Nobody's talking about the Aliens
If you guys don't know already, Mexico just released some footage showing alien bodies. Not as a joke, apparently it's being taken seriously.
I put this in the Epistemology subforum because I feel that the most interesting questions about this release of information are epistemic questions. Questions like, should this footage elicit a change in beliefs at all? Do we have good reason to trust that these are real aliens? Do we have good reason to trust that the people who are taking this as strong evidence that it's all real are being rational and analyzing the evidence properly?
What do you guys think of the Mexican aliens?
I put this in the Epistemology subforum because I feel that the most interesting questions about this release of information are epistemic questions. Questions like, should this footage elicit a change in beliefs at all? Do we have good reason to trust that these are real aliens? Do we have good reason to trust that the people who are taking this as strong evidence that it's all real are being rational and analyzing the evidence properly?
What do you guys think of the Mexican aliens?
Comments (85)
Not for me. Probably for many others, perhaps it should, but won't. The ones who reject the idea of alien life, will brush it aside as a hoax. The ones who are interested in science will ask questions - just as they always have. The ones who believed UFO sightings will say "I told you so!"
Quoting flannel jesus
Not at the moment. I don't know anything about the information source. Sounds legit, but it seems UNAM only vouched for the age, not the composition of the bodies.
Quoting flannel jesus
I think ET never went home, after all. Married a Condor lady?
No, that's silly.
I'm wondering about the 30% genetic difference. If they didn't evolve on earth, where did they get all the humanoid genes? If they did, why are there only two bodies? If they had the technology for cadmium implants in 1020AD, and the ability to give multiple birth, why didn't they thrive?
It all sounds quite improbable, which makes me suspicious.
It has more red flags than anything. It's most likely a joke, in my opinion. I'm certainly laughing.
But I do think it's interesting that someone in the Mexican government is taking it as seriously as they are. It's funny, and puzzling. Are they stupid? It's it motivated stupidity, perhaps?
A rather elaborate one, by appearances. They must have some objective to go to the trouble.
Quoting flannel jesus
I don't think so. But there are motives that can make intelligent people behave stupidly. Strong desire to believe in the implausible is one of them (see organized religion, political rallies, war, etc). To be noticed? Drum up interest in exobiology, a hitherto undervalued branch of science? To attract UFO tourism?
I wouldn't see it unless it's in the NYT or something. But did you see this? The JW telescope may have detected a molecule on an exoplanet that is only made by living things on earth. It still needs further confirming, but that would be incredible!
Good, thorough post.
If the USA wants to keep out absolutely all aliens, a much taller wall is going to be needed. Maybe a dome too. :sparkle:
Exciting for some scientists and a lot of fans.
I think it would be huge philosophically. This same exoplanet has methane and CO2, so it might have an ocean. Wow!!
Maybe, sorta, academically.
In 2015, Maussan claimed that a mummy discovered in Peru Near Nazca Lines, was that of an alien. However, as per a fact check by Snopes.com, the claim was found to be false. According to their report, the mummified corpse was of a human child. Due to these reasons, Maussan is considered to be a hoax promoter.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/two-non-human-alien-corpses-unveiled-in-mexico-congress-who-is-ufologist-jaime-maussan-101694597362929.html
Basically, this is another fraud. Someone who's already been caught lying so blatantly once should not be trusted. I await the test results that will conclude this is another hoax.
Wonder why all the aliens died in South America... Mayhap, that's where Maussan gets permission to explore?
A 30% genetic difference is HUGE. No mammal is so genetically remote from humans. This number is closer to the difference between humans and reptiles.
It is not inconceivable that both DNA itself, and its content, could evolve independently this closely, if in fact they represent globally maximal solutions to the problems they solve.
More likely though it is shaped croc meat.
Quoting flannel jesus
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the evidence we have now is hardly that. We need imaging of the "alien's" insides, for starters. If it turned out the genetic similarity is 70% to EVERYTHING, that would be something.
It's only not inconceivable by a technicality. It's more than astronomically unlikely.
I don't think it is. Our genetic code isn't a product of mere chance, more like a directed stochastic process. It might be that the basic cellular machinery common to all multicellular life is the best or even only possible solution to large scale lifeforms. (I sure would like to see the similarity of its mitochondrial DNA. )
In order to estimate the probability we'd have to come up with possible alternatives that work as well, and estimate the difficulty of the evolutionary steps to arrive at those.
I think hypericin might be right. The more you look the outcomes of convergent evolution, the more it seems likely that an alien might actually be something we would recognize.
here
Why would they need to solve the exact same problems on a completely different planet? What are the odds of all suns and planets capable of supporting intelligent life having the same gravity, air, vegetation, light, climate and topography as Earth? On Star Trek, about 95%. But in reality?
It's not inconceivable that long-ago reptilian, amphibian or even possibly avian ancestor evolved elsewhere and became capable of space travel many thousands of year ago. But that 1. the reptiles would be just like the reptiles here, 2. that the reptiles were required to adapt to major changes in their environment and 3. that they would have evolved into the general configuration of a bipedal human is a longer stretch.
After all, the most successful species on Earth stopped changing as soon as they achieved a form and lifestyle they could sustain for millions of years. Why did ants and octopi never become bipedal mammals?
Do you think the genes for wings in bats is similar to those for birds, is similar to those for flying insects?
They're not.
You are completely right that there are probably certain, let's say, local optimums in terms of physiology, and it's not inconceivable that some of those traits would occur even across planets. The idea that the genes would end up looking exactly the same, however, is off base. That's not how it happens on our planet, it's really not likely to happen across the universe.
I see what you're saying. But could DNA be like the fins at a lower level? In other words, certain environments give rise to DNA?
But what is similar between us and bananas (60% similarity) is not physiology but basic cellular machinery and communication. Are there a lot of genetic ways to get that?
And that's a big if already, because it's not a guarantee that there is only one genetic path to these features.
In addition, what's interesting about the genes of life on earth is that a lot of it is junk. A lot of it doesn't do anything. It's vestigial. If we share 70% of DNA with this alien, that means we share a hell of a lot of vestigal DNA - that's actually a pretty big problem. See, vestigal DNA sort of disappears at random - some bits remain, doing nothing, for millions of years, and other bits disappear in a few generations after they stop contributing. So even if we were to charitably grant that (a) life should have evolved similarly in the other planet, (b) it was likely to evolve with the same genes, and (c) those genes would appear in the same order in Aliens DNA (and again, all those things are definitely far from a given), you would still be massively surprised to find a huge overlap of vestigal DNA.
I just don't think the picture adds up.
But hey, maybe the story is more like Prometheus (the alien prequel), and these dudes are our generic ancestors. Or, more likely, these aren't aliens at all.
The story is a crock. If you can't see that your critical skills are inadequate.
We know that water makes fins. Could there be environments that make DNA?
So an alien species was capable of travelling a million light years but they werent clever enough to leave us with anything but a corpse?
That's a bit simplistic. True, insects are quite distant and the genetic distance is going to be relatively large for them. However the four animals in Frank's picture are all tetrapods:
Note the mention of Hox genes. All of the tetrapod species in Frank's picture have Hox genes playing a strong role in determing much about the body plan, and constraining the course that tetrapod evolution could take.
Good point, although I'm assuming that if there was DNA testing, it wasn't a whole genome sequencing of whatever DNA there was to test. A test that only looked for 100 genes might find 70 matches, while ignoring non-coding DNA.
I'm guessing the 'researchers' won't be releasing any details of any DNA testing.
Personally, I am a big fan of the interdimensional and the illegal types
No. It doesn't make me change my mind. If there are evidence of alien life forms, and they've reached the Earth, and caught on camera, then they should be here. Man-made space debris fall on Earth in minute particles undetectable by our existing technology. If you found something at the bottom of the ocean that's "strange", most likely it's our own space debris.
If there are other life forms, and they're too far away to reach the Earth, then all we have are speculations.
Perhaps they are golems and someone has removed their 'shem'. :wink:
Global-warming and Climate-change ???
Humans and bananas share 50 to 60 percent of the same DNA. So there is a 40 to 50 percent genetic difference between humans and bananas. :nerd:
Someday humans and bananas will be hybridized and will share 100 percent dna.
:razz:
Will they be called "humananas", "hananas", or "bahumans", or "bahanas" ?
Quoting frank
What difference would it make to philosophy in your view?
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I believe it has already happened in some enclaves.
:rofl:
Homo sapiarnadisiaca
It is an oppressed and marginalized demographic
I think that the Mexican government saw this and wanted also to discuss such interestingly exotic subjects. So now you have TWO parliamentary institutions that have discussed UFO's and alien life. That's very, very interesting. That's how it would go...
Anyway, I think there's been extensive discussion about the sightings especially after the US armed forces did release footage and the fighter pilots were interviewed (and weren't kicked out of their jobs and downplayed). Mr David Grusch just put it a little bit more to tinfoil hat territory, but then was the also the Mexican Congress also.
First it's laugh, then it's simply silence, then it's already old news as things were revealed / discovered years ago...
(I think the threads should be joined...)
Why do you think literally no one outside the US cares about this at all?
"The NASA independent study team did not find any evidence that UAP have an extraterrestrial origin," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference announcing the release of the study. "But we don't know what these UAP are."
https://www.axios.com/2023/09/14/nasa-uap-report-release
So, what are they/is it?
That they couldn't nail down a conventional explanation is a conclusion, in a way. Weren't the skeptics at first saying the UAP's were image artifacts?
Dark splotches on a computer screen that appear to move. Amazing evidence. :roll:
What do you think I was referring to there?
Darn tootin'
If that was what it was, wouldn't NASA have figured that out?
And then, of course, you have the actual witnesses, the pilots. But what do they know about encounters in the air. :snicker:
The pilots btw. said that the biggest obstacle was simply to report the fact in fear that they would be laughed upon or at worst grounded.
You would think. But anything to take the public focus off our senile president. I used to trust most government agencies, but I withhold judgement now. Those little dots that seemed to run alongside the aircraft are not convincing. Just me.
Someone once said the humanoid form is universal. I think it was Orfeo Angelucci.
:roll:
I think Mick West has done a solid job of explaining the UAP videos. His work doesn't get enough attention. I remember smacking myself in the forehead when I saw him explain that one triangle UFO video as bokeh. Of course that's what it is! And his gimbal analysis of one of the other famous videos is probably right.
Gimbal Analysis
Bokeh UFO
As for eye witnesses, well, people are fallible, even pilots, and humans have a pretty strong tendency to want to believe in something beyond the mundane reality we see every day, myself included. There are incentives to deceive and to self-deceive.
I'll go with Hume's argument against miracles on this. Think of it in probabilistic terms. What is more likely to be true? That someone is deceived? Or that the object in question is a literal alien spacecraft? We know that people being deceived and deceiving is a very common occurrence. But extraterrestrial intelligent beings visiting earth isn't something we have strong evidence for having ever occurred. You'd be wise to bet in any case that the more typical case is happening.
In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the Prime Directive (also known as "Starfleet General Order 1", and the "non-interference directive") is a guiding principle of Starfleet that prohibits its members from interfering with the natural development of alien civilizations. Its stated aim is to protect unprepared civilizations from the danger of starship crews introducing advanced technology, knowledge, and values before they are ready.
But the Aliens are not perfect and sometimes they make mistakes.
Except extraterrestrials visiting earth wouldn't be a miracle. There's no violation of a law of nature. Why should we prima facie think alien visitation is a low probability event?
Right, it doesn't fit the bill for Hume. What I never understood though is how he could maintain his view on miracles when his thoughts on the problem of induction would seem to lead us to conclude that miracles are impossible to rule out, and can only be argued against by circular appeals to induction.
Life is rare, intelligent life rarer, technological civilization rarer still, and interstellar travel is really, really hard.
Consider that even on this planet, where the conditions are so ideal for life, as far as we know, life has only occurred once. There are not multiple trees of life. Everything alive here is related and has a common ancestor. You would think that if life had a strong tendency to occur where conditions favor it, we'd see another line. Who knows though, maybe all the life related to us just outcompeted and outcompetes anything else and obliterates any evidence of it.
We have yet to see a single bit of strong evidence for any life beyond earth. And we've been looking hard. No truly interesting signals, nothing.
If alien visitation were not a low probability event, we'd see more clear evidence for its occurrence. Clearly, deceit among people is a common occurrence. Spaceships visiting from other star systems are not known to be even possible.
Whether or not it fits the definition of a miracle as a supernatural event is beside the point. The point is that it is always more likely that you are dealing with a typical event than that you are dealing with an extraordinary event. You should bet on it being the typical case. If you see a light in the sky, chances are overwhelming that it's not an alien.
Hynek suggested they get here via the Astral Plane - what some call extra dimensions or, more traditionally, the spiritual world. Many of the reported sightings suggest they are spirits but many also suggest they are biological beings. Perhaps they are both.
I don't think this reasoning provides strong evidence for how probable abiogenesis is. Any protolife that developed today is apt to be seen as food by existing life forms which have had billions of years to improve their effectiveness as an eating machines. Perhaps abiogenesis occurs on earth every million years on average, but the resulting life form is no competition for existing life forms with an evolutionary head start.
Edit: Did you recognize this and edit?
That might be right! The fact remains that we don't have any evidence for any life other than this line we are a part of. The discovery of a second line somewhere would be big news.
https://youtu.be/9M1-PfFx1hU?si=W4Uq2jSpqdiGrVQc
It does seem to be eerily quiet.
Other nations do not have the resources to fund investigations into things like UFOs.
The USA does so because it thinks that they will get some sort of advantage over the rest of the world from spacer travelers, technological or military.
What I do not believe is the "fact" that aliens might be aggressive and that we need to be defended from them at any means. If they have gotten here and wanted to take over the world it is doubtful that we could do anything to stop them.
If they are peaceful, and as they have not yet attacked I think that we can consider them so, why don't they make contact? Would you talk to your new neighbor if he walked around point a shotgun at you?
Another thing that I think we need to consider is how they got here, not just the method of transport but the reason behind the journey. It takes a long time for signals from earth to reach out to the stars, so they cannot have found out about us until recently unless they were planet hoping and found us by accident.
If they are here now, we have to question how they got here so fast after receiving the signals or if they have been for a long time what were they doing before we became technologically advanced enough to be any use to them.
If they came here a long time ago to conquer us, why did they let us develop technology that would make their job harder. If they just arrived recently to conquer, why did they not stop our technological advancement? It would not take much to do so.
If they came a long time ago in peace, then it might be possible that they have helped with the advancement of the technology we have today.
So they only reason I can see for them to be here is a peaceful one, sharing knowledge.
One of the things I always laugh about in the alien invasion movies is the way they portray them as ugly monster that slobber all over everything. How could something like that even develop technology? You see them with claws trying to use the human like controls of their spaceship or weapons.
I believe that to be able to develop technology the beings must have the physical attributes necessary to be able to create and use tools. That is why ants will probably never develop an Ipad. It might take a while, but there are several other mammals that might one day actually create advanced tools.
Living environment will also play a part in advancement of any being in the universe. Dolphins are supposed to be very intelligent, but in their environment and with their physical attributes it would be extremely difficult to create tools and material to build anything.
Like a near fast-as-light spaceship. :roll:
Its just like... what kind of super advanced alien civilization would do that. Its like bizarre trolling behavior just basically spamming space craft all over earth for decades on end for no apparent reason. Just doesnt make any sense to me that UFOs are actual intelligent aliens.
Apparently many people are ready to believe in the existence of UFOs which presumably contain aliens, and more. Erich von Däniken wrote a popular book about alleged aliens in 1969 -- Chariots Of the Gods, which makes all sorts of claims about alien activity on earth over millennia. A significant number of people have taken it as FACT. On Halloween, 1939 Orson Welle's radio production of H, G, Well's FICTIONAL story, War of the Worlds freaked out millions of people--despite repeated statements before and during the broadcast that this was a FICTIONAL DRAMA not reality.
"Jaime Maussan, a ufologist and journalist, told Mexican politicians under oath last week that nearly one third of the mummified objects' DNA was unknown."
Allegedly there was some human DNA present -- which is highly suggestive of human authorship of the ancient artifacts (if that's what they are). Why should we assume that "DNA" would be present in an alien's body? Did somebody discover that aliens from another star system evolved DNA? Not that I know of. How does Maussan think that human and alien DNA would get mixed up together?
I didn't read anything about the hard structure of the objects, Bone? Stone? Clay?. Plaster? Previously unseen material?
IF this had been actual alien tissue, THEN I would expect that the facts of the examination would spark intense scientific inquiry and public discussion. This has not happened. Conspiracists will claim that the alien evidence suppression conspiracy has once again deprived the public of the TRUTH.
I said in an earlier post, Quoting Agree-to-Disagree
Maybe the Aliens are becoming bored with watching us and are deliberately making appearances to annoy and upset us. If I was an alien then that is what I would do :grin: . I have often thought that it would be fun to put on a bigfoot costume and hoax people.
People usually think that Aliens will be wise, serious, and do things for our benefit. What if Aliens have a sense of humor like us?
What if making appearances is part of a social experiment that they are doing on us?
The most important question is why these Aliens have travelled billions of kilometers in order to abduct people and "probe" them. Abduction and probing is reported frequently. There must be an explanation for this. Does anybody have any ideas?
Thinking about that Im curious whether more people believe in ghosts or aliens.
Many people seem to have a "need" for the paranormal.
ESP (extrasensory perception like telepathy), spiritualism, ghosts, cryptozoology, UFO's, telekinesis, poltergeists, life after death, reincarnation, faith healing, human auras, clairvoyance, prophecy, astrology, witches, etc.
There are probably many reasons for this "need". Here some quotes from Wikipedia:
- The number of people worldwide who believe in parapsychological powers has been estimated to be 3 to 4 billion.
- A survey conducted in 2006 by researchers from Australia's Monash University[86] sought to determine the types of phenomena that people claim to have experienced and the effects these experiences have had on their lives. The study was conducted as an online survey with over 2,000 respondents from around the world participating. The results revealed that around 70% of the respondents believe to have had an unexplained paranormal event that changed their life, mostly in a positive way. About 70% also claimed to have seen, heard, or been touched by an animal or person that they knew was not there; 80% have reported having a premonition, and almost 50% stated they recalled a previous life.
Wikipedia shows a number of "Belief Polls" which report on the belief/unsure/disbelief percent for a number of different beliefs.
- A survey by Jeffrey S. Levin, associate professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School, found that more than two thirds of the United States population reported having at least one mystical experience.
A 1996 Gallup poll estimated that 71% of the people in the U.S. believed that the government was covering up information about UFOs. A 2002 Roper poll conducted for the Sci Fi channel reported that 56% thought UFOs were real craft and 48% that aliens had visited the Earth.
A 2001 National Science Foundation survey found that 9% of people polled thought astrology was very scientific, and 31% thought it was somewhat scientific. About 32% of Americans surveyed stated that some numbers were lucky, while 46% of Europeans agreed with that claim. About 60% of all people polled believed in some form of Extra-sensory perception and 30% thought that "some of the unidentified flying objects that have been reported are really space vehicles from other civilizations."
In 2017 the Chapman University Survey of American Fears asked about seven paranormal beliefs and found that "the most common belief is that ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis once existed (55%). Next was that places can be haunted by spirits (52%), aliens have visited Earth in our ancient past (35%), aliens have come to Earth in modern times (26%), some people can move objects with their minds (25%), fortune tellers and psychics can survey the future (19%), and Bigfoot is a real creature. Only one-fourth of respondents didn't hold at least one of these beliefs."
I meant any technology. :shade: :roll:
Be a bigfoot for a day, just like with the UFOs, someone would probably try to shoot you.
Quoting Agree-to-Disagree
Maybe the want to get to know the difference between the different human races that many bigots keep saying exist, them being the best type obviously.