We are alone

[Mister Imperceptible]

The box! You opened it.....we came!

[George the original one]

What happens if they're just fucking annoying. Like all they do is sit around and fucking complain all day like a race of inter-planetary yentas. Or they do nothing all day. Like they come over and just sit there and fart on your new couch. And they have nothing to contribute.

"The Garbage Chronicles" by Brian Herbert
"Martians, Go Home" by Frederick Brown
And there's another one that I have on the bookshelf, but can't find or remember the title/author...

Edit after remembering: "Strange Invasion" by Michael Kandel
Jason would really like this one.

[George the original one]

Curious to see if you buy this guy's theory, or think we are NOT in fact, alone.

I don't buy his theory because communication/travel across interstellar distances requires vastly more energy than is practical, at least for us. You also have the problem of whether we'd even recognize aliens as life. Then there's the time problem... 4.5 billion years to get us to the stage in the last 100 years where we can even conceive of radio communication with aliens, so we haven't even been listening long enough for the odds to be practical. Unless we discover a way for telepathy to break the laws of physics, but so far it seems more likely that brain biochemistry isn't reliable enough to transmit any thoughts beyond muscle control when augmented with technology.

[Campitor]

I believe there is alien life in the universe. How intelligent or complex is a different question. I believe we'll find life in on the moons in our solar system that contain water and underwater volcanoes. I think we'll find simple single-celled organisms in those volcanic underwater zones.

That we haven't found life or heard a signal is unsurprising. Like the primitives that were separated by oceans before the advent of sails, our fellow galactic companions are too far away to be contacted or heard with our crude technology. They could be transmitting on a frequency beyond our current perception or broadcasting a quantum signal. And maybe we will never encounter intelligent alien life because the tyranny of physics throttles our traveling speed.

But regardless the state of life "out there", humans have to conquer space and learn to live amongst the stars.

[Jason]

@GTOO

Thanks, I'm not a sci-fi guy but those seem about my speed.

[7Wannabe5]

In top running for my favorite book I read this year is Simon Barnes' "Ten Million Aliens: A Journey Through the Entire Animal Kingdom" and you can't read that book and come out the other end feeling like humans are very special or alone on the planet or universe.

First off, it's an error to do the math based on some notion of modern-modern humans being found at the pinnacle of some pyramid shaped process. Secondly, it's an error to not take into account the high frequency with which useful traits evolve independently and/or unique qualities emerge from systems. For instance, intelligence attached to high degree of care for young independently developed along mammal line and bird line, and you could likely replicate this emergence with a computerized simulation based on very simple rules.

Since humans have been at least as intelligent and ingenious as current population for much longer than modern technology has been in existence, the obvious solution to that puzzle has to do with availability of concentrated sources of energy. I think it might have been in the book noted above that I recently read the joke that if a couple intelligent aliens did visit Earth in their spaceship and looked down at our lighted cities, one might turn to the other and say "Gee, isn't nature beautiful!"

OTOH, maybe they are staying away from us due to what we did to all the other intelligent hominid line species a blip on the time-line ago.

However, given great difficulty of inter-galactic travel combined with recent research in the field of genetic manipulation, I am currently placing all my chips on the Planet of the Apes future in which intelligent life other than us pops up right under our noses.

[fiby41]

Life comes from life.

[Jason]

Looks like we'll be depending on the Navy if they decide to go all Independence Day on our earthly asses.

https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/if-th ... 1833079619

[Salathor]

If you haven't read it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_ ... ort_story)

Great short story about alien technological development and its interaction with us. You can find the full text online; it's just a few pages.

EDIT: Read the transcript. Really don't think this is much new, but I did think this part was a little painful:

"Complex life forms must arise -- the thousand becomes one. Sophisticated tool use must develop -- that's one planet in a thousand galaxies. To understand the universe, they'll have to develop the techniques of science and mathematics -- that's one planet in a million galaxies."

Under these assumptions, not only are we not alone, but we're habiting the universe with literally millions of worlds with a) complex life that b) features sophisticated tool use, albeit life that lacks complex mathematics. I feel like that's close enough that he not only isn't proving his point, he's actively arguing against it. Plus, it's highly doubtful that many of these are separate--does any of us think that there are literally 1000 sophisticated, tool using societies for each one that invented math, and another 1000 of those that wound up being asocial for each one that clustered into cultures? How would tool development or mathematical techniques spread if they were asocial? It's just as likely (maybe moreso) that these are complimentary traits rather than random ones.

Not to say I'm sure there's aliens. But this seems like a very thin argument.

[Jason]

Under these assumptions, not only are we not alone, but we're habiting the universe with literally millions of worlds

Well, if you can verify that at least one of these worlds is not inhabited with half-assed, millennial, pseudo-feminist blog writers so aliens who have an interest in early retirement can post without concern of being subjected to a reductionist gender hermeneutic I might change my feelings towards this whole topic.

[enigmaT120]

There's nothing out there. I think people want to believe there is something out there but there isn't. I know this because if there was, I'd be the type of guy they'd snatch up and do all types of unseemly shit to you.

I think that might have happened. Maybe they removed some filters.

[Jason]

I should probably stop calling them three-headed Tom Arnolds, being that they most likely filmed it.