To quote one of the best american philosphers of recent years:

"There are known knowns.
There are known unknowns
and there are unknown unknowns."

Every logician will agree that he forgot the unknown knowns, but that is another story.

"The first thing Fascists usually try to do is silencing the opposition."

by opposition on 07/09/2010 12:34:07 PM EST

[ Parent ]
Is it better to be smart or stupid? (none / 0)
Considering that there are billions upon billions of planets, I think life on other planets is very likely, although it could be in a vastly different form than here on earth. I very much like the idea that reba put forth up above, that if ET life were to visit us, that would mean they are very old and have figured out how to get along.
Here's an excerpt from Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival which asks a very interesting question. Is it better to be smart or dumb? Higher intelligence may just be an evolutionary statistical outlier (but again, billions and billions of planets would mean an improbability could become a certainty).

"A few years ago, one of the great figures of contemporary biology, Ernst Mayr, published some reflections on the likelihood of success in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. He considered the prospects very low. His reasoning had to do with the adaptive value of what we call "higher intelligence," meaning the particular human form of intellectual organization. Mayr estimated the number of species since the origin of life at about fifty billion, only one of which "achieved the kind of intelligence needed to establish a civilization." It did so very recently, perhaps 100,000 years ago. It is generally assumed that only one small breeding group survived, of which we are all descendants.

Mayr speculated that the human form of intellectual organization may not be favored by selection. The history of life on Earth, he wrote, refutes the claim that "it is better to be smart than to be stupid," at least judging by biological success: beetles and bacteria, for example, are vastly more successful than humans in terms of survival. He also made the rather somber observation that "the average life expectancy of a species is about 100,000 years."

by jhufford on 07/09/2010 12:58:41 PM EST

Awesome (none / 0)
Thanks for the fascinating tid-bit about Ernst Mayr.  I may have heard of him before but I didn't remember the name.

If I had to guess, I'd say that there are probably a great deal of planets with some form of life out there, but on the vast majority of them it's just basic single-celled organisms.  A select few have full-fledged plants and animals, and a tiny minescule portion have intelligent species capable of technology.

Of those, I'd guess that most wipe themselves out relatively quickly, but given the size of the universe there must be a handful who survive and spread across interstellar space.

With 200 billion stars in our galaxy to work with, it's definitely not inconceivable that a few such civilizations are already out there, and that by the time we evolved they might have spread far enough to be aware of us and to have visited us.

Unfortunatley, there's just no good way to assess the likelihood of that, but the default assumption is that it is highly unlikely.

by kemstone on 07/10/2010 05:13:20 AM EST

[ Parent ]
Given the size of the universe (none / 0)
It's at least possible intelligent life exists elsewhere. OTOH, given the size of the universe, it's just as likely they would never have contact with us.

"No, you are a paid blogger assigned to counter anyone that posts something negative about the government or Obama." by Mcamelyne II on 05/17/2011

by Robrob on 07/09/2010 02:51:58 PM EST

Necromancy redux (none / 0)
Slight apologies for the necromancy, but I will justify it by pointing out that this is a timeless topic; it's just as relevant now as it was when Kemstone first posted it.

I unearthed this minor gem of a thread just to suggest a series of 3 books on the subject by David Brin.

Sundiver
Startide Rising
The Uplift War

I would mention that the first, Sundiver, is notably weaker than the other two. Each novel is capable of standing on it's own, but part of the reason why Sundiver is weaker is because much of the novel is consumed with setting the milieu. You can read and enjoy either Startide Rising or The Uplift War alone. It's just that the background is mostly in Sundiver.

I mention these because, of all the SF I have read in the last 38 years, this series is a neck-and-neck tie for the most credible portrayal of multiple alien species that I have ever encountered.

The other contender for that title, (most credible portrayal of multiple alien species), is the Chanur series by CJ Cherryh, which is also notable for the fact that homo sapiens does not form the centerpiece of the story. It centers on another race entirely, and only one human has anything but a cameo appearance.

Instead, Cherryh sets up the race which is at the center of the story almost as a mirror image of humanity, and uses that fact to make several sly, catty points about human nature along the way.

by RedPossum on 08/08/2010 12:52:27 PM EST

If there is an ET presence | 13 comments (13 topical, 0 hidden)
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