[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by pmrid

I like to test ideas by looking at them backwards. If there have been alien visits to earth, encounters between aircraft and alien craft, squadrons and flotillas of alien craft over this city or that, then we have to assume that those visiting aliens observed us more or less as we are - a species with a mastery of materials, construction, flight, telecommunications and so on and so on. Not a bunch of amoeba crawling about on a cave floor.

All that would be a given.

But then again, what could an intelligent amoeba be capable of??

Originally Posted by pmrid

Why, then, in all those encounters, if you accept for a moment that they were indeed encounters, has there never been any recorded communication, or attempt at communication? In all of those encounters, why has there never been the equivalent of a decent photo-stop, pee break, overmnight solourn, alien dirty weekend or whatever you want to call it.
Are we so unattractive a species that these visitors might have come all thiis way (and presumably from multiple distant places- not just one) and not attempted some form of contact, exchange of messages - why haven't we had a M.O.U with the Sirius B folks?

How do you know that there hasn't been any communication. Just because no one has come out with a tap recorded message or a book from any encounter that may have happened, doesn't mean to say that nothing has occurred. What was the last thing you heard your Grade 12 teacher say to you as you left school....now, prove it. You can't. It's the same here. Hypothetically, I could come out and say I've had extensive conversations with a group of alien scientists who regularly come here to observe this planet (I haven't, BTW, this is just a "what if") and I've learnt quite a few things. However, they wouldn't allow me to record the conversation or take with me any proof of the encounter. How would I be able to prove any of it, and despite having actually been in that situation, the fact that I had no proof...like a book or a recorded message...would make me look like a certified wacko. It would be my word against everyone else. Every "debunker" and "skeptic" and some scientists would descend down upon my head like a ton of bricks and the media would treat the whole affair as a joke. You can now see why most people would want to shut up and keep quiet about this sort of thing. The few who do have the courage to speak up, even if it's just pure fantasy on their part, still end up having to fall on their own swords and the way that most are treated is utterly despicable. If it were real, I would laugh at those idiots who rail against all of this, if they ended up experiencing an encounter themselves. I can tell you now, a great many of them would curl up into a little ball in the corner of the ship and babble away like demented fools. Their entire world views would come crashing down around their feet and they wouldn't be able to cope with the shock. Strip away a person's identity or a core belief system like that (and not just in a case like this...in any situation) and they go to pot. That's a fact. Only those who already "subscribe" to that world view or have strong enough personal integrity would manage to survive it intact. The same would also be applicable in the other direction as well, for some. This psychological deconstruction goes on when people get attacked for things like this and the guilty parties doing the damage seem to get some vicarious pleasure out of doing it....showing their greater powers of logic, rationality and "healthy skepticism" to the greater audience, most of whom are as ignorant as those doing the debunking, even more so. It's like one huge chest beating exercise as to who has the biggest brain/mouth/opinion/ego/set of qualifications etc etc.

And then you wonder why there's no "open" communication between us and them!!!. A quick look at our TV broadcasts and some judicious snooping on the radio frequencies coming from this planet would be more than enough to convince any intelligent group of explorers from any planet that apart from making a few attempts here and there, it would be pointless to even try and openly contact the species living here. You'd be putting your life in danger nearly every time you tried. They can't even agree to live together in relative peace amongst themselves, let alone with anyone else. The general populace of the planet, in some few areas, might be reasonably well behaved and sensible. But the rest aren't. Nor are their governments and militaries to be trusted. Observe them yes, contact them....only the few deemed appropriate enough to do so, the rest forget about. Let them continue to wonder about our presence and make up stories. And hope that one day they grow out of their petulant childhood and finally open their eyes. More for their own sakes than anyone else.

If I were in a position of finding a civilisation that was very much like us, that's how I'd treat them if I were an explorer from another part of the galaxy. For whatever you might think of the idea, the Prime Directive, of Star Trek ilk, is a very sensible idea and one we ourselves should heed once we become able to travel out amongst the stars.

Originally Posted by pmrid

If an idea is credilble, it generally balances out when looked at from a different perspective. The alien visitation idea does not. At least not to me.
Peter

How do you define "credibility"??. The goalposts for that little definition get shifted around all the time, depending on any number of circumstantial variables that might impact the situation at the time. Beliefs, perspective (world views, etc), emotional states, prior experiences...everything needs to be taken into account. One person's credibility is another's load of nonsense. I haven't seen one case at all, for anything, where someone's personal views and feeling haven't tainted a discussion about this question....or any other, for that matter. Especially with the subject of UFO's, objectivity rapidly goes out the window quite often on both sides of the argument. And, nothing comes of it, except innuendo and slanging matches. Even amongst scientists. If anything can remain objective for any period of time, where people are concerned.