Do you believe there are extraterrestrials and that they have visited earth?

[Starla]

Originally Posted by The Omega Concern

Has Maria Orsich returned?

Who is this? I don't feel like looking it up.

[The Omega Concern]

Vril society...


around WWII, her and some other fetching long haired German woman joined forces in channeling.





Maria claimed to have channeled from Aldebaran, a planet in the Taurus constellation. Her and the girls had to decipher what they wrote down (one was written down in Sumerian).

The gist is scientist found applicable physics in their channelings about spacecraft. The Nazi's recruited the girls to lead the design of their disc shaped fleet. The disc that were designed off Maria's channeling were far superior to the clunky expensive disc the German army were working on. That's her in that pic in front of one of them.

The lore is Maria went off planet in the ship which had the ability to create a wormhole to Aldebaran. Officially, she disappeared. The mystery today is has she returned as this girl Sully, who was seen hanging out with Supreim Rockefeller a few years back, a guy thought to be a hoax ( I tend to hope so anyway...and he's a whole other story).

However, I gotta admit; This Sully girl bares a striking resemblance to Maria Orsic. I wouldn't be surprised if she's related, but to say she's either a reincarnation or actually Maria Orsic herself...well...

[The exploding boy]

Please Starla, next time do us all a favor and don't ask.

[The Omega Concern]

speak for yourself you collectivist twit and do yourself a favor...ignore it.

[The exploding boy]

Well we all have our mental issues.

[slunken]

Originally Posted by The Omega Concern

Vril society...


around WWII, her and some other fetching long haired German woman joined forces in channeling.





Maria claimed to have channeled from Aldebaran, a planet in the Taurus constellation. Her and the girls had to decipher what they wrote down (one was written down in Sumerian).

The gist is scientist found applicable physics in their channelings about spacecraft. The Nazi's recruited the girls to lead the design of their disc shaped fleet. The disc that were designed off Maria's channeling were far superior to the clunky expensive disc the German army were working on. That's her in that pic in front of one of them.

The lore is Maria went off planet in the ship which had the ability to create a wormhole to Aldebaran. Officially, she disappeared. The mystery today is has she returned as this girl Sully, who was seen hanging out with Supreim Rockefeller a few years back, a guy thought to be a hoax ( I tend to hope so anyway...and he's a whole other story).

However, I gotta admit; This Sully girl bares a striking resemblance to Maria Orsic. I wouldn't be surprised if she's related, but to say she's either a reincarnation or actually Maria Orsic herself...well...

Hadn't heard this one.

[butthurt]

I'd like to go off planet.

[slunken]

I visited Earth once. Meh.

[slunken]

Actually I'm still stuck here.

[slunken]

So what's up

[butthurt]

White people smell like butter.

[The exploding boy]

I don't smell like butter.


I smell like a lot of things but butter ain't one of them.

[Mayfuck]

"visited" is a loaded term

[Mayfuck]

Originally Posted by The exploding boy

I don't smell like butter.


I smell like a lot of things but butter ain't one of them.

what about "shit"

[Luke de Spa]

Originally Posted by Charmbag

I want to hear why Luke thinks no

i'm assuming that by "extraterrestrials" the OP means sentient organisms that a) currently exist, and b) that we would recognise as conscious organisms.

thing is, it's a big universe but it's also an old universe, and we've only been around for a blip and probably only have a fraction of a blip left.

if we assume that consciousness is generally evolutionarily maladaptive – big brains are expensive to run, natural selection favours those organisms within a species that are as stupid as possible, etc. – then life may well be prevalent throughout the universe, but sentience won't be. we're an anomaly here on earth, after all.

further to that, if the conditions in which sentience is selected for throughout the universe are like they were for early humans, then the great filter starts to make sense.

if consciousness is only advantageous in social animals whose interactions grow increasingly complex, thereby favouring brains that can better mediate between multiple hypothetical decisions (e.g., kill the entire herd of aurochs and feast, or kill only a few so there are more next year) and engage in tactical deceit (e.g., steal dried aurochs meat from your neighbour and then plausibly deny it), then consciousness will tend to start out, as it has with us, as a bolt-on to a largely heuristics-driven brain in a pre-technological environment.

consider two factors: the rate of human intelligence and the rate of human technological progress.

intelligence is almost a flat line. we don't seem to be getting smarter at a terribly impressive rate – rather, all the evidence points to human consciousness remaining very much a palaeolithic workaround – fairly late to the mental party. basically, we're better at thinking than everything else, but still pretty bad. irrational, biased, prone to denial, short-term-oriented idiots.

meanwhile, science and technology have marched onward, rapidly outpacing our ability to understand their implications. we've already been on the brink of wiping ourselves out. it's hard to imagine that we'll catch up cognitively in time to avoid wiping ourselves out in some way or another (climate change, bioweapons, non-benign super-intelligence, etc.).

so:

• sentience is exceedingly rare, even if life isn't.
• sentient species with technology tend towards rapid self-annihilation, because they're unlikely to get any of their population off their origin planet before shit hits the fan.
• in geological time, the existence of a sentient species with technology is likely to be a drop in the ocean. if we manage 50,000 years of emitting radio waves into space, and the age of the universe is about 14 billion years, then we'll be broadcasting for under 0.000004% of the universe's duration at the time we disappear.
• therefore, while extraterrestrial intelligence may have existed and may exist in the future, i'm not persuaded that it must exist now – at least in a form that is like us.

lots of assumptions in there, obviously, but that's the general gist.

[Luke de Spa]

i'm not saying there couldn't be other kinds of environments that favour consciousness for non-social reasons, btw. it could even be an emergent property of networks that grow beyond a certain size while staying below a certain latency ceiling – 400 ms, i think i read somewhere recently – add enough neurons/transistors/nodes and eventually it just wakes up, which is a cool idea. but i assumed that wasn't what the OP was meaning

[Luke de Spa]

another fun idea is the simulation argument, in which case the argument against extraterrestrials would be that the observable universe is a backdrop for the simulation of our solar system (and us, obviously) run by posthumans in the real world – who have excluded extraterrestrials not because they don't exist but because there is no point in simulating extraterrestrials when running a simulation of earthbound unmodified humans

[slunken]

Don't take this the wrong way but thinking that great things will happen because it's Billy, James, D'arcy and Jimmy back on the stage is pure fantasy.

[The exploding boy]

Originally Posted by Mayfuck

what about "shit"

A suggestion of it.


It's the more "subtle" smell of just ass really.

[Order 66]

i think james brings more.. the atmospherics, the ebow. jeff is a better technical player but it doesn't bring the rawness earlier shows had

[F.Delacroix]

im certainly hearing what you're saying

[killtrocity]

Originally Posted by Luke de Spa

i'm not saying there couldn't be other kinds of environments that favour consciousness for non-social reasons, btw. it could even be an emergent property of networks that grow beyond a certain size while staying below a certain latency ceiling – 400 ms, i think i read somewhere recently – add enough neurons/transistors/nodes and eventually it just wakes up, which is a cool idea. but i assumed that wasn't what the OP was meaning

What exactly does latency mean? Response time? This reminds me of an article from Wired last year: http://www.wired.com/2013/11/christo...ciousness/all/

Basically, the idea is that consciousness as an emergent property depends not just on the number of transistors, but on the complexity of the connections. In this way, the brain is vastly different from something like the internet, which has comparatively simple connections.

[Luke de Spa]

latency means the maximum amount of time it takes for any one node in the network to communicate with any other node

[Luke de Spa]

that guy sounds like he's out of his gourd but yeah that's similar to what i was getting at

[Mayfuck]

Originally Posted by Luke de Spa

i'm assuming that by "extraterrestrials" the OP means sentient organisms that a) currently exist, and b) that we would recognise as conscious organisms.

thing is, it's a big universe but it's also an old universe, and we've only been around for a blip and probably only have a fraction of a blip left.

if we assume that consciousness is generally evolutionarily maladaptive – big brains are expensive to run, natural selection favours those organisms within a species that are as stupid as possible, etc. – then life may well be prevalent throughout the universe, but sentience won't be. we're an anomaly here on earth, after all.

further to that, if the conditions in which sentience is selected for throughout the universe are like they were for early humans, then the great filter starts to make sense.

if consciousness is only advantageous in social animals whose interactions grow increasingly complex, thereby favouring brains that can better mediate between multiple hypothetical decisions (e.g., kill the entire herd of aurochs and feast, or kill only a few so there are more next year) and engage in tactical deceit (e.g., steal dried aurochs meat from your neighbour and then plausibly deny it), then consciousness will tend to start out, as it has with us, as a bolt-on to a largely heuristics-driven brain in a pre-technological environment.

consider two factors: the rate of human intelligence and the rate of human technological progress.

intelligence is almost a flat line. we don't seem to be getting smarter at a terribly impressive rate – rather, all the evidence points to human consciousness remaining very much a palaeolithic workaround – fairly late to the mental party. basically, we're better at thinking than everything else, but still pretty bad. irrational, biased, prone to denial, short-term-oriented idiots.

meanwhile, science and technology have marched onward, rapidly outpacing our ability to understand their implications. we've already been on the brink of wiping ourselves out. it's hard to imagine that we'll catch up cognitively in time to avoid wiping ourselves out in some way or another (climate change, bioweapons, non-benign super-intelligence, etc.).

so:

• sentience is exceedingly rare, even if life isn't.
• sentient species with technology tend towards rapid self-annihilation, because they're unlikely to get any of their population off their origin planet before shit hits the fan.
• in geological time, the existence of a sentient species with technology is likely to be a drop in the ocean. if we manage 50,000 years of emitting radio waves into space, and the age of the universe is about 14 billion years, then we'll be broadcasting for under 0.000004% of the universe's duration at the time we disappear.
• therefore, while extraterrestrial intelligence may have existed and may exist in the future, i'm not persuaded that it must exist now – at least in a form that is like us.

lots of assumptions in there, obviously, but that's the general gist.

this was painful to read.

We all know what "extraterrestrial" means and the context behind the question. we didn't need a long ass tedious prologue to the question.

[Luke de Spa]

charmbag asked why i answered no. that post explains why i answered no. <shrug>

[jczeroman]

Yes they exist, no they have not visited the earth.

[Order 66]

i think they have. how else do you explain black holes

[The Omega Concern]

Originally Posted by slunken

Hadn't heard this one.

Really now...well, get a load of this one:


This site is intended to facilitate the gradual release of confidential documents pertaining to a top secret exchange program of twelve US military personnel to Serpo, a planet of Zeta Reticuli, between the years 1965-78.



http://www.serpo.org/

[The exploding boy]

Originally Posted by Mayfuck

this was painful to read.

We all know what "extraterrestrial" means and the context behind the question. we didn't need a long ass tedious prologue to the question.

Leave it to a mexican to be too lazy to read.